HRTech Interview with David Bator, Managing Director, Achievers Workforce Institute

David Bator, MD, Achievers Workforce Institute, highlights the importance of meaningful recognition for employee retention and satisfaction

1. Could you tell us more about your role at Achievers?
I am the Managing Director of Achievers Workforce Institute.
Achievers Workforce Institute (AWI) is a strategic practice of workforce and data scientists that connects global business leaders with research, community, and advisory services to drive better business outcomes. AWI co-creates and applies best practices in workforce science to improve and innovate for the employee experience.
This work informs both the counsel we share with customers and the members of our community and the product we build.
For the last 20 years I’ve worked with the leadership of companies large and small to build programs that leverage strategy and technology that deliver extraordinary value for employees, customers, and partners.

2. What does your typical day at work look like?
I’m an early riser. My day begins with meditation, reading, consuming all the news that’s fit to print, making a list of the items I’ll attend to during the day and then writing an article about “how work could work” that I publish on LinkedIn. All that is done before 8am. I find that practice keeps me oriented to the challenges and opportunities facing business leaders every single day.
The rest of the day is spent guiding the impact our research can have, working to grow our community and ensuring that the breadth of our expertise is easy for the members of our community to find, use and share.
The best part of my day are the opportunities to interact with customers and prospects. It’s only through those conversations that I’m able to have insight on the conditions that need to exist at work so employees can do the best work of their lives.

3. Which features of your Employee Experience software set you apart from your competitors?
First, our work is grounded in workforce science. One of the privileges of having members on our platform in more than 150 countries is that it grants us a privileged perspective on the conditions that need to exist at work so that employees can do the best work of their lives. It saves us from developing features in a vacuum and informs our ability to build relevant experiences that foster belonging at work.
One of our main differentiators is that all of our products are offered in a single streamlined platform, creating a more seamless and user-friendly experience and integration for our customers. Many other HR tech offerings are fragmented across multiple logins and tools, adding confusion for organizations and reluctancy when it comes to wide adoption.
The Achievers Experience Platform™ is a connected ecosystem of five market-leading products – Recognize, Reward, Celebrate, Listen and Connect – that power a unified and relevant employee experience to improve employee belonging.
Below is an outline of our suite of offerings:
• Recognize: A robust set of capabilities offering the flexibility to help admins, managers and employees recognize the way they want, whenever they want. Organizations can create and evolve unique sets of recognition programs with flexible, modular, recognition tools spanning budgeted points-based, social, bulk uploads, campaigns and more
• Reward: Reward Marketplace is in over 150 countries, supports 27 languages and is always-on across devices to offer all employees the flexibility to participate at their convenience. Access and personalize an always expanding global rewards catalog ranging across price points and categories
• Celebrate: Achievers Celebrate modernizes traditional service award programs and makes it easy to celebrate every employee milestone — empower celebrating diverse employee lifecycle events with self-service custom celebration cards
• Listen: Whether in the office, on job sites, across borders, or remote, hear every voice in the organization with a voice of employee (VoE) program that makes sure individuals can take action when and where it matters most
• Connect: Employee Connections, the first key feature under Connect, supports employee pairing and networking with a high level of configurability to meet an organization’s objectives

4. How does the software enable employee feedback to be addressed by senior management?
Research from AWI reveals that organizations who collect feedback from their employees have 50% higher levels of engagement and that 88% of those employees are more likely to feel they belong.
Our philosophy has been to leverage the high active use on our platform, fueled by frequent recognition, to provide employees opportunities to raise their hand and have their voice heard on anything from their experience being onboarded to a new team, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging, Health & Wellness, Safety or even the policies, procedures and programs that impact an employee’s overall engagement at work.
The polls, quizzes, surveys and forms can be created ad hoc, configured from a pre-written template library or be science-backed. Because this feedback can be collected frequently and within the flow of work, it becomes easy for employees to participate and because the content is relevant and in real-time, the insights become easy to action for the managers of those employees and teams.

5. Which essential features do you feel are the foundation of a successful business?
Work, by its very definition, is focused on outcomes. It’s true that any business that sticks around focuses on ensuring employees are doing the right things to get the right results. My own experience is that the businesses that stick around and grab headlines for the right reasons are just as focused on the experience of achieving their goals and how it feels for their people, every single day. In the midst of labor shortages, historic levels of resignation and a coming recession, companies are rightly focused on employee engagement. A foundation for every successful business is to understand, establish and maintain the conditions so that employees can do the best work of their lives and be engaged in the first place. The research of Achievers Workforce Institute discovered there are 5 pillars to attend to, that are elastic enough to embrace any employee doing anywhere and respond to the challenges and opportunities that confront individuals, leaders, teams and organizations as a whole. When organizations ensure their people are Welcomed, Known, Included, Supported and Connected, they build infrastructure that lasts, whether things are operating as intended or require correction.

6. Can you highlight the importance of meaningful recognition for employee retention and satisfaction?
Recognition can be a superpower in retaining employees and boosting satisfaction. More than half of employees say feeling recognized for their efforts would reduce the negative impact of a salary freeze and two-thirds say feeling recognized would reduce their desire to job hunt, according to the latest State of Recognition Report from Achievers Workforce Institute.
The report also found that feeling recognized more positively impacts employee engagement, productivity, and advocacy than a fair salary. 46% of respondents who were recognized weekly reported to be more highly engaged and more likely to recommend their company to others.

Meaningfulness was the top factor in ensuring that employees feel recognized when building a culture of recognition.

Two-thirds (64%) say they would prefer to receive more meaningful recognition, as opposed to more frequent recognition. To provide meaningful recognition, individuals should highlight something specific the person being recognized did, spotlight the individual or something they value, and/or the way in which the person being recognized made a difference to the person giving recognition.

7. Could you tell us more about your team and how they support you?
One of the great privileges I have in leading Achievers Workforce Institute is that it’s a cross-functional team (and community) of workforce scientists, data scientists, analysts, practitioners and big thinkers. By default, there’s a diversity of thought and experience that richly informs the work we do. Since so much of our work is about discovering what work could look like, this aspect is critical in ensuring we explore the world, empirically and with great curiosity, from every possible angle. I am inspired each day in every interaction by these folks and my only complaint is that there aren’t enough hours in the workday to chase every dream that we share together.

8. You have been certified as a Great Place to Work multiple times. What makes Achievers a great workplace?
Our mission is to help create environments where employees feel recognized and appreciated so companies can boost employee satisfaction and engagement. This mission is reflected in our work culture, by providing a workplace where employees can learn, contribute, feel valued, and pursue their professional goals — and have fun along the way.
Continued understanding of employee happiness is paramount for Achievers. Engagement is nurtured through our recognition and rewards software, which has a high rate of participation among employees. Additionally, management conducts regular pulse surveys to listen to their employee voice. Results are anonymous, confidential, and help the organization address employee feedback in real-time.
To further support all employees, Achievers offers perks that go above and beyond basic benefits. Among these are a holistic wellness program which combines physical, financial, social, and mental efforts — with many services, activities, and practitioners available in-office for accessibility and convenience. Employees also enjoy a collaborative workspace, career development opportunities, subsidized activities, healthy snacks and beverages, and more. Moreover, Achievers is flexible in adapting its benefits to align with the personal and professional goals of its employees. For instance, through its “Personal Top 1s” program, employees receive $250 annually to use towards a personal goal, whether that be for a gym membership to get fit, or to overcome a fear of heights by skydiving.

9. What is the biggest piece of advice you could provide to company leaders?
As previously mentioned, it’s important for company leaders to recognize their team. There is a strong positive correlation between employees that are regularly recognized by managers and employees that recommend their manager and company to others.
Recognition can have a positive chain reaction. People who say they are regularly recognized by their manager in a way that makes them feel valued are more likely to recognize others, contributing to an overall culture of recognition.

10. Where do your passions lie? What do you think defines you as a person?
In both my personal and professional life, I’m possessed of an enormous curiosity about the world around me and the people in it. My happy place has always been the opportunity to do interesting work with interesting people; it doesn’t matter if I’m learning from a customer, a colleague or one of my children. The energy of those interactions fuels me. I’m grateful for that curiosity and for the chance each day to apply the gifts I’ve been given – my interactions with people, chief among them – to make new things that make things just a bit better.

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