​​L​ast week, we sent four of our consultants on a vacation to Bali for four nights. Why pay for our staff to holiday, you ask?

Well, at Aspect, we live by our values, and ‘we develop our people’ is something we take quite seriously. From customised training and development plans for each team member, team incentives and reward and recognition programs throughout the year, we believe in celebrating and rewarding success.

Once a year, we also acknowledge our top performers with entry into our coveted Stanley Club (named after the street in West Melbourne where Aspect was founded). Individual team members are rewarded with a little downtime at a destination of their choice – usually to chase the sunshine.

And while it might seem a bit extravagant to jet off to Bali for four days; we’re proud to celebrate our high achievers and for them to do it in style. We believe that two days spent out of the office to recognise and celebrate success, drives motivation and employee satisfaction. And for all the work that our team put in, quite frankly, they deserve it.

Just to reiterate before I go on, rewarding our employees is the top of the agenda. But it’s also worth reflecting on the other surprise benefits:

• They stick around– From the four employees that were awarded Stanley Club membership this year, two have been with Aspect for over two years, and the other two over seven years – not bad for an industry that replaces almost half of their team every year! This is backed by research that has found companies with recognition programs that are highly effective at improving employee engagement have 31% lower voluntary turnover.

• They are truly engaged in our business – in addition to their day job, our team members consistently go above and beyond the call of duty. For example, one of the group runs our book club and social functions and another our CSR program. There are so many stats we could quote about employee engagement – many of them are listed here. Some of the highlights include organisations with high employee engagement outperform those with low employee engagement by 202%, and companies with engaged employees see 233% greater customer loyalty and a 26% greater annual increase in revenue. We were kind of blown away when we read these stats – but the occasional trip to Bali, obviously pays dividends!

• It brings the team together – and not just the ones who went to Bali. Collectively the team were excited about the trip – we checked Instagram accounts for update pics, we sent them messages of congrats and acknowledged them in our Friday wrap up meeting. For the team that went – they have now shared a unique experience together and helped strengthen their working relationships. Quoting Jenny Gottstein (2015 Forbes 30 under 30 list) “team-building activities can achieve the holy grail of company culture: an engaged, inspired, confident, supportive and innovative workforce. Effective team-building turns employees into purpose-driven evangelists for their company and their co-workers.” Thanks Jenny – we agree!

A first-class reward and recognition program is just part of our employee value proposition that has been designed so that our team have a great place to work and a meaningful career.

Underpinning everything we do, is our purpose - to empower success, make a meaningful difference and enjoy the ride. And enjoy the ride, they did.

Congratulations to this year’s Stanley Club 2017/18Sara Fife, Michael Parker, Karen Gauld and Sanj Shouan.

If you’re looking for some simple tips for recognising performance in your team, have a read of this article, or drop me an email if you don’t know where to start!