Bernie Borges [00:00:00]:
Bridget Dahlgren and Mike Irvine, welcome to the Life Fulfillment podcast.
Mike Irvine [00:00:06]:
Thanks for having us, Bernie.
Bridget Dahlgren [00:00:07]:
We’re definitely excited to jump in and talk with somebody else who has as much passion as we’ve grown up here at Crystal De in around employee engagement and how businesses can really adopt this as a strategy.
Bernie Borges [00:00:21]:
Overall, great segue, Bridget and Mike. First, let me introduce the both of you. Bridget, you are the executive vice president of marketing and sales. And. And Mike, you are the executive vice president and chief operating officer at Crystal D, a leading supplier of employee awards and recognition programs, specifically beautiful Crystal awards, I might add. And what I invited you here to discuss today is the power of employee recognition and why it’s more than a perk. It’s in fact, it’s not a perk. It’s really something that businesses can really embrace, to have healthy businesses.
Bernie Borges [00:01:03]:
And let’s begin the conversation with a little bit of storytelling. And Bridget, I’m going to ask you to go first because your company, Crystal D, is a great example of employee recognition. You call yourselves memory makers. In fact, it’s in your description. Those that are watching on video actually see below, Bridget. Below Mike. Memory maker at Crystal D. So tell us the backstory of about Crystal D and how everyone there was a memory maker.
Bridget Dahlgren [00:01:31]:
Yeah, happy to, Bernie. Crystal D had been in business for, oh, probably about 10 years before it was a mindset shift, where that mindset shift was, hey, we better start practicing what we preach. And my father was the founder of Crystal D, and it was actually my sister, Audra Leonard, who she was a punk kid out of college, thought she knew everything right as as you do. And she walked to, at the time, dad’s office and said, you got to practice what we’re selling here, dad, and we’re not recognizing our employees. The business back then was really in survival mode. We were very small, and he was more about the financials and the bottom line. And she kept preaching it to him. And then it clicked.
Bridget Dahlgren [00:02:16]:
And that was the beginning of the journey of really evolving into an organization that does value recognition. And not just employee recognition, but an entire employee engagement strategy and how important it is as ownership and leadership to really understand that everybody is human and we’re all looking to be part of something. And how does one organization create that environment where that head and heart alignment come in? And what can an organization do to have that atmosphere where what we call ourselves, memory makers walks in the door and they can feel that atmosphere is different than any other employer they have worked with. But, Bernie, it all started with a Mindset and belief that it is important. And until you have that belief, it’s really hard to build a program because that creates an experience for an employee, because it oftentimes will be looked at more as a financial advantage. And it’s like, how do you balance that, both of those things? The financial piece is obviously a benefit, and every owner and leader needs to be cognizant of that. But it goes deeper than that.
Bernie Borges [00:03:28]:
So my takeaway from the story, Bridget, is that you’re walking the walk. This is what you do. The value that you bring to the world is you make memories for the people who buy your products. And, Mike, I know you’ve got a story to share as well that is not Crystal D, but. But pretty powerful in. Into itself.
Mike Irvine [00:03:47]:
Yeah. Thanks, Bernie. I’ve worked for Crystal D for 27 years. And so I was there before the revelation and then after and part of the change and know what it felt like. And we use the word as everyone here matters, you matter. And that’s part of our culture, who we are. And it makes a difference. And it makes me and all of my fellow memory makers want to do that much more.
Mike Irvine [00:04:08]:
And I know in particular a company, a local company here I know the president of the company. I’ve known him for many years. We talk a lot. And he’s applied some of this principle at his company and at Northstar Fabrication. And his name is Dan. And let me tell you quickly, Northstar Fabrication is a precision metal company, and they’ve been great and great quality, known as one of the best in the world and known for consistency, reliability, and all the hallmarks, and had a strong operation. But below the surface, Dan would confide in me that there needed to be more of the connection and the engagement, the potential. It wasn’t feeling like a culture.
Mike Irvine [00:04:47]:
In fact, he said, when I became president, we were getting the job done, but I could feel the gap. People were working hard, but not necessarily working together. I believed if we shifted our culture to focus more on the people behind the product, everything else would fall into place. And over a few years, he adopted a lot of the things that I would talk about that we were doing here at Crystal D and what we, as an awards company, what we back and what we support and what we try to tell our customers why it’s a valuable thing. And so he introduced a couple of things. One of them was a monthly meeting where he’s sharing and they have lunch together as they do victories. And they don’t. If they don’t, it’s Real.
Mike Irvine [00:05:23]:
That’s who he is. As part of that culture is you got to keep it real. But he also, we have here at Crystal D, we implemented a peer to peer program where peers can nominate each other for. We have what we call Value Champion awards each year and they’re based off of your peers nominations and which one matches. And he did a similar thing. And what he said, see, people want to be a part of something that matters. When you listen, when you communicate clearly, and when you show that you care about your team, they don’t just show up, they step up. And not only that, he noticed over about two, three years of this program, he.
Mike Irvine [00:05:58]:
They call it precision proud, I think is what they call it. But he said more to the point in the business numbers that his employee engagement recognition scores went up by 34%. This is over a couple of years now. It doesn’t happen overnight. But then turnover dropped by more than half from 21 to 9% and productivity jumped over 18%. And they have a lot of equipment, they’re a big metal shop. They have all these kind of things in automation. He said this was without spending any money on any of that, but just by having better collaboration with his team and it improved.
Mike Irvine [00:06:29]:
And he’s very happy to this day.
Bernie Borges [00:06:31]:
Fantastic. Thank you both for sharing those stories. And so I think you both know and my listener knows that on the Life Fulfill podcast, I have a platform that I call seek and find fulfillment across five key life pillars. Health, fitness, career, relationships, and legacy. And in this case, when we talk about employee engagement and recognition, I think for the most part we’re really touching on the two pillars of career and to some extent, legacy, where people can have an impact. Legacy is all about impact. It’s not about saving the world necessarily, although that’s great, but it’s about impact. And I always say that when employees are both personally and professionally fulfilled in the workplace, then a lot of good things happen.
Bernie Borges [00:07:14]:
Great culture, good morale and good work gets done. So where I’d like to go next in the conversation is what’s the opportunity cost, or the cost, if you will, of a disengaged workforce? Companies that are not doing what Crystal D is doing. And Mike, the story you just shared of that, that one company, what’s the. That disengagement cost look like?
Mike Irvine [00:07:35]:
I’m glad you asked that, Bernie. We have done a lot of research and this is numbers we like to share with our distributors, to arm them, to go out there and tell their customers and their clients why they should be investing in A program like this, because they all have the dollars for it, but just where’s the spend and why does it matter? These are some numbers that we’ve picked up throughout the years and they seem to be consistent from different sources. For example, replacing an employee that is making about $75,000 a year will really cost you two factors. So it would cost you about $150,000 in total cost. That’s recruiting, onboarding. And then there’s also a loss of productivity, not just for the person that you’re replacing, but all those around them that have to help. And these are real numbers. And then that’s also quality in your output during that time and it’s a big deal.
Mike Irvine [00:08:23]:
So for example, like in a thousand person company with a turnover rate of about 3%, which is pretty small, most companies that would be very nice, people would love that. But a thousand person company turnover at about 3% would equal perhaps about, at that same rate would be about four and a half million dollars total cost in turnover. And Gallup, by the way, said that recognition reduces turnover by 20 to 50%. And my example with Dan, he was at 50% reduction a little bit more. So that is very real. And so if you take that example, if you spend about $500 per employee in one year and a thousand percent company, you get about that $500,000 annual investment. So going along with that, you spend $500,000 and reduce your turnover by 50% or even to 33%, you get go from that four and a half million dollar cost of loss of an engagement to about $3 million. So that’s a $1.5 million savings.
Mike Irvine [00:09:25]:
33% right off the bat.
Bernie Borges [00:09:27]:
Wow. Okay. So my takeaway from that is that disengagement is not just an issue that human resources is dealing with. This is a business issue. This is a boardroom issue. So when you’re out there talking to people, leaders across different companies, what is it that surprises them the most when they start to learn about really the power of employee engagement?
Mike Irvine [00:09:54]:
I think most of the leaders have a sense that turnover is not good, it’s costly, but they don’t look at it at the hard. Costs are one thing, but it’s all everything around it that really impacts your business. And moving forward, it can slow growth. They get really surprised at these real costs and how would they add up so quickly? And what it takes to replace a person, it’s much better to engage with them and in a formal type and an informal type of recognition and keep them engaged.
Bernie Borges [00:10:20]:
Okay. So let’s talk about the role of employee engagement and recognition in the promotional products industry. What does that look like today?
Bridget Dahlgren [00:10:31]:
Oh, that’s a big question, Bernie. So as far as the promotional products industry, I mean, we’re in the upwards of close to being a $30 billion industry, depending on your source. Right. Anywhere between 25 and 30 billion is what the says the size is. And swag, which is what we call promotional products. Right. Swag is used not only for external branding purposes, but also internal branding purposes. And within that category of internal branding, there’s that little piece of recognition and employee recognition, and that is a smaller piece in our industry.
Bridget Dahlgren [00:11:04]:
It’s about 3 to 5% of the products sold in our industry fall into that category. But I think what a lot of our distributor realize is they’re already selling products that hold a higher purpose. And we say higher purpose because not to discount that external branding isn’t important for an organization. But over the years, being just on the ownership side and having a team, as well as being a supplier to the promotional products industry, one thing that we do know is that the customer experience should never exceed the employee experience, because that all comes back to how well your brand is being represented. And we can all say, hey, the definition of brand is whatever the company says it is, but it’s not. It is defined by the customer. And the customers tell the organization what their brand is through the experience that they had. And so it is so important that you create an environment where your team is giving the experience to the customer that you want that experience to be so that your customers are defining your brand the same way.
Bridget Dahlgren [00:12:16]:
And a lot of times that can be driven through promotional products. It can be something as simple as an organization putting signage on the walls. It could be something as simple as doing a cute little onboarding kit when an employee is onboarded. We do a ton. Our industry does a ton of these. It can be T shirts and apparel, but it could be the. Your business mascot. I’ve seen bobbleheads purchased by corporations with the president and his head is bobbling, and it’s the CEO, and that goes in an employee onboarding kit, and that sits on their desk.
Bridget Dahlgren [00:12:51]:
And it has some of the core values written on the base. Right. An organization can use a lot around promotional products just to keep that brand in front of that employee’s face so that they know what is the experience that I’m supposed to be giving out to the customer so I stay consistent with the brand that the organization is really trying to put out. Into the marketplace.
Bernie Borges [00:13:13]:
Okay. Thank you for that, Bridget and Mike. So you both know, and my listener knows that what I do is I teach organizations how to recognize employees, how to engage employees through what I call fulfillment centric leadership. And Mike, the example that you shared, what I thought to myself is that that Dan, that individual, that CEO, was creating fulfillment, even though he may have never even used the word fulfillment, but he was doing that unconsciously. So as I’m out there waving the flag of fulfillment centric leadership, and you’re out there in the industry waving the flag of the power of recognizing employees, what should leaders be thinking about when they’re thinking about recognizing employees and their whole approach to their business?
Mike Irvine [00:14:00]:
I think it’s important that realize as a leader that fulfillment is kind of a big deal. And it’s not just something. Your work is a portion of that. And there’s other things as the five pillars that you talk about of fulfillment. Your job is one of them. And being recognized helps you about all the things you do, helps you with that. But I think it’s important for leaders to understand that there’s a kind of two different kinds of recognition. There’s that make up the whole package, and that’s a formal recognition.
Mike Irvine [00:14:28]:
And that’s where Crystal D and our great competitors and our partner distributors, we fill in there with awards more formalized. It’s a bigger deal. You get together, you go off site, it’s an event. It’s like periodic or whatever it may be. But then there’s the informal recognition as well. The two together make you feel like you’re part of the culture, like you matter, like you’re something bigger, a part of something bigger, and that’s fulfilling. And as a leader, you might say, that’s great, but this is costing me. How is it improving my service? Your customer hears it right away.
Mike Irvine [00:14:58]:
When you have an engaged employee and a fulfilled employee, you have someone that wants to be there and wants to serve their customer. And that just is really great for the business. But. But in addition, I can give you an example here at Crystal D. Quality is a very serious thing for us, just like every company. And we were having a part where we felt we could do better on quality. So we created this recognition. It wasn’t really a recognition program so much, but it turned into that.
Mike Irvine [00:15:22]:
And it was our Stampy program. So Stampy is a rhino. It’s just a rhino, A stuffed rhino that we had. And then we had some perks that went along with it too. We got a rhino because I was watching A movie once and I saw those that rhinos put out fires. They just naturally run out and stamp out the. So I’m like, hey, Chuck. And that’s our founder, Chuck Dahlgren.
Mike Irvine [00:15:41]:
I say, chuck, I got this great idea, Stampy. And then so it was all around that informal type of recognition where we would meet once a month and each department would report on their quality metrics. And the department that had the best numbers, they would get to hold Stampy for the next month. And not only that, but they get to dress Stampy up however they want and do little for things to them. And that became such a fulfilling thing. People drove to get that and it drove our numbers to better. We had even better quality. And it wasn’t a chore, it was a privilege.
Mike Irvine [00:16:13]:
And people really engaged that way. They would tell stories even today. That was like 15 years ago. And so there’s that informal side as well. It’s a full thing. It’s a culture. It’s real, it’s not made up. And when you go into these things and thinking about designing recognition and how you want to engage with your team, that I think is very important to remember.
Mike Irvine [00:16:32]:
There’s the two sides.
Bernie Borges [00:16:33]:
Mike, you’re reinforcing points I make all the time. You both said the importance of a fulfilled employee to create a great customer experience. The customer experience begins with a good employee experience. So where I want to go next is we’ve touched on the financial ramifications, meaning it’s good business for employees to be fulfilled and want to do good work. Because you have a great culture, it’s good business. But. But beyond the financial recognition or ramifications, rather, what are some other things that organizations could be thinking about maybe as maybe a little crystal ballish? What’s in the future with regard to employee recognition?
Bridget Dahlgren [00:17:17]:
Bernie, we’re seeing a ton of movement, obviously with technology. And we have over the last decade, just within our space. Gosh, 10, 15 years ago, it was points programs that were driven off websites and they still exist today, employee stores where they can go on and purchase, whether it’s sway or anything under the recognition umbrella. But we’re seeing shifts, right? With obviously the big topic in the world right now is AI and what’s going to happen and when, how is it going to be used and where is it going to go? And I wish I had the crystal ball to be able to answer the question. I think right now it’s the simple things. We’re seeing it just used in giving suggestions, like if you’re running a department and you’ve got five people to 30 people and you’re just like, okay, what type of team building should I do today? What’s an idea or an example of a day to day recognition that I could do as a leader? You can just go on a few different AI sites. ChatGPT is one I know we use fairly heavily here at Crystal D. And you can get 10, 15 ideas in 20 seconds.
Bridget Dahlgren [00:18:24]:
And then you can say, hey, can you actually build that for me and make it into a welcome packet that I can roll out to my team? And about five minutes later you’re printing it out and it’s done and it’s ready. And you can effectively implement something that might have taken a day or so and another person to brainstorm around. And so that’s what we’re seeing it. It’ll be fun and interesting to see how it changes enterprise sized organizations over the next few years.
Mike Irvine [00:18:50]:
I think those are some very good points. And there’s all sorts of platforms that deliver recognition through your desktop or through your phone. And these are some of these AI apps that Bridget had talked about. And they can be very meaningful, spontaneous. And I would just warn that it’s gotta be meaningful, has to be meaningful, it has to be real and not just something that you program. But it’s just these little things to get into the world of the folks today, especially the younger folks, they love this stuff. Who doesn’t love a thumb up when you did something good? And it just comes out of the blue and it just somehow knows it’s pretty awesome.
Bernie Borges [00:19:24]:
Yeah. And to both your points, not only is there existing technology and AI of course contributing to that as well, but even in my world with my fulfillment centric leadership framework, I’ve got an assessment that I call fulfilled at work. And it simply measures employees on how fulfilled they are at work. And leaders can use it to keep their finger on the pulse on how fulfilled their employees are at work. And, and that provides insight, data driven insight that can also feed intervention and it can trigger, depending on how much technology you throw at it, things that can be automatic or just where leaders look at it and go, okay, the trend is downward, so let’s strategize what do we need to do to impact fulfillment more positively. So there’s a lot here. We could probably do a whole dedicated episode on what’s in store in the future with regard to how to harness employee recognition and fulfillment in the workplace. But let’s get to a closing thought here.
Bernie Borges [00:20:27]:
Sometimes I like to ask, what have I not Asked you what would you like to leave the listener with regard to this whole conversation around the impact of employee engagement and recognition in the workplace and of course, connecting that to fulfillment.
Mike Irvine [00:20:41]:
If I could start. That is a very great question, Bernie. I think I’ll just set some up to. We have two audiences here and that’s the professionals that are running companies, running departments, running teams and what they want to do and in terms of getting better engagement and better results out of their team. And even as we were talking about in what’s coming up in recognition, I think it’s vitally important. People really think their job is something that matters to them and it’s a big part of their life. It makes a big difference of when you come home at the end of the day, of how you engage with the rest of your family and your friends. And that’s important, it’s meaningful.
Mike Irvine [00:21:17]:
And I would say to those individuals that it’s not just the, the act of doing it. But for example, we have here at Crystal D what we call Value Champions. And every once a year we go, we have an off site event and we call it wow Day because we’re home of the wow fact. And we go there and we recognize these individuals. And some years some of those people go home crying because they didn’t win. And the people that win, they win. And. But it’s not just the event, it’s what you do with it after.
Mike Irvine [00:21:44]:
That’s what makes it meaningful, is so our guys, they get for the whole year to the next one, they get a prime parking spot in front of the building. And in our building, people are parking on the streets. We’re a little full, but so it’s nice to have that. Plus we have a video for them and we bring it up throughout the year and we make it meaningful that way. And then we set up our new employees, when they come in, they talk to our value champs. It’s a big deal. So it’s a part of an ongoing process. And I would say to distributors out there are wonderful supporting customers and partners out there that companies already have the dollars for this.
Mike Irvine [00:22:17]:
They’re already investing in this. They want to have fulfilled, engaged employees because like we said before, it just creates a better experience for their customers. And I got to tell you, when we look good, when our customers look good, and we have all the tools and information that you could use to help talk to your customers as a distributor to maybe make this even better, wouldn’t that be great if everyone that comes to work is happy with it? They wake up in the morning before the alarm clock and they’re already thinking about how they’re going to work with their best customer and their most challenging customer and whatever it may be. And they have a smile on their face while they’re driving in. Wouldn’t this be a wonderful place?
Bernie Borges [00:22:53]:
Bridget, anything to add?
Bridget Dahlgren [00:22:56]:
That was well said, Mike. I guess I was taking it a little different angle a little bit to more of the listener outside of the promo industry. And if you haven’t started this journey yet. So a lot of organizations, as Mike said, have recognized that this is a strategy and it’s of a high importance. But for those who haven’t, it’s okay. Today’s a great day to start. Starts with a mindset. Know that it’s a journey and know that as the leader of an organization, your job isn’t to make it all happen.
Bridget Dahlgren [00:23:25]:
Your job is to set the guardrail and the vision and describe the experience you want your teams to have working at your organization. They have to get the flywheel going. You’re, as the leader, going to set that guardrail and go. I want my employees to feel fulfilled at the end of the day, but it’s really at the management team and the employee level that once they understand your vision, they get the flywheel going. And your recognition programs will have higher adoption rates. And that’s where culture really starts to turn and spin and get ingrained into an organization. It’s all about the emotional connection, though. I know technology and I it’s there, but I wouldn’t want anyone to forget that either, that we are also humans and we want to know that we are cared for and cared about.
Bridget Dahlgren [00:24:16]:
Mike said, you matter and keep that at the center as well.
Bernie Borges [00:24:21]:
Thank you, Bridget. Thank you, Mike. Both well said. And what I would add to what you both said and is following on the heels of your last comment, Bridget, about the emotion, and that is to harness the power of fulfillment as an emotion. I say that fulfillment is the second most powerful emotion in our humanity, second only to love. And love is typically something that we’re not measuring in business. But fulfillment has the ability to create a workplace, a culture, an environment where people are enjoying what they do and that’s good for business. So I would just encourage employers, leaders to embrace fulfillment as a strategy.
Bernie Borges [00:25:02]:
I say fulfillment is a performance strategy. So I’ll leave it there and invite the both of you. If someone’s listening or watching on video and they’d like to connect with the both of you, where would you like to send them?
Bridget Dahlgren [00:25:13]:
Yeah, happy to connect on LinkedIn. My profile was under Bridget Dahlgren at Crystald.
Mike Irvine [00:25:19]:
Yeah, same here. Mike Irvine, CrystalDinkedin. You can visit our website, you can contact us there, but you won’t get me. You’ll get one of our wonderful marketers.
Bernie Borges [00:25:29]:
Fantastic. My listener knows that both of Those, both your LinkedIn profile URLs and the website for Crystal D will be linked up in the show notes. Mike, Bridget, thank you so much for joining me in this conversation. I feel like we could have kept it going. There’s so much for us to discuss. It’s a powerful topic and really appreciate both of you joining me today on this episode of the Life Fulfilled podcast to talk about the power of employee engagement and recognition, both for the employee and for the business. Thank you so much.
Mike Irvine [00:26:01]:
Thanks, Bernie. We appreciate the opportunity.
Bridget Dahlgren [00:26:03]:
Yeah, thank you.
