Recognition in Retail—Visibly Improving Employee Engagement

By giving employees and managers more power in choosing how they’re recognized, Visionworks has grown their culture of appreciation and reduced turnover.

At A Glance

Decrease in turnover
7000+ employees
774 US locations

About Visionworks

As a leading eye care service provider in the US, Visionworks is dedicated to helping people improve their vision without hassle. They make eye health convenient, affordable, and professional for all.

The Challenge

How do you spread recognition to hundreds of different retail locations spread throughout the country?

Visionworks needed an upgraded recognition platform to build a culture of appreciation in their retail-focused stores—and they needed a strategy to get everyone involved.

“When I was given the task of finding an employee recognition vendor, I found five options. After doing some research, Awardco was the big winner by far.”

Marla Mayo
Director of Payroll

The Solution

Put the Platform in Managers’ Hands

Visionworks vetted five different recognition vendors and soon realized that Awardco was the best choice for them. Why? Because they could fully customize the platform to fit their specific needs.

Visionworks wanted a solution they could customize to fit the many different locations, demographics, and people in their company. So they decided to test Awardco’s capabilities.

Instead of adding recognition programs from the top down, Visionworks decided to put the power in their regional leaders’ hands. Each regional leader frequently meets with their managers and employees to find out what recognition programs they want. Then they build out a plan and budget for the program and send it to their HR team for approval.

This way, each region has customized recognition programs that fit their people and build up their culture effectively. Examples of their unique programs include:

  • Stock the Pantry—employees redeem points for snacks from a custom catalog
  • Gold and Silver Vision Awards
  • Spirit Week
  • March Madness Spirit and Sales Contest
  • Hero Awards—annual recognition

The Solution

Reap the Benefits of Effective Recognition

As anyone in retail will tell you, it’s hard to keep employees engaged and retained, and Visionworks is no different. However, since implementing their flexible recognition platform, along with other employee experience enhancements, they’ve seen a big drop in their turnover and an increased adoption rate of Awardco!

And despite all of this customizing, budgeting, and reporting that is happening, Visionworks HR team has been able to handle all of the administration tasks without any stress.

“Awardco is just so easy to use. At the beginning, our support rep would do everything for us, but I was able to quickly learn the platform and become more self-sufficient.”

Marla Mayo
Director of Payroll

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