As midstream activity has exploded with the advent of the shale revolution, companies find themselves attempting to recruit from a talent pool that had shrunk following the industry’s downturn in the 1980s and 1990s. The process doesn’t end with the initial hiring though, as companies must also work to retain their highly skilled workers.

Clearly benefits and room for advancement are a major part of these efforts, but another way to combine all of these efforts is through employee recognition platforms that engage employees. Not only can these plans help to retain employees, they also serve to motivate them to continue to produce high-quality work.

The downturn in oil and gas prices in the ’80s and ’90s resulted in a talent gap as the workforce was slashed, many workers left the industry and younger people stopped entering the industry’s fields of study. This wasn’t an issue for the industry when prices remained low, but when the shale gale began and prices improved, companies were forced to heavily compete for the few available workers.

The industry wasn’t among the first to adopt social media like Facebook, GlassDoor and YouTube to recruit talent, but it has begun to embrace this medium and is quickly playing catch-up as companies are now utilizing social media for employee engagement and retention.

One company that helps to manage these initiatives is Achievers, which builds social HR software similar to Facebook and other social media outlets and helps to build an Employee Success Platform that companies can use to reward and recognize employees for hitting goals or living company values. Started in 2002, Achievers serves more than 200 companies and employees in 110 countries. Many of these companies are large, multinational corporations.

The recognitions offered through the platform come in the form of non-monetary peer-to-peer recognitions and points with a monetary value. The points can be redeemed for real-world items such as Apple iPads, gift cards, and trips from Expedia. “Our peer-to-peer recognition system allows co-workers to recognize work that is specifically tied into company values and it will show up in the employee’s profile that highlights all of your accomplishments in the workplace,” Razor Suleman, Achievers’ founder, told Midstream Business.

Employee engagement and retention is just as important as recruitment according to Razor Suleman, Achievers’ founder and chief evangelist. (Source: Achievers)

Through a concept they call L.O.V.E.: Living Our Values Everyday, the Achievers system encourages employees to bring their company values to life. “Most companies have come up with three to five corporate values like excellence and integrity. Often these sit on the wall behind the receptionist’s desk and nobody could probably even list them to you, let alone identify them actually happening in the workplace. What we wanted to do is take these values off the wall and make them a part of the DNA of the company every day,” he said.

This system allows any employee to recognize and reward other employees for living one of the corporate values. Most customers provide each employee a small amount of money per week, month or quarter, typically between $10 and $25, to award to their fellow employees. Employees also have the option to recognize their colleagues every day on the platform through non-monetary peer-to-peer recognitions – a feature that helps build the stickiness and engagement on the platform, as it becomes a daily habit in employee’s lives.

According to Suleman, the average utilization rate for the Employee Success Platform in an organization is 70% on a regular basis. This data can be tracked and reported on to see who are being recognized as a company’s top performers. This follows the lead of companies like Google that have moved from offering annual bonuses towards peer-to-peer style bonuses. Employees are further empowered by the fact that there are no approvals necessary to issue these bonuses.

When an employee starts work with a company that utilizes the platform, their account is loaded with a nominal amount of points for their own use to start them off and introduce them to the program. They are also provided a similar amount of points to award other employees. Achievers has found that receiving and giving points work equally well at increasing an employee’s engagement.

This platform resides on the web and is similar to other social media sites and can track and display users’ achievements similar to Facebook’s timeline. This social aspect is the biggest difference between the platform and other enterprise software.

Employee engagement and retention is just as important as recruitment according to Razor Suleman, Achievers’ founder and chief evangelist. (Source: Achievers)

The biggest difference between Achievers and social media sites is that Achievers is behind a firewall that can be integrated with a company’s intranet and HR system with employee files. The platform can even be integrated so that users are automatically signed in when they log into the company network to start their day.

This integrated approach provides the capability for automatic rewards based on the company or a division reaching goals such as 90 days without incident and service awards for length of employment, while also allowing managers and supervisors to recognize and reward employees that went above and beyond in reaching a company or individual goal.

“Instead of waiting for an annual performance review for recognition, Achievers encourages companies to catch people doing something right and allowing the supervisor to go onto their smartphone, tablet or PC and send a clear and quick recognition with a monetary reward to that employee,” Suleman said.

Specific goals can also be designed and tracked in the system through a tool called a SalesDriver that shows users how close they are to achieving a goal along with a leader board for the company or division. “This allows for a healthy peer competition that makes everyone want to perform better because everyone wants to be on the top of the leaderboard,” he said.

The social networking aspect not only helps companies with safety campaigns and other initiatives, it can also help in recruiting campaigns through an employee referral program that can provide employees with significant points if a referral is successfully hired.

Achievers negotiates on behalf of all of its customers for its Achievers Marketplace, which is the catalog that employees can shop from to exchange their accumulated points for rewards, in order to get bulk pricing for the products offered. Companies partnering with Achievers can choose for their employees to have access to the full catalog or exclude some products, typically those from competitors. “Ninety-five percent of the time companies choose all of the options because that’s really meaningful to employees. Most oil and gas companies choose the full catalog,” he said. In addition, points can be donated to every U.S. charity via the program’s marketplace.

Companies utilizing the platform typically have a goal to offer the product throughout the entire company, but Suleman said that some larger companies choose to rollout the platform on a slower basis either through different countries or divisions in order to more or less beta test it.

The fact that many oil and gas workers are not located directly in front of a computer each day is the biggest hurdle that Achievers has to face to ensure that consistent access is provided to each employee. “This isn’t just unique to the oil and gas industry—retailers and the hospitality industry have a similar challenge—but there’s such a wide range of positions that companies want to make sure everyone feels they have equal access to the program,” he said.