Name: Awardco Academy Episode 5: BetaNXT on Building a Rollout Strategy That Sticks
Uploaded: 2026-08-18T16:46:13.905Z
Duration: 31 min 16 s
Description: Awardco Academy Episode 5: BetaNXT on Building a Rollout Strategy That Sticks

Transcript for "Awardco Academy Episode 5: BetaNXT on Building a Rollout Strategy That Sticks": Hey, friends. Welcome to Abortco Academy. My name is Nathan Gray, client education specialist. And today, we were excited to welcome Patrick Butman, global head for of total rewards and talent acquisition from BetaNext. Patrick, where are you joining us from today? I am joining you today from New York City. New York City. Headquarters. Yes. Right there at the headquarters. And I I told you this yesterday when we went through the run through. But last time I was in New York City, I was right there on Wall Street right by the office with the bull right there. You guys are in a great spot of town there in New York City. We are. That's our view off in the distance is the bull. Yes. Oh, perfect. Well, for those in the audience joining, for AwardCo Academy, what we like to do is we like to do product deep dives, go through admin playbooks, share best practices and tips, and answer your questions. So we have Patrick here, and we're gonna be rolling all that up in one as Patrick's gonna be here walking through what Betanex did for their launch strategy, the success they found going through all of that, and answering your questions. So here in the webinar, there is a spot to have the chat where you can put it in where you're from. We love seeing where everyone's from. And then there's also if you click over, there's a q and a spot. We want you to go there in that q and a and put in your questions. We have a moderator here that will help answer them. And I'll also be reviewing those questions that you're putting in there and addressing them to Patrick. Patrick and my goal today is to help answer your questions. We have a few things that we've planned to walk through that we feel are very impactful and beneficial to share, but we also want to answer your questions. So as Patrick is sharing some amazing insights, if you have questions about what he's sharing, put those in the chat. We'll be happy to answer those and get your questions answered so that way this is beneficial for you. Patrick, to help kick us off, tell us a little bit about yourself and Betanext. Well, Betanxt is a fintech company, and we provide technology data and operational infrastructure to wealth management firms and financial institutions. We were we started in July 2022. So, we are a relatively new company, but at the same time, we were stood up on three different product lines from the London Stock Exchange. So we have that great mix of a new company with highly tenured employees. And I joined in October 2022, initially, as, coming in to do some comp work, and that evolved into the head of total rewards and talent acquisition. And something that I love about Patrick, when I first met Patrick, he's really good at using LinkedIn and getting to know people. And when I hopped on my first call with Patrick, Patrick's like, oh, I see these things you put on LinkedIn. We talked about them, and Patrick was asking me about my family. Patrick's just so good at being personable, so we really hope that comes across in our webinar today that as he's sharing his experience, that you're getting to know him and learning data next strategy for their launch and where they found success and what practices they're doing that you all can find success in as well. So, Patrick, without further ado, let's go ahead and jump into some of these questions. The first question we got is why AwardCo? Y'all were were looking at different vendors. Walk us through that process. And you mentioned that there was quite an evaluation process. So walk us through what that all looked like. Well, when I started, we always knew that we would have to we would be launching a rewards and recognition program of some sort. And I'd say when I started, we had kind of a straw man of what we wanted to do, and probably had overworked what we wanted to launch with. And I think the thing that helped us with AwardCo is as part of the vendor review process is the intake that AwardCo did with us to understand what we were trying to solve for allowed us to get really meaningful feedback from AwardCo about the different programs that might help us succeed in standing up a rewards and recognition program. So it didn't feel like a product that we were being crammed into. A lot of times it's you have a presentation, it can do x y z for you. Whereas beta and I, award code really came to the table with, these are your options, we heard you, this is what we'd recommend. And they were really good at giving us an ability to see how WordCut people used it and how it could work with our branding as well. Okay. So it sounds like it wasn't just, hey. Here's the box that you have to fit in. Mhmm. But it was, hey. Here's some best practices that we recommend. But, also, you're free to run with it and do what you want as you are recognizing an award reward for your work. Modelings as well. Like, you know, we were coming into a pretty cold, called you a work that was able to recommend. This is the typical award that somebody might get as a new hire as a service recognition, so that was really helpful as well. Okay. And a special reason why we wanted to bring you on today is talking about your launch strategy. Are you the next? And you you were very strategic in how you went about launching the platform. You didn't launch everything all at once, but you were very strategic starting with the nonmonetary recognitions, having that peer to peer manager of the peer, and then slowly adding the service awards, other monetary recognitions, adding the branded swag items, and then corporate gifting. And now you've been doing some ad hoc programs. So it's been very domino effect slowly, strategically thought out, and planned. Can you walk us through what that looked like in the planning process for your launch strategy? Well, we wanted to stand something up, and I'm a believer in any benefit program. Like, you know, what you launch with doesn't need to be what it always is. It doesn't go static. I feel like, I'm big on v one, v two, version one, version two. So it was really just important for us to get something up. And so we did a what I would call an initial launch on the nonmonetary awards, and that allowed us to partner with our, you know, corporate communications group and have a really thoughtful kind of rollout of the platform. And just standing something up where people could start recognizing their peers or thanking their coworkers, especially in a hybrid model where we're in many different locations and overseas at different time zones. We wanted to get the ball rolling with that knowing that this was gonna be an evolution that we continue to build on. Again, because award coach kinda showed us what we had at our available to us. So that was whether or not that was a strategic, you know, intentional necessarily. But what it was is it I wanted to stand something up, and I wanted it to continually evolve. Oh, we love that. And something I just wanted to mention here, as we're going through the webinar, we noticed that sometimes the the video goes out and comes back in. We're working on that technical stuff, so we appreciate your patience as we're going through this webinar. And, again, as we're having these discussions, if you have questions, feel free to throw them in the chat, and Patrick and I will be happy to help address those. Patrick, you mentioned that your company is global. What are some of the locations that you have employees in? Well, we have a big part of our workforce is in India. We've got people here in New York. We've got New Jersey, Cary, North Carolina, Brookfield, Wisconsin. So we're really all over the place and people that are fully remote as well. Okay. And how did Award co play a role in that remote strategy? You mentioned remote. We have some hybrid people. How does Rekognition look different with with that employee demographic? Well, I think the demographic and, you know, the hybrid model and people that are remote in different time zones You know, in the past, when we're all in when employees were all in one location, it was very easy for me to thank a coworker, you know, or take them to a cup of for a cup of coffee because they were right here. And I think as you're disjointed or even we learned this in the pandemic or when we returned back to work, I think that made a platform like this much more important because it allowed me to thank my coworker that helped me on a project that I might be remote and they might be in India. So I feel like it is a really important tool in a model like we have or location strategy like we have. Yeah. And not only with, like, the, employee demographic being all over, there's also a shift after the COVID nineteen pandemic where employees, they were wanting more recognition. Yes. How did that play into the strategy of launching AwardCo? Well, as I as I said, it was really we need we heard in feedback from employees or, you know, as, you know, people were used to recognition programs in the past. And, you know, it was important for us to answer their needs, which was I want to be able to recognize my my coworkers, and I want to be recognized as well. So it was based on that employee feedback that really led us that way because we felt like we had a need to fulfill as it's what we heard from people. I love how you took that feedback from your employees. You did an engagement survey, learned what their needs were, and then launched from that. And you started small with just those nonmonetary recognitions. Walk us through what those looked like and then how it evolved over time. Well, initially, it started off with a peer to peer, manager to peer, and a service recognition, which was non monetary. But what it did is it allowed people to start recognizing their coworkers, managers to start acknowledging service recognitions. And and again, like I said, it was an evolution. Like, we knew eventually that we wanted to give points, you know, for service recognition. So we went, you know, the following year, and we started giving, you know, points at different milestones in somebody's, you know, tenure. And eventually, that led to us wanting to do birthday recognitions. And, you know, it just kinda continued to build over recognitions. And, you know, it just kinda continued to build over time. And now we're kinda seeing a shift to using this for more ad hoc programs. Like, we recently, you know, did a step challenge here at BetaNext, and we used points to recognize, you know, milestones there. You know, we're using it for a hackathon that we're gonna be doing or that we just finished, actually. So that's how it's continued to evolve as it it wasn't just birthdays, wasn't just service anniversaries. And we've also used it, with our engagement surveys. We'll use points to encourage people to complete our engagement surveys. Oh, man. Okay. You you had a lot of golden nuggets that we wanna dive into. Okay. We got a question from the audience, though. Someone was wondering, what steps did you take to ensure cultural differences were thoughtfully considered? Well, I think we think of everything as global. Like, we don't think of anything as regional. That was why this platform worked really well for us is it was a way for us to all consistent consistently recognize each other or reward points. So I feel like the platform and our philosophy here at Betamax allowed us to, you know, roll something out that hit all cultures and all all all all areas and regional things. I I think that that's how we look at everything here as well. So having that global mindset of, okay, we're not just having this for one region, but we're we're with the platform being globally available, we're taking a global mindset and not trying to focus in on maybe, like, specific cultural things in one location, but just No. In broad. We we'll use use the India office. I mean, the you know, our India location was very, very important to us that the program look and feel the same as their counterparts in The United States. And that, you know, doesn't often happens with different platforms that are just in The US or they're just, you know, in certain regions. That was another thing as we we could roll out a program globally that was just as easy to use or easy to recognize across all regions. Yeah. And that comes with the redemption options as well, making sure they're equitable across all regions. Okay. And earlier, you mentioned a few gold nuggets. I just wanna pick at because I'm sure the audience is wondering a little bit more about what those look like. You mentioned let's start off with best step challenge. Yes. I know health and wellness is important to the total rewards strategy. So how did you do that through AwardCo and use AwardCo to help supplement that type of a program? Yes. It's you know, we we wanted to wellness is what all companies are looking to roll out or have some kind of, have some kind of, I don't know, philosophy around. And that's certainly been top of mind for us every year. So this year, we did a step challenge, which, you know, is part of a, you know, sort of a wellness program. We were able to roll out a step challenge globally, again, to all of our employees. And, you know, typically, you know, one of our business lines, this is the busiest time for them in the year. And they used to have these little motivational programs, and we just rolled it out to the whole firm this year. And we partnered with a free app. And, you know, we rolled out, you know, the step challenge, you know, for beta next and used points to not only recognize, like, our top five steppers by the end of the program, but also to do fun things along the way where we recognized, you know, the pe people that had the most improvement week to the week or the the most consistent. So that was a fun challenge for us that kind of enter into what I would like to think more wellness related challenges like that. Yeah. And I appreciate that you didn't just, at the end, say, okay. Here's the people who walked the most. But you mentioned, you know, you did midway. You did at the end, but you're also recognizing those who had the most improvement. So I love how thoughtful it was and how you went about the process and recognizing those for multiple different reasons throughout the challenge. Well, Well and and and, again, I said this in the beginning. It is also important for us to have a communication strategy around this stuff. So it's, you know, partnering with our communications group, our marketing group that we're recognizing these successes along the way. May they be, you know, I I don't I'll give you another gold nugget. We have a feed that comes in from award code to our company intranet, which allows us to spotlight, you know, recognitions as they're happening or allows us to recognize those at town halls or in company newsletters as well. Okay. Sorry. We're getting some great questions coming here. So I'm gonna address one from Jerrin, directing it to you, Paul. They say, we're a small group of a couple 100 employees. How many people were on your launch team for the platform during the rollout process? And did you have a run through before the launch to prepare the launch team? We did. It was a small team. You know, I found that the platform was pretty easy to stand up. It wasn't an implementation that was, you know, months and months and months and months. So I would say probably our core three people, you know, it was myself, another team member, and then our communications, you know, group as well. But most of the heavy lifting was really done by AwardCo. I think that, you know, we were able to stand it up without a huge lift on our part, which allowed us to focus on the change management and the communication strategy. Okay. I hope I answered that. Yeah. Thank you. And we'll have our moderators go through, and they'll be helping answer some of these questions, putting what you said, Paul, into the chat there so that way people can review those as we're going along. And then someone wanted to ask a little bit more about the engagement survey that you did. They said and this is coming from Kayla. For the engagement surveys, did you use an EARN program, or how did you give out the points, or were there points associated with that survey? There there were. I think it was, completion. You know, we gave points, you know, along the way. I don't believe it was at a at one point, we looked at and I'd have to go back to my notes. We looked at points when you got to a third certain threshold, but I think what how we ended up and we're on the eve of doing it again is points upon completion is is how we administered it Okay. Plan too. And is that for everyone that completes the survey, they get points? Okay. Thank you. Great question there, Kayla. I know there's lots of questions about how to get participation going, so thank you for asking that. I'm sure other people in the audience were thinking the same thing. And then someone we have Liz wondering about redemption options. They're they're asking, can you tell us more about the redemption options that you use to keep things globally inclusive? Well, you you think that's more of a question for you probably, Nathan. But, you know, but but, I mean, obviously, Amazon is an option globally. You know, that that is one. You know? And when I think of the the different, like, gift cards, those are all global as far as I understand. So I believe that for the most part, we are able to give you know, Amazon hits everybody, typically. So, like, the fact that we're able to offer that globally, but I think that, you know, it's pretty consistent across the board of what, like, Best Buy, I believe, is an option that's available to everybody globally. But Yeah. I tried to move that question to you. It didn't work very well. You did a great job answering it. I I think the only thing I would add to that, Patrick, was also the the swag items. Yes. That those are international as well. Now there might be a slight variation in what items are available, but for the majority, we've worked hard with our vendors to make sure that it's equitable across all regions. Oh, man. I love seeing all these questions coming through. Thank you, audience, for asking these. Paul or Patrick, I'll keep directing these to you. So going back to the step challenge, they're wondering what that free app was that you use to help Oh, I will. I will look. It was at the beginning. Have it on your phone. Step up. Step up. Step up there. So One word. Step up, one word there. And through the app, were you able to have, like, an administrative view to see everyone, or how did that work knowing where people were at? Yeah. You create a challenge. Like, we created a beta next challenge within the app. So, like, if I look right now, where am I? I'm number 18 across the board of beta next users. So you can see you can see everybody that's participating and signing up where they land. And it was, again, once you introduce the points, like, I think that probably helped people get a little more competitive. So it was it was a lot of fun. We had a really good time with it. Oh, that's great. And how long did this challenge last for? That's another question that we had from Pam here. I believe it was two or three months. Probably, you know, I should know that. At least a couple of months. I believe it was It was a couple of months going through. And that's why it was important for us to do that, have that midpoint, kind of like, you know, check-in with people with some points. But, it's probably two months. Yeah. And I I love that you had that midway check-in because a lot of times, things are rolled out, and they're set up, but there's no comeback to it. People forget about it. So I love that, hey. We're rolling out this initiative. A month or two in, you're following up on it, and then you're couple That's great. Alright. Oh, we have another question going with the engagement. Did you use the AwardCo engagement or a different engagement? How did you go about that engagement survey? So it's it's using the the survey platform within our award code. I I know award code is is is launching an engaged program as well that does some analytics and some surveys, but we, use the survey option that's available in award code to do the employee engagement survey. This survey option, we also use for, like, thirty, sixty, and ninety day check ins with our new hires. And, we've used it in the past for exit interview as well. So it was the basic survey. I don't wanna call it basic, but it was the survey, feature that came along with our product. Yeah. No worries calling it basic. I think in the platform, it's called the simple a simple survey tool. So you can use that. And something that you talked about previously is with that surveys that you did for the thirty, sixty, 90, is you put those in your email templates that are automated. So that way, they're automatically getting sent out to employees on those thirty, sixty, 90. And with that, each each day on the thirty, sixty, or 90, there was a different focus of each of those surveys. Can you walk us through a little bit of what those surveys look like on those thirty, sixty, 90? Yes. I would say that probably the 30 is, you know, typically, you know, more I would say it's like, how did your onboard boarding go? How was your technology experience when you started? How easy was it for you to, you know, complete your benefits online? And then probably and then over time, it probably gets more targeted with, you know, have you had a, you know, goal discussion with your manager and those type of things. So it kind of evolves over the 3060, '90. Okay. And I something that you've mentioned a few times is just the evolution of the platform as you've been using it, getting the feedback from employees and evolving what you're doing in the platform. And we've been able to, you know, there has been we've been able to do a lot more in Award Cohen. I think the product is fluid enough that we can turn things on pretty quickly. And you mentioned the company store, the swag store, that's been a lot of fun for us as well that we've been using, leveraging that for swag on our interns or swag for, you know, corporate events or, you know, you know, even trophies for employee recognitions as well. That's great. And kinda as you've been doing that, some questions that we have here is, you know, what did the platform adoption look like across the company as you're doing these different programs? You know, how do you grab and maintain, the participation of your employees, especially beginning with a nonmonetary program and then slowly rolling out more? Well, what it is is it it keeps people interested and keeps people engaged if you're constantly evolving a product. So, you know, initially people might have thought of it as a nonmonetary and then they started getting these these recognitions for their, you know, birthdays or service anniversaries. And now they now they know that OA points come along with a step challenge or a hackathon. And so I think that it's that we've not gone stale with it has kept the adoption high for us because we're doing new things with it constantly. I I love that. And then how do you choose to incentivize some of that participation versus just having a nonmonetary initiative? How do I choose? I don't, not sure how to quite answer that, how I choose. I'm trying to think it's thoughtful. I mean, of course, you wanna you know, points are immediately gonna get everybody's attention. And I think our focus really has been on trying to use it for more ad hoc events. But, you know, probably, you know, we should be looking at, you know, getting more manager usage as well. And that's probably I don't know how well I answered that question, but I think that that's probably, you know, those next steps for us. Next steps there, focusing on that. Alright. Going to another question here. And I know we're coming up on time. We have a little less than five minutes. We're gonna try to get through as many questions as we can here for all of you. The question is, what has been your utilization rate for peer to peer recognition organization wide and then also managers? You know, what does that look like? How are you trying to get them involved? Well, I don't have the statistic with me off the top of my hands. I probably should have had a printout. I don't believe in printouts when I'm presenting, so I don't have that. Oh, okay. You know? The manager engagement is an important one for me. That is probably where we're we're headed towards next. It's probably my our biggest opportunity for adoption would be with our managers. Right now, managers really are enjoying the notifications they get on the eve of the service milestone with their employees. It's really I notice a lot of traffic with managers, calling out, service milestones with their employees. But I'd like to push managers' adoption, you know, of this to be independently going into the engine and independently looking at ways that they can acknowledge people and independently report and use analytics in local town halls. So, you know, while I don't have that initial statistic, I do know that our opportunity really lands with manager adoption manager usage. Okay. So with the manager usage, you're looking at, okay, how can we do a little bit more ad hoc with those managers, but also get them to be more self sufficient in using the reports and tools available to them to take more lead on their teams. Is that kinda what the next steps that they're looking at? I want them to understand the visibility that they have into all of the great acknowledgments that their teams are getting. I think that's meaningful for a manager. And I know that, you know, that's that's also the type of thing that, you know, when you're looking at performance reviews and, you know, the accolades that people get there are are important there as well. Okay. Well, Patrick, one more thing we wanna do is we'll end with this question is what would you have done differently throughout the time that you've been with AwardCo launching the platform, being very strategic about when you're rolling out programs and how you're using those programs, what would you do differently? I kinda like the slow rollout, so I can't say that I I am disappointed that we're we did it that way. I think that probably launching it earlier, and that's nothing to do with AwardCo. I think in the beginning when we were a new company and we're standing up programs, you know, I think we were there's the building the plane build while you're flying it kind of thing. I think that we we probably could have started earlier by not having been so in our heads and overworked with what we thought a reward and recognition program should be. That's probably what we could have done differently. So the launching earlier, not stressing so much about the overall strategy, but just, you know, get that Well, I think we we wanted to come out, you know, out of the cannon with all of these great things. What we didn't realize with Wardco is you can have all of those great things, but you can roll them out and not think that you have to solve for every scenario day one. That's back to my point of I think that's benefits in general. Nothing should be out of the box and go stale. It should be that. But sooner would have been something different. Right there. Okay. Well, Patrick, we're we're here on time today. So it seems like some overall messages is you don't have to do everything at once, but, also, when you roll things out, they can change and evolve over time. And I love hearing what Betanex is doing as you are evolving, adding more, taking employee feedback, and adding it into the platform as part of your total rewards strategy. That's great. Well, thank you, Nathan. I've I've enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here and sharing your time with us and your your wealth of knowledge that you have. It's great to learn from you. And, Patrick, we've worked a little bit in the past, and it's always been so great to be with you. So I'm grateful that we can have you here with our audience today. Audience, thank you for being here and asking your questions. We we love hearing from you and knowing what's on your minds as we're having these conversations. So thank you, audience, for participating and answering, asking these questions and for Patrick being here and answering those questions for us today. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you, everyone, for being here. And this is AwardCo Academy, and we appreciate your participation. And we will see you next time.