Guusto turned recognition from an afterthought into a key driver of engagement.
Rexall is one of Canada’s most trusted pharmacy brands with over 390 locations and 7,000 staff across the country.
The company’s recognition journey began about 7 years ago, when they discovered through surveys that employees felt they weren’t being recognized for a job well done.
It wasn’t simply top-down, it was peer-to-peer. There was no real forum for people to appreciate each other.
The company originally chose to partner with a different recognition provider, who offered a system where employees could accumulate points that could be redeemed through a catalog.
However, this served to expose more gaps, as Joe and his team struggled to cater to their diverse groups of employees.
You couldn’t appeal to all tastes, and I think the more we tried to do that, the further away we got from the goal of recognition. Not everybody liked a crystal bowl. Not everybody like a pair of binoculars, and there was only so much my team and I could do to keep procuring things from the catalog.
The other major issue Rexall had with its previous vendor were the sizable service fees applied to every transaction in the system.
It did nothing for the employee, and it was a cost borne by the organization.
This challenge was what ultimately led Rexall to Guusto, a platform that offers no hidden fees or markups, so that every dollar you spend on recognition goes to your employees.
Guusto not only offered the flexibility Rexall wanted in terms of rewards and cost-efficiency, but also the chance to build a three-tiered recognition program across the entire organization.
Known as the Applause program, it offers 3 tiers of awards:
The programs you run at Guusto are similar whether you’re at the store level, or at the home/office level. It’s something everyone can partake in equally.
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One of the biggest positives that Guusto brought for Rexall compared to their previous programs was the platforms’ user-friendliness for both frontline and office staff.
I think that the simplicity of Guusto lends itself to really good adoption in industries where there’s a lot of frontline or service workers, as well as industries where it’s more corporate.
This led to an instant spike in people using recognition at the company. Two years later, there hasn’t been any marked dip, with participation remaining steady.
Joe has also been incredibly happy with the support he’s received from Guusto.
The support Rexall has received at Guusto has been nothing short of amazing, specifically Emma, who’s our account rep. She’s always there to help us out. We have regular touchpoints with her, where we discuss some internal strategies on how we want to keep promoting the program.
Rexall also praised our team’s responsiveness in addressing any issues, and for getting the program implemented on a tight timeline.
Our hourly workforce is large, we're always going to have turnover there, but we've seen those numbers get better and our management turnover spiked a little bit during the pandemic and we're seeing that come down now as well.
Interviewed by Joe Facciolo, Co-Founder of Guusto
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