In this episode of the Transform Your Workplace podcast, Brandon Laws sits down with Aaron Rubens, CEO/Co-Founder of Kudoboard, an innovative, authentic tool for making employees feel seen and valued. It’s called Kudoboard, and just under 3 million users have already bought in. Read on to learn more about how Kudoboard could transform your employee appreciation measures.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Entrepreneur Aaron Rubens is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kudoboard, an online tool for streamlining employee appreciation initiatives. He attended Harvard Business School and Tulane University.
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR
🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws
📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”
INNOVATION IN EMPLOYEE APPRECIATION
Kudoboard began as a replacement tool for the card that’s passed around and signed in the workplace for birthdays, work anniversaries, farewells, get wells, maternity leave, or any other occasion where the team would want to show appreciation.
With the arrival of COVID-19 and the subsequent increase in remote and hybrid workplaces, passing around a card became almost impossible. Enter Kudoboard, an online group card for honoring employees and recognizing special milestones in the workplace. Users create a Kudoboard, invite others to collaborate, and post short or detailed messages, GIFs, photos, or videos that can be delivered electronically, printed out, or played as a slideshow.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Falling Short
“A lot of the special occasions — things like birthdays, work anniversaries — they were just very ad hoc. So it meant that if a colleague of yours happened to think you were great, then maybe they would do something for you, but they didn’t really have any systems in place to deal with it. And that wasn’t really the reason Kudoboard was started, but it was definitely a gap that we saw in software that focuses more on the peer-to-peer recognition but doesn’t do a great job on special needs.”
The Paradox of Appreciation
“I think the challenge is, on one hand, you want it to feel systematic — where everyone’s getting appreciated who deserves to be appreciated. […] But on the other hand, the more systematic and formulaic, the less authentic it feels. And so that’s really the paradox, right? It’s like, how do you have something that is both easy enough that it can be used and is used by everyone, but also special enough where people actually care when they recognize that it is sort of a challenge.”
Making it Natural
“We’ve really focused more on how we can allow people to give authentic appreciation — really focused on the messages that someone is giving as opposed to focusing it around a point system, a leaderboard, rewards that go with it. And that doesn’t mean there’s not a place for those things. I just think it can make it feel a little bit more formulaic as opposed to natural.”
Messages That Last
“For things like work anniversaries or birthdays, they tend to be light-hearted — people are having fun, choosing GIFs, writing little notes of appreciation. And then there are the bigger things where someone’s parent passes away or it’s a farewell and they’re leaving after having worked with the team for a long time — […] where if you want to write someone a few paragraphs in your note, you can. If you want to record a video, you can. And so it gives you the option to provide something more meaningful. […] When people put a lot of thought into what they wrote, we see people going back to them, a year later, two years later, three years later.”
Getting Specific
“The more specific you can get, the better, just because that’s what people connect to.
Like just giving people those really concrete things that they’ve done that have impacted you. I mean, I want to be honest here, Brandon. This isn’t coming from any research I’ve done. This is just what personally impacts me when I hear it. Internally, we try to be really specific with that feedback and with that praise because that can be really meaningful for folks.”
Growing and Evolving
“Now, we have about just under 3 million monthly active users on Kudoboard. Most of the use is workplace-related. It’s really interesting for us because we’ve been a very product-first company where our engineering and product team is substantially larger than our sales team. […] So one of the things that we’re really learning as we’re growing is how to work with these larger organizations and what some of their needs are.”
When Hard Times Come
“I think where Kudoboard makes a huge difference is when there are bumps in the road, and every organization has bumps in the road. Having a solution that really brings people together and makes connections is super important because that’s what keeps people around when the going gets tough. It’s not usually anything other than that they care about their colleagues, and they care about making sure that the team as a whole succeeds. So that’s kind of what we’re hoping to be used for is to bring people together and strengthen those connections.”
LEARN MORE
To find out if Kudoboard is a good fit for your business, head on over to kudoboard.com and start your 30-day free trial.
This episode is sponsored by Swag.com. Get 10% off your order by going to https://swag.com/tyw and enter promo code TYW10 at checkout.