Financial wellness is a luxury that younger demographics seem to have a harder time achieving. Stevie-winner John Hancock is an insurance company refining its approach to develop financial solutions for the modern generation of consumers.

With the ongoing economic impacts of the Great Recession, astronomical student debt, rising housing costs, and myriad other financial factors, retirement looks a lot different today than it used to. Gone are the days of getting into a job, working for 40 years, and retiring with a handshake and a gold watch. Pensions and 401(k)s are increasingly hard to come by. Plus, with often insurmountably expensive real estate costs, fewer people are entering the realty market. As a result, many people don’t have valuable homes to supplement their retirement nest eggs.

Given these kinds of factors, it’s little surprise that the concept of “retirement” has shifted. In this landscape, one thing is clear: If financial services groups want to continue to stay relevant, they will need to change their approaches, advice, and outlook to match what financial wellness means to millennials and members of Generation Z.

Rethinking Retirement Age

In a 2018 study by Bankrate.com, millennials responded that they think 61 is the ideal age to retire. Despite this aspiration of early retirement, however, approximately two-thirds of millennials have nothing saved for retirement.

Because of increased debt and decreased financial opportunities, more people than ever are being forced to reevaluate what’s realistic when it comes to retirement. For many, this means bumping out that expected age of retirement. Some don’t even expect to retire at all, instead considering part-time jobs, second careers, or other money-making opportunities as they get into the later years of their lives.

Increased longevity further complicates the issue. Across the globe, people are living longer than ever, which seriously skews issues related to realistic retirement age, health insurance, and life insurance.

Rethinking Financial Wellness

Companies that provide financial planning and other money-management services are often viewed as symbolic of a bygone era. After all, someone who has nothing saved for retirement, doesn’t own a home, and is working on paying down $50,000 in student debt can feel as if these companies aren’t relevant to their financial realities.

That doesn’t need to be the case, though. These companies can still help younger clientele reach their financial goals; they just have to shift how they think about accomplishing this endeavor. Stevie-winner John Hancock, which is based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, is one such company successfully refining its approach. 

The people at John Hancock understand it’s time to look beyond outdated concepts like ‘net assets’ and to build financial solutions that fit into customers’ whole lives—with easily accessible products that reflect their values, their approach to wellness, and their holistic well-being. That’s why they’re redefining retirement, insurance, and investing for the modern generation of consumers to address both their health and wealth.

To connect with this modern generation of consumers, one key is reframing the idea of financial wellness as the most important kind of wellness. Financial service providers are finding that the younger generation prizes a more holistic approach to well-being, and providing advice that resonates means tailoring to that mind-set.

John Hancock believes good health and financial wellness are essential ingredients to overall well-being, and they want to help motivate people to make healthier choices—for themselves and their future.

With this goal in mind, the organization has had success especially with one initiative: a partnership with the Vitality Group, which can serve as a template for similar companies looking to connect with younger investors.

In 2015, John Hancock started a new chapter in their 155-year history when they partnered with the Vitality Group to help clients live longer, healthier lives. As the first life insurance company in the United States to offer a wellness-based rewards program, John Hancock life insurance with Vitality gives customers the financial protection they need while also helping them earn savings on their premiums, shopping gift cards, and travel discounts for their everyday healthy habits, such as going for a walk, eating well, and getting a regular health check.

John Hancock was honored with seven Stevie® Awards at The 2019 American Business Awards®, earning the company a Grand Stevie® Award. This designation is reserved for the top 10 most-recognized organizations at the event. The company’s honors included four Gold awards (in the categories of Mobile Site and App, Innovation of the Year, and two in Achievement in Management), two Silver awards (in the categories of Woman of the Year and Financial Services), and two Bronze awards (in the categories of Information Technology Team of the Year and Customer Service Team of the Year).

Interested in entering the next American Business Awards?

Honors Sponsored by RAK Chamber of Commerce & Industry
Recognize Innovation in 17 MENA Nations

Winners in the first Middle East Stevie® Awards, the only awards program to recognize innovation in the workplace throughout 17 nations in the Middle East and North Africa, were announced today.  The awards are sponsored by the RAK Chamber of Commerce & Industry.  The list of Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Award winners is available at http://MENA.StevieAwards.com.

The Stevie Awards are considered to be the world's premier business awards, conferring recognition for achievement in the workplace over the past 18 years in programs such as The International Business Awards® and the Stevie Awards for Women in Business. The name Stevie is derived from the Greek word for "crowned".

The 2020 Middle East Stevie Awards have recognized organizations in 12 markets including Bahrain, Egypt, India, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.  Several hundred nominations about innovative achievements in the MENA region were considered by the judges this year in categories such as Award for Excellence in Innovation in Products & Services, Award for Innovative Management, and Award for Innovation in Corporate Websites, among many others. 

Two Grand, or best of show, Stevie Award winners announced today are:

• Boehringer Ingelheim, Istanbul, Turkey, is the winner of the Grand Stevie for Organization of the Year. The pharmaceutical giant’s six Gold, two Silver, and one Bronze Stevie wins are tops in the 2020 competition.
  
  
• Dubai Health Authority’s nomination “Diagnostic & Prognostic liquid biopsy biomarkers for Asthma,” a Gold Stevie winner for Innovation in Medical/Dental, received the highest overall average score from the judges, of all nominations in the 2020 competition, and thus wins the Grand Stevie Award for Highest-Rated Nomination of the Year.

Winners of multiple Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Awards include Akenerji Elektrik Üretim A.Ş., Istanbul, Turkey; Birevim, Istanbul, Turkey; Çelebi Aviation Holding, Istanbul, Turkey; Shoaib Javed of DHL Express Saudi Arabia, Al Khobar; Digitallica, Istanbul, Turkey; Dubai Health Authority, United Arab Emirates; Dubai Public Prosecution, United Arab Emirates; Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Eng, Abeer Ramadna, Director Assistant of Control & Inspection Unit, MIT Jordan, Amman, Jordan; Ministry of Interior, Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain; Petrol Ofisi, Istanbul, Turkey; Phenomenal PR and Events, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; RAK Transport Authority, Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates; Türkiye Vakıflar Bankası T.A.O., Istanbul, Turkey; Vitamin Marketing Services, Istanbul, Turkey; and İbrahim Ziya Akbulut of Ziraat Bankasi, Ankara, Turkey, among others.

Stevie winners will be presented their awards at a gala banquet at the Waldorf Astoria Ras Al Khaimah Hotel in the United Arab Emirates on Saturday, 21 March.  Tickets for the event are now on sale.

More than 70 executives around the world participated on four juries to determine the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners.  

“We are very pleased that our new Middle East Stevie Awards program has been such a success in its first year,” said Michael Gallagher, founder and executive chairman of the Stevie Awards.  “We are very gratified by the number and variety of the organizations that submitted nominations, and we have fielded a strong list of winners.  We look forward to celebrating them in RAK on 21 March.”

About the Stevie® Awards
Stevie Awards are conferred in eight programs: the Middle East Stevie Awards, the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards®, The International Business Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com.

About the RAK Chamber of Commerce and Industry
RAK Chamber of Commerce and Industry (RAK Chamber) is the second chamber of commerce commissioned in the United Arab Emirates. Incorporated on 22 October 1967, RAK Chamber adopts the spirit of innovation and creativity, strong leadership and initiative to support and develop business sectors to achieve excellence and become pioneers, focusing on clients, investors and business by meeting their needs and offering them added value. The chamber is keen to create and develop a system of sustainable enterprise relations, and it also works to provide a business environment and practices that enhance the culture of group work by working in a spirit of a unified team – along with responding to internal and external changes by providing information, data, procedures and laws for all concerned categories. This is in order to achieve transparency and credibility and to create a business-motivating environment in order to promote the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah as an economic hub in the United Arab Emirates.  Learn more at www.RAKChamber.ae.

101,000 Votes Determined Public’s Favorite Customer Service Providers Among Stevie Awards Finalists

Winners of the 2020 People's Choice Stevie® Awards for Favorite Customer Service, a worldwide public vote, were announced today. Voting was conducted from January 16 through February 14, with the highest number of votes deciding the winners in 11 industry categories. More than 101,000 votes were cast this year.

All organizations honored in the Customer Service Department of the Year categories of this year’s Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service were eligible to be included in voting for the people’s choice awards. The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, now in their 14^th year, are the world’s top honors for customer service, contact center, business development, and sales professionals.

More than 2,600 nominations from organizations of all sizes, in virtually every industry, in 48 nations were evaluated in this year’s competition. Finalists were determined by the average scores of more than 180 professionals worldwide in seven specialized judging committees and were announced last month.

This year’s people’s choice winners, who will each receive the coveted crystal People’s Choice Stevie Award, are:

Airlines/Distribution/Transportation: DHL Express Bangladesh
Computer Hardware & Services: SiteGround Hosting Group
Consumer Products & Services: 4ocean
Financial Services - Up to 100 Employees: Wells Fargo Merchant Services - Account Management
Financial Services - 100 or More Employees: DenizBank
Healthcare & Pharma: UPMC Health Plan
All Other Industries: VIPKid Teacher Support Team
Public Services & Education: OmniUpdate
Software - Up to 100 Employees: Carbonite
Software - 100 or More Employees: Loopio Inc.
Telecommunications: AireSpring

Nicknamed the Stevie® from the Greek word “crowned,” the awards will be presented to winners at the 14^th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service awards banquet on Friday, February 28 at Caesar’s Palace Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada USA. Tickets for the event are now on sale. More than 550 executives from around the world are expected to attend.  The presentations will be broadcast live via Livestream.

Sponsors of the 14th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service include HCL Technologies, Sales Partnerships, Inc., and ValueSelling Associates, Inc.

Request an entry kit for the
2021 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

In an age where AI is changing the business landscape, agencies like Digital Resource are stepping up to help organizations gain online traction. Adopting AI can mean creating personal connections between businesses and clients.

Hollywood’s dire predictions of artificial intelligence (AI) taking over the world might not be coming true any time soon, but there’s no denying that AI’s capabilities are revolutionizing many industries. With newfound access to big data, machine learning, and in-depth insight into consumer behavior, the marketing industry, for one, is undergoing a complete overhaul.

Most businesses today have the wrong idea about online marketing. It is not so much about the tools and platforms you use as it is about understanding human behavior and motivation. The deeper your knowledge of your target audience, the more impactful your marketing efforts will be. To that end, AI is a powerful ally for marketers who are willing to accept and to adapt to its capabilities.

AI for Your Marketing Team

Businesses across the world are using AI and machine learning insights to sharpen their marketing focus and to increase personalization. For instance, AI can help create ads that convert better by enabling deeper keyword searches, social profiling, and exhaustive online data research—all of which are not scalable efforts when done manually.

Intelligent analysis of search patterns, conversational chatbots to increase retention, individual-level user analytics, and several other marketing use cases of AI are all emerging globally.

“Marketing initially scared me because you couldn’t measure it,” said Susan Johnson, CMO of SunTrust Bank, in a conversation on AI with John Koetsier of Inc.

“I never thought we'd be here, where technology and marketing are completely intertwined,” said Johnson, who trained as an engineer and worked at Apple before making the shift to marketing. “Now, with technology, we have some degree of certainty about what is happening and why.”

This sentiment echoes the thoughts of savvy marketers everywhere.

AI Adoption and Marketing Impact in Numbers

Recent research and survey reports reveal the pace at which AI is changing the marketing landscape. For example, according to the Digital Intelligence Briefing, 2018 by Adobe, top-performing companies are more than twice as likely to be using AI for marketing (28 percent versus 12 percent) and Marketers' adoption of AI has grown at a rate of 44 percent since 2017 from the State of Marketing, 5th Edition, Salesforce Research.

Change Is Good

Stevie-winner Digital Resource, which is based in West Palm Beach, Florida, United States, is a full-service Internet marketing agency that works with businesses looking to gain online traction. Started in 2014 by Shay Berman, who was twenty-two at the time, the agency aims to go beyond vanity metrics and to give businesses unfiltered, measurable results. With that goal in mind, they have been quick to explore and to implement AI in their marketing campaigns for clients.

“We're very interested in the introduction of artificial intelligence. While many are afraid AI will take jobs, we're exploring ways we can use it to complement and to optimize our employees,” says Emily Crieghton, a multimedia specialist at Digital Resource. “We're going to see a big uptick in the use of AI. On the flip side, though, we're also going to see companies striving to create more personal connections between businesses, influencers, and online users. So, we'll be working to find a balance between the two.”

Whatever the eventual specifics of AI’s incorporation into business marketing strategies, one thing is clear. Artificial intelligence has arrived, and marketers need to adapt quickly and to harness its potential in order to meet customer expectations and to drive business growth.

This year, Berman won the Silver Stevie® Award in the Entrepreneur of the Year - Advertising, Marketing, & Public Relations category at The seventeenth annual American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering the next American Business Awards?

Workplace cultures and behaviors play a big part in determining employee motivation and performance. Media Partners is a production company committed to helping clients build strong, productive work environments through their engaging training films on challenging topics.

No one likes working with uncivil or downright toxic people, but even the best and happiest organizations have their share of them. Toxic workplace behavior lowers overall productivity and performance, affects loyalty and motivation, and opens up the organization to lawsuits and public defamation. To actually change employee behavior for the better, companies should consider investing in training people skills.

A recent Harvard Business School study of more than 60,000 employees clearly demonstrated this need for workplace behavior training. It revealed that uncivil behavior in work environments can cost companies millions. Nearly half the employees subjected to incivility “decreased their work effort” and deliberately spent less time at work. Another 38 percent “intentionally decreased” the quality of their work, a quarter admitted to taking their frustrations out on customers, and over 10 percent resigned from jobs due to uncivil treatment.

Unfortunately, most corporate behavior training programs are too dry and fail to address or to engage employees in a meaningful way.

“Most corporate training is truly bad,” says Karen Edwards, vice-president of marketing for Stevie-winner Media Partners, a learning and development organization based in Bellevue, Washington, United States.

Media Partners produces story-based, cinematic-quality, engaging training films to address challenging topics, such as sexual harassment, bullying, and workplace violence.

“Most people are surprised to know there really is good, engaging training on some of the toughest topics. With our programs, employees don’t yawn, roll their eyes, or fall asleep,” says Edwards.

Media Partners is one of a handful of learning organizations that are leveraging the power of storytelling to create more high-performing, respectful workplaces.

Why Use Storytelling?

Neuroscientist Paul Zak and his team work extensively on the physiological and behavioral effects of storytelling. Through a recent experiment, they concluded that the more a story resonates with a person, the more likely it is to modify behavior.

While the power of storytelling is only being scientifically proven now, it has been used traditionally and culturally as a behavioral modification tool for centuries. Most people grow up on a healthy diet of stories, which consciously or subconsciously shapes the way they interact with others.

“Nature shaped us to be ultra-social, and hence to be sharply attentive to character and plot. We are adapted to physiologically interact with stories,” writes Jay Bhalla in a Scientific American article titled “It Is in Our Nature to Need Stories.”

It makes perfect sense, therefore, that organizations should utilize storytelling to create positive behavioral changes in employees.

Show, Don’t Tell

Learning and development organizations typically deliver training programs either textually or orally. This means employees either have to read through tomes of textual material or to sit through presentations and lectures, many of which they’d rather not attend.

It’s not too difficult, therefore, to see why companies like Media Partners are veering toward video as the training medium of choice. Videos are one of the most compelling ways to engage people, and they are being consumed on a massive scale. Mobile video consumption is rising 100 percent every year, over 50 percent of people watch videos online every day, and almost 60 percent of senior executives say that, if there are both text and video options about a topic on one page, they prefer to watch the video (Forbes).

Media Partners has leveraged video-based storytelling to deliver over 150 original, high-quality training videos that creatively address workplace behavioral issues.

Their unique approach to workplace training led to a Silver Stevie win in the Training Video category at the 17th Annual American Business Awards®, 2019, for their training video titled “Once & for All: Stopping Sexual Harassment at Work.”

Interested in entering The American Business Awards this year? The entry deadline is February 12, 2020. 

Customer experience (CX) has undergone a huge transformation over the last few years, and that’s largely because technology has led to rapid advances in the way consumers are engaged and served. CXOne, a platform created by NICE inContact, enables brands to adopt new innovations and improve overall operations.

Virtual chatbots, artificial intelligence, cloud-based contact centers, and data-driven personalizations are no longer novelties. Businesses are working overtime to make their processes agile enough to serve customers’ demands for multichannel, real-time service. Does this mean the beginning of the end of legacy customer service systems?

“It’s no secret that customer satisfaction leads to customer advocacy and loyalty,” says Heather Hughes, senior corporate communications manager of Stevie-winner NICE inContact, a customer experience company based in Sandy, Utah, United States. “As companies strive to provide excellent CX, we’re seeing advanced technology play a big role in the experience.”

Moving CX to the Cloud: Need and Adoption

Not so long ago, customers needing to resolve issues could only call up business call centers and wait to be assigned to representatives. Today, customers reach out to businesses via a variety of channels, including, but not limited to, social media, voice calls, e-mails, chat, SMS, and video. They’re not happy waiting around either. According to a 2018 Hubspot study, 90 percent of consumers rated an “immediate” response as important or very important when they have customer service queries.

Supporting this multichannel, real-time customer experience demand calls for the quick implementation and seamless integration of new technologies, strategies, and processes into organizations’ existing customer service systems. This entails significant ongoing expenditure and is hardly sustainable, which is why businesses find the alternative of migrating contact centers and their entire CX management to the cloud way more palatable.

According to the State of Customer Experience study, by West Corporation, 39 percent of call centers they surveyed had already migrated to the cloud (as of 2017), and another 53 percent were planning to do so within the next three years (by 2020).

“The speed at which organizations need to perform and to transform continues to accelerate. The ability to adjust course in real time to best serve internal and external audiences is paramount, and it’s best enabled with open cloud platforms,” says Hughes.

CX platforms like CXOne from NICE inContact enable brands to adopt new innovations (e.g., AI and embedded analytics), to deploy service changes quickly, and to consolidate routing and reporting across global operations.

Marrying Technological Innovations and the Human Touch

When businesses think of moving CX to the cloud, investing in virtual chatbots, or personalizing customer interactions, the assumption is the need for human interaction then decreases drastically. That, however, is not true. Technology is simply a suite of tools, and it can’t replace the value and impact of the human touch.

For instance, a January 2019 Forrester study revealed 63 percent of customers are OK with getting service from a chatbot, provided they have the choice to move the conversation to a human if required.

“We believe one-on-one customer interactions have a real and lasting impact on people’s lives,” says Hughes. “It’s a belief that inspires us to relentlessly innovate in the cloud and to find smarter ways to transform one-on-one experiences in order to help contact centers achieve their goals.”

This approach toward customer experience makes CXone from NICE inContact a global leader in cloud contact center software, and it led to a Silver Stevie® win in Product Management & New Products Awards in the Cloud Platform category at the 17th Annual American Business Awards® in 2019.

Interested in entering The American Business Awards this year? The entry deadline is February 12, 2020. 

The Stevie Awards, organizer of the world’s premier business awards programs, has announced that HR Revolution Middle East Magazine will serve as a media partner for the 2020 Middle East Stevie Awards and the Stevie Awards for Great Employers.

HR Revolution Middle East Magazine is described as an honest reflection of the Middle Eastern business environment through its use of clear case studies, articles, and interviews professionally served to readers around the world. The organization’s mission is to improve and have a powerful impact on human resources processes in the Middle East by providing the proper resources. HR Revolution will be covering all aspects of both Stevie Awards ceremonies in 2020.

The first annual Middle East Stevie Awards gala event will be held on Saturday, March 21^st at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates. The Stevie Awards for Great Employers will be presented on September 17^th at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Both award ceremonies will recognize workplace achievements since July 1, 2018.

The Middle East Stevie Awards, sponsored by the Ras Al Khaimah Chamber of Commerce & Industry, are an international business awards competition open to all organizations in 17 nations in the Middle East and North Africa. The focus of the awards is on recognizing innovation in all its forms.  

The Stevie Awards for Great Employers are an international business awards competition open to all organizations worldwide. The awards recognize the world's best companies to work for, and the HR teams, professionals, achievements, new products, and suppliers that help to create and drive great places to work.

About HR Revolution Middle East Magazine:
Among the global ethical awakenings in our recent century, and among the glorious creative and business erections, the magnitude of the Human Resources aspect has proven to be greatly valuable. As the recent Middle East being a parlor of inspirations to the open-minded observers and thinkers of our planet, we – a group of Egyptian enthusiasts – decided to have the honor to start the HR Revolution Middle East Magazine. The magazine is an honest reflection of the Middle Eastern business environment empowered by clear case studies, articles and interviews professionally served to worldwide readers of researchers and learners.

Request an entry kit for the
2021 Middle East Stevie Awards.

Professionals in IT operations often resolve issues by automating scripting or coding.

Why use automation?

Throughout the past two decades, technological innovations and information delivery systems have spurred unprecedented growth. The continued evolution of tech, as well as human ingenuity, present organizations across the retail, manufacturing, telecom, banking, and financial services sectors with an array of ever-expanding scenarios and challenges. As just a few examples, being connected continues to become cheaper, and device ownership is skyrocketing.

Data volumes are soaring, and billions of new connected data sources are anticipated within a few years. We are quickly approaching exabyte volumes and are surging toward zettabytes, and the growth of mobile connectivity continues to surpass fixed lines. Security is, as always, a major issue, along with regulatory complexity.

These automations, however, often only work within a monolithic and extremely predictive environment. If one thing changes in that environment, it typically results in the automation failing within the system. Once this happens, an IT professional must begin the troubleshooting process, which might take anywhere from five to thirty minutes to complete. This increases a company’s internal costs and bogs down IT resources.

Are Humans and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Destined to Work Together?

IT has revolutionized businesses across global industries. The way IT operates in most enterprises, however, is still very people-centric, which means the industry is prime for robotic or runbook automation initiatives. Having a fairly straightforward goal of achieving direct cost savings, these automations can reduce the manual effort spent on repetitive activities.

Robotic process automation (RPA) is great for a predictive environment, but it’s not necessarily designed for an ever-changing landscape. It lacks, therefore, the agility to successfully handle many scenarios. To see better results, the automation efforts need to be cognitive and intelligent.

While script-based automation yields quick, small wins, most organizations soon realize the accelerating pace of business-related changes, the increasing complexity of technology and operations, and rising technology-based operational risks far outmatch traditional automation capabilities. There is a critical need, therefore, for an intelligent system that can keep up with technology churn, understand business processes, and be customized to an industry domain and business model.

Many companies praise automation like it’s already the backbone of their business platforms, but human intervention within that automation is still largely necessary. Companies like Digitate try to be aware of this (currently) inescapable reality by working with top brands in virtually every industry. By continuing to improve their product capabilities, service delivery, and customer support, they can build a community of dedicated users who are excited about sharing their stories with them.

Digitate™ leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence to manage IT and business operations. Their product, ignio™, enables better decision-making and ultimately solves IT operations challenges.

Other companies that also leverage machine learning and AI to manage IT and business operations are still working on developing an overarching process that can understand system needs across dynamic situations from different sectors. This is a daunting task, though, and something no one has been able to achieve—yet.

Digitate recently won a Silver Stevie® Award in the Software Defined Infrastructure category at the 2019 International Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The International Business Awards this year? They open for entries on February 4, 2020. 

Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Winners to Be Announced in Las Vegas on February 28

Finalists in the 14th Annual Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service, an international competition recognizing excellence in disciplines that are crucial to business success, were announced today.

A diverse group of organizations and individuals around the world are among those recognized in the customer service awards, contact center awards, business development awards, and sales awards categories.

Organizations with five or more Finalist nominations include Achievers, Toronto, ON Canada; Allianz Global Assistance, Richmond, VA USA; Bounteous, Chicago, IL USA; Carbonite, Inc., Boston, MA USA; Cinch Home Services, Inc., Boca Raton, FL USA; Clarabridge, Reston, VA USA; Concentrix, Fremont, CA USA; CoverMyMeds, Columbus, OH USA; Cvent Inc, McLean, VA USA; Dell Technologies, worldwide; Delta Vacations, Minot, ND USA; DenizBank Financial Service Group, Istanbul, Turkey; DHL Express Vietnam, Hanoi; DHL Express, Johannesburg, South Africa; Druva, Sunnyvale, CA USA; GoDaddy, Scottsdale, AZ USA; HomeServe USA, Norwalk, CT USA; IBM, worldwide; John Hancock Financial Services, Boston, MA USA; Mailchimp, Atlanta, GA USA; NCR Corporation, Atlanta, GA USA; RAIN Group, Boston, MA USA; Sales Partnerships, Inc., Broomfield, CO USA; Spinnaker Support, Greenwood Village, CO USA; Sun Basket, San Jose, CA USA; TTEC, Englewood, CO USA; UPMC Health Plan, Pittsburgh, PA USA; VXI Global Solutions, Los Angeles, CA USA; Wells Fargo Treasury Management Client Delivery, San Francisco, CA USA; and WNS (Holdings) Limited, Mumbai, India.

Visit http://www.StevieAwards.com/Sales for a full list of Finalists by category.

Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award placements from among the Finalists will be revealed during a gala banquet on Friday, February 28 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. Tickets are now on sale.

The awards are presented by the Stevie Awards, which organizes eight of the world’s leading business awards shows, including the prestigious International Business Awards® and American Business Awards®, and the Women|Future Conference.

More than 2,600 nominations from organizations of all sizes, in virtually every industry, in 48 nations were evaluated in this year’s competition. Finalists were determined by the average scores of more than 180 professionals worldwide in seven specialized judging committees. Entries were considered in more than 90 categories for customer service and contact center achievements, including Contact Center of the Year, Award for Innovation in Customer Service, and Customer Service Department of the Year; more than 60 categories for sales and business development achievements, ranging from Senior Sales Executive of the Year to Sales Training or Business Development Executive of the Year to Sales Department of the Year; and categories to recognize new products and services and solution providers.

Beginning today through February 14, the general public may vote for their favorite providers of customer service in the People’s Choice Stevie® Awards for Favorite Customer Service. Voting is open at http://peopleschoice.stevieawards.com. Winners of the People’s Choice Stevie Awards in multiple industries will be determined in mid-February and honored at the awards gala in Las Vegas on February 28.

Request an entry kit for the
2021 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Companies that consistently rank high on the lists of best places to work often have great work cultures, deep-rooted values, and fantastic employee benefits. They go above and beyond state and federally-mandated benefits and offer their employees generous retirement plans, flexible work hours, tuition reimbursements, ample parental leave, and many other tangible and intangible perks. These companies attract and retain the best talent because they truly care for their employees’ well-being.

What Do Employees Really Want?

While the long list of benefits top companies provide are great, they might not be feasible for most smaller businesses. In these scenarios, companies should identify the “good-to-have” benefits and then investigate what their employees really need and what issues weigh heaviest on their minds.

According to the PwC Employee Financial Wellness Survey, 2019, financial matters cause employees the most stress—more than all other life stressors (health concerns, relationships, job issues, and more) combined. A staggering 30 percent lie awake at night worrying about money, and 23 percent are less productive at work because of financial worries, according to a US employee benefit trends study.

Also, even though the numbers have improved slightly since last year, almost 40 percent of US households still don’t have enough savings to cover an unexpected $400 expense (Report on the Economic Well-Being of US Households).

Investing in employees’ financial health, therefore, is one of the best ways companies can show they care.

Offer Innovative and Affordable Financial Benefits

With the amount of financial stress they are under, one would think employees would opt for pay raises over perks. Surprisingly, though, almost 80 percent of employees chose perks over pay raises in an employee confidence survey by Glassdoor.

Employer-matching 401K, health insurance, financial planning, and student loan repayment are all excellent financial benefits, but corporations (or even small businesses) can also implement several innovative and unique financial benefits alongside these more traditional options.

One good example is Gusto, a human resources management platform based in San Francisco, California, United States, which allows employees to access the money they’ve already earned for emergencies, without having to wait until payday.

Another example of an innovative yet affordable financial benefit is Stevie-winner Cookie Jar by SafetyNet, a financial services company based in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Cookie Jar combines the simplicity of kitchen-table finances with the sophistication of an employer-matched benefits program by rounding employees’ checking account transactions and credit card purchases to the nearest dollar and then saving the spare change in special accounts. These savings can be automatically matched by the employer, and they can be accessed by the employee whenever an emergency arises.

“Cookie Jar is designed for average workers who need to save but don’t feel they have the financial flexibility to do so,” says Vreni Pigorsch, senior media strategist at Cookie Jar. “A salary and a retirement plan are no longer enough to sustain employees, and employers are taking note. Instead, pet insurances; liquid savings programs, such as Cookie Jar; and other accessible financial tools are being incorporated into employee benefit plans. Employees become happier and more focused at work, and employers are able to attract and to retain great talent by setting their benefit structure apart from their competition.”

Cookie Jar won a Silver Stevie® Award in Product Management & New Product Awards in the Financial Services category at the 2019 American Business Awards.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?