Aspiring Leader Infuses Fun into Cox Employee Recognition Program

Terese Farmen is full of passion and energy as Recognition Program Manager of Cox Communications’ recognition program, Amplifi. "It's not just about software or points or online recognition," she said, "It's about engaging employees, building competencies and giving them the tools and confidence to serve our customers.”

As part of this effort, Farmen co-led a cross-functional team that included representatives from public affairs, HR, marketing, product, training and technology. The team set out to impact a business objective and enhance the customer experience by encouraging employees to learn more about the company's products through engagement, recognition and skills building.

Farmen was determined to infuse fun into the effort and she succeeded by introducing gamification into the Amplifi program. Upon launch, the first effort, Gamified Quizzing, garnered 50% participation among employees. Today, an average of 30% of employees play a game each month to learn about product knowledge. Employee product knowledge among the back office, non-customer facing employees has increased significantly for base offerings, technology changes and pricing strategies.

Farmen also helped to integrate privacy, security and safety awareness into Amplifi, along with marketing and field service initiatives.  In fact, year over year, these initiatives touched 97% of the entire employee base. The program is so popular that in the first half of 2018, 94% of all Cox employees received recognition for work tied directly to company goals and competencies.

Farmen also simplified the once complex process of employee milestone anniversaries into Amplifi. "Employees now have the choice between popular, sought-after gifts or a chance to redeem points for their own gift selection," said Farmen. In fact, her idea has helped Cox earn Best in Class level participation in the Milestone PURL (personal URL) program which provides a social networking platform where fellow employees post comments, pictures and videos to an individualized personal website that is set up to celebrate the employee and his or her achievement.

Today, Farmen continues to look for innovative ways to grow Cox’s Amplifi recognition program. She said, "I'd really like to find a way to tie all the different things we're doing across the company to promote benefits awareness to our employees. There's so much excitement over gadgets, mindfulness and counting steps. What if we could use Amplifi to encourage participation in our wellness programs? It would give employees one more reason to love their jobs and what we do as a company!"

Terese and Team Innovator of the Year Comcast NBCUniversal will be honored at CTHRA’s HR Symposium on October 2, 2018 in Philadelphia. For details, please visit www.cthrasymposium.com.

Special Thanks to CTHRA’s Awards Sponsor