BI WORLDWIDE: Integrating Behavioral Economics to Improve HR Technology

It was in the year 1950; an American entrepreneur developed the flybuy methodology as a way of getting customers to return to the same stores. Over the next decades, the company continued to grow, and in the 90’s it developed its own platform. Now in its sixth generation, BI WORLDWIDE (BIW), being an HR technology firm incorporates behavioral economics in its technology platform to help its clients engage and reward their employees. “We are a behavior change company at heart, and we use social sciences along with technology to drive long-term behavior change for our clients,” says Tricia Mikolai, Managing Director of BI WORLDWIDE, Oceania.

The pain point of most HR solutions is the ability to make customized, real-time reports and that is where BIW excels. Its platform has a number of built-in real-time dynamic reports that clients can access hierarchically. The employer can use a report wizard that enables them to sort through a range of parameters in a step-by-step manner. Each report can be viewed in multiple formats, and the data underneath encompasses the entire company, giving employers a look at the numerical data that can be exported in the form of an Excel sheet or PDF file. BIW’s platform gives users the ability to create their own dashboards with up to five reports that can be changed at any time. Additional data that doesn’t appear in the reports are shared with the clients at the time of quarterly reviews, along with benchmarks and best practices.

BIW also offers a set of DIY tools for managers, administrators, and leaders, giving them the ability to set up communication alerts, surveys, contests, and leaderboards; which are also integrated into reports for company oversight.

BIW employs communication, training, rewards, and measurement as the foundation to inspire behavior change and achieve results for its clients’ organizations. “There are many engagement objectives that each organization has, so we first work out what their overall business goals are. Once known, we help them define the employees’ performance objectives and build the program to align with their business strategy,” continues Mikolai.

BIW has its own developers who build the platform in-house, and it constantly gathers feedback from clients. The firm then identifies bugs and envisions enhancements on its own, which together with market research and a product roadmap for clients are upgraded two to three times a year. BIW is focused on integrating the ability to give managers more information about their teams. In doing so, BIW will retain the high employee engagement levels as well as head-off any potential turn-over or reduction in quality.

AIA Australia approached BIW for a way to integrate all its rewards and recognition initiatives for employees, along with the ability to send e-cards and recognition for service anniversaries. BIW implemented the platform, and shared employee engagement benchmarks during the design process. AIA blew the benchmarks out of the water. BI WORLDWIDE embraced the foundation of communication and tied performance statistics into the platform for annual employee surveys and observed a core increase year-on-year.

The company is currently working on ways to extract data from its clients’ enterprise systems for additional insights. The firm has partnered with IBM Watson Analytics so that it can integrate this client data along with its own to provide better analysis around employee retention, disengagement and the right time to take on new work and training levels. With offices in Shanghai, Singapore, Melbourne, and Sydney; BIW has people on the ground who can support clients in person as much as possible.