| Company Size | Industry | Challenges |
| 40+ | Finance & Tech | – Replace quarterly reward system with spot recognitions – Foster better employee-employer relations – Build a culture of continuous feedback |
Cowrywise is a financial technology company democratizing access to savings and investment products for the underserved African middle class and millennials.
With over 300,000 customers, they empower people with powerful wealth-building tools to improve their financial health.
Cowrywise is backed by Y Combinator, Quona Capital, Venture Souq, SHL Capital, and Kairos 50 Ventures. They are the first Nigerian company to be accepted into the Catalyst Fund program – backed by JP Morgan and UKAID.
Goodbye, quarterly awards. Hello, instant recognitions! 👏
With the majority of people being Millennials, spot recognition has become ever more important inside Cowrywise. Studies reveal 80% of Millennials prefer instant recognition over formal reviews.
As a result, employee recognition is key not just to secure top young talents but also to improve their performance and retain them for a longer duration.
Upon discussions with Faith Emmanuel – Lead, People and Culture at Cowrywise, he said, “Before EngageWIth, we did quarterly awards to recognize and reward individuals. But the challenge was – the sense of timing was completely missing. So as a result, people had to wait weeks, sometimes months, to get acknowledged. Clearly, this wasn’t working.”
But as soon as EngageWith entered the picture, it completely changed the landscape.
“Now, recognition takes such little effort yet creates a huge impact, almost instantly,” revealed Faith.
“As everything happens on Slack, contributions – big or small – are noted and appreciated then and there. If anyone sees their colleague who goes above and beyond, they immediately give a Kudos or Shout Out. Democratizing the recognition program has helped deepen connections and fuel positive momentum in building a winning team,” added Faith.
The best part of this recognition program was – it helped gel people cross teams as well.
“One week, I still remember a person from Customer Experience team who got a Shoutout from the entire company for attending to a customer in a pleasing manner. But it didn’t end there. The next time they were asked to work with a member from another team, rather than feeling unfamiliar, they seemed very comfortable by recalling the gratifying experience that brought them together in the past.”
Yes, the upshot was incredible.
Think about both encouraging efforts and rewarding results whenever employees make a difference – EngageWith has you covered.
And here’s what Cowrywise achieved:
Embracing a culture of continuous feedback with Pulse Surveys 🖖
Cowrywise has set the bar high when it comes to employee feedback.
To achieve that, they capture feedback from employees regularly using Pulse Surveys.
It gave them quick and targeted opportunities to gather feedback from employees as needed. Plus, everything happens in real-time, enabling Managers to improve and deliver a best-in-class employee experience in no time.
Faith continued, “Pulse questions, as simple as – ‘Does your job give you a sense of accomplishment? Does your job help you to learn and grow? How well is your job aligned with your career goals?’ are sent, and the answers were recorded duly.”
“This helped us to decentralize the feedback collection process. Now managers can send and receive responses instantly. No more, ‘Oh, not another boring, lengthy survey,’ reaction from our people. It’s a shift in our feedback management culture,” shared Faith.
Pulse is a strategic way to get a good sense of what your people want. The best part? Since the results and analytics are at your disposal, the decision-making gets a lot quicker.
Cowrywise found Pulse Surveys to be an authentic approach to connect with their people on a personal level. If consistent, it’s a great method for People Leaders to foster a culture of continuous feedback.
Building greater trust and transparency with Anonymous Pulse 👊
To improve the employee-employer relationships, right from CEO to People Managers, use Anonymous Pulse periodically.
It is just a regular Pulse Survey, only that – the responses and people’s identity are kept anonymous.
Faith continued, “Questions like – ‘How happy are you with your organization? Are we a better company now than we were six months ago? How likely would you leave this organization if another company offered you a 5% raise?’ are sensitive and something that can’t be discussed socially.”
But by including anonymity in such questions has helped us improve and align the company’s goals, culture, and people.
“Employees are the core of our growth. Unfortunately, we had very little insight into what they thought about the company. But Anonymous Pulse empowered them to voice out their opinions or concerns while being themselves – authentic and honest. For us, it gave REAL insights into people’s sentiments and helped us work towards the REAL solutions.”
“Anonymous Pulse is one of the favourite features of Razaq Ahmed, our CEO. He checks in at least twice a month to get hands-on experience on what his people think about the company – without any bias attached,” quoted Faith proudly.
In short, it helped shape Cowrywise’s core value – listen and understand your employees to drive people towards the common goal.
Our take 🥰
“Building wealth for our customers and building a great culture for our employees have a lot in common, and neither happens overnight. And we are on the right track with EngageWIth in our arsenal,” stated Faith jokingly.
Thus, with the continuously changing work scape and swift shift in providing smarter employee experiences – EngageWith helps teams inside Cowrywise to be agile and spot-on, 24×7! 😇
– Team EngageWith
