Alarm.com Transforms Culture with Employee Recognition & Rewards Platform

Challenge

After years of rapid growth and mergers & acquisitions, Alarm.com, an award-winning smart home and business security platform, decided it was time to create a more deliberate culture of recognition within their organization. In the last few years, Alarm.com grew from just 436 employees in 2016 to 2,088 employees in 2023.  As the organization continued to expand, the need for a more scalable and equitable recognition and rewards program became evident.

VP of Human Resources Michelle Cipolla-Feinstein decided to consult employee survey data to surface insights around how best to move forward with implementing a meaningful employee recognition and rewards program. Alarm.com’s survey results revealed that many team members felt a lack of appreciation and recognition from their managers. Michelle also discovered that although Alarm.com had a few existing recognition programs embodying the company’s core values, these programs only touched a small percentage of Alarm.com’s employees.

To efficiently improve the scale of recognition at Alarm.com, drive widespread manager participation and engagement, and create an overall culture of continuous recognition and employee rewards, Michelle and her team decided to conduct an evaluation of external Recognition & Rewards software providers. They met with a variety of vendors before selecting WorkTango’s Recognition & Rewards software platform due to its robust peer-to-peer recognition capabilities; powerful Incentives features and budgeting tools; and automated celebrations of employee milestones such as anniversaries and birthdays. Alarm.com’s concurrent acquisition of a company that was already using WorkTango also provided Michelle and her team with a strong case study of the effectiveness of WorkTango’s technology and paved the way for rapid adoption of WorkTango across Alarm.com’s growing employee population.

Solution

Once the decision was made to purchase WorkTango, Michelle and her team elected to roll out WorkTango via a departmental pilot program, beginning with Alarm.com’s IT department. Once IT was successfully recognizing colleagues through the WorkTango platform, Alarm.com next opened the platform to managers, followed by the rest of the company. The smart home and business security company also integrated training on WorkTango’s Recognition & Rewards platform into their New Hire Bootcamp and post-M&A Employee Onboarding sessions. Many new hires hadn’t seen a peer-to-peer recognition platform in action before and showing how current employees used WorkTango to show their appreciation for one another and redeem points for meaningful rewards inspired new hires to lean into Alarm.com’s culture of recognition and start using the platform, too. WorkTango played a pivotal role in helping successfully integrate newly acquired companies and their employees into Alarm.com’s culture post-M&A and foster an authentic sense of inclusion and belonging.

By implementing WorkTango, Alarm.com took a significant step towards shifting from its historical top-down, infrequent recognition model to creating a continuous and inclusive culture of peer-to-peer recognition.  This shift allowed both managers and individual employees to proactively acknowledge their colleagues, which in turn rapidly contributed to a more inclusive and appreciative work environment.

Alarm.com’s leadership, like President Dan Kerzner, found more innovative ways to engage with employees using WorkTango Points. Dan offered ‘Kabobs with Kerzner’ for just 1 point, creating an opportunity for more personal interactions with the Alarm.com team. Because of this initiative, Dan was able to connect with over 20 employees in that 3-month period. Other executives hosted unique activities like lunches, game nights, or a fun day at Putt-Putt. This approach was a key element in Alarm.com’s journey to enable their leadership by boosting connections, harnessing a stronger culture.

“We were able to seamlessly integrate WorkTango into several key areas of the company’s operations, including compliance training, New Hire Onboarding, and a variety of other HR programs,” said VP of Human Resources Michelle Cipolla-Feinstein. “To further boost motivation and encourage employee participation, we used WorkTango’s Incentives feature to incentivize employees with points for accomplishing specific tasks, such as referring prospective candidates for open roles or taking an employee survey. We also decided to commemorate important life events such as birthdays and anniversaries with automated messages and points distribution within WorkTango.”

Results

The success story of Alarm.com showcases the powerful impact of recognizing employees and promoting a culture of appreciation. Alarm.com’s new and improved Recognition & Rewards program led to an increase in manager engagement, streamlined program administrative processes and improved the scale of the company’s recognition program overall, and positively impacted revenue. Implementing WorkTango’s Recognition & Rewards platform resulted in a significant transformation in Alarm.com’s company culture. Alarm.com’s Sales leaders began sending quarterly Recognition reports to their teams as part of their Alarm.com Leadership Framework and sellers leaned in and saw increased sales of some products in 2023. 

• Significantly accelerated Compliance Training and Open Enrollment by offering Incentives for timely completion
• Significantly increased Employee Referrals through Incentives
• Accelerated the integration of two cultures into one unified culture post-M&A