How To Use It
Account administrators and managers can create a new custom challenge by clicking on the top level Create Challenge button after logging in. The step-by-step wizard will walk you through several options for your employees.  You will begin by defining a goal and a reward.  After that, you can specify the type of challenge, who may participate, and several other options. Once you launch your challenge, all eligible individuals can view and interact with it on the My Challenges tab.

Why It Exists
The Employee Challenge Wizard is the core of Ever Extra.  It is a very powerful tool that can make your employee’s more goal orientated. Custom employee challenges allows business owners and managers to create a wide variety of challenges, then manage, track, and archive them. For example, the random winner option lets you create a challenge where, “the top 5 sales people have a chance to win the reward”.  The team option allows you to create a challenge with separate teams, to foster competition.  The voting option allows you to create subjective challenges like “vote for the employee who you think is the nicest to customers”.  There way are too many possibilities to list here.  In fact, with all the challenge options available, there are literally hundreds of combinations of challenges to choose from!

Pro Tip
Every time you begin to create a challenge, it is automatically saved as a draft.  So no mater where you are in the challenge wizard, you can always come back to it later.

Best Practices
Create several challenges… as many as you can.  Even if there is a small reward or no physical reward, challenging your employees keeps them motivated, interested, and driven.

Create a variety of challenges.  You want to avoid the same top salesperson being the only one who ever wins anything.

Start small.  It’s ok to start with “a lovey box of tea if you can get a customer to smile”.  To avoid conflicts and misunderstandings, practice using small challenges to get all the kinks out.

How To Use It
Account Administrators and Managers can access the store by going here: Log-in > Purchase Incentives

Why It Exists
Our online incentive shop is what makes us different than our competitors.  Why?  Because it is completely optional.  We simply provide it for your convenience.  All of our competitors will lock you into some sort of reward fulfillment plan, but Ever Extra is different. Ever Extra is a completely open system where there can a non-tangible reward, or no reward at all. Maybe the reward is just a hearty pat on the back. You can use our online incentive shop, or maybe head over to eBay.  Since physical rewards will most likely be the most expensive part of your employee appreciate program, we take a free market approach and leave it totally up to you.

Pro Tip
All links to products and vendors do not open in a new window.  We like to leave that up to our users. Windows users can right or middle click to open a new window or tab.

Best Practices
Try to purchase rewards before using them in challenges.  Nobody likes to wait a long time to get a prize.

Shop around, while our incentive shop covers a lot of ground, there are a lot great vendors out there with great deals!

How To Use It
To assign a title to an employee, managers and account administrators can go to:  Log-in > Manage Employees > Assign

Why It Exists
Having an employee of the month program, or assigning titles in general, can be a great way to recognize employees. Ever Extra provides an easy way to manage and publicize your employee of the month program. When a title is assigned, an e-mail message is sent to all employees (who have notifications enabled) and the title is posted on the company news section for the length of the title assignment.

Pro Tip
You can use title assignments can be used in conjunction with custom challenges.  Simply create a custom challenge and use the title as the challenge reward.

Best Practices
It is a good idea to use a middle ground time-frame for titles.  Some type of “Employee of the Day” title is probably too short while some type of “Employee of the Year” is probably too long.
Consider sticking to some type of “Employee of the Week” or “Employee of the Month” titles.

How To Use It
To reward an employee directly without a corresponding challenge, managers and account administrators can go to: Log-in > My Account > Manage Employees > Reward

Why It Exists
There are many occasions where employee challenges can not be preplanned. For example, an employee may heroically rescue a co-worker from a burning building, or maybe just heroically rescue a client’s account that took an unexpected turn for the worse.

You can’t create employee challenges like, “Rescue someone from a fire if there is ever a fire.”  However, you can use Ever Extra to recognize employees for performance when dealing with the unexpected.

Similar to when awards are given as the result of winning a challenge, an announcement is made on the company news page, the distribution of the reward can be tracked by management, and the employee will have a lasting record of the achievement in the Past Wins section.

Best Practices
Although direct rewards are necessary in some cases, keeping employees goal orientated will often have a greater impact than “afterthought” rewards.  The get the most out of Ever Extra, try to reward employees though a challenge instead of directly whenever possible.

How To Use It
Only users who have “manager” access or “administrator” access can use this feature.
If you have that access, log-in to your account and go to Company Profile > Manage Employees > Thank.

Why It Exists
There are many ways to send a note of recognition to an employee.  You can send an e-mail, a text messages, a hand written letter, or even just a pat on the back.  Ever Extra’s recognition notes are delivered via e-mail, but there are some additional benefits.  Not only do Ever Extra’s recognition notes come with inspirational examples on what to write, but when notes are sent, the company news section is updated, displaying information on a note being sent.  When all employees can see an atmosphere of appreciation, everyone benefits a little bit.

Pro Tip
Once you have selected an employee to send a note of recognition to, a large list of suggestions shows up. What you may not have noticed is every time you go to recognize an employee, the list of suggestions is randomized. Who knows, you may never see the same suggestions twice!

Best Practices
Our recognition program really is “forbidden fruit”.  Although, there are lots of randomly generated messages to choose from, we don’t recommend you use them verbatim. Even though your employee may not know the message was auto-generated, and even though you may sincerely mean every word, it holds more meaning if you personalize it to the specific employee.

The suggestions are really there just to help inspire you.  It’s OK to use a line here or there, that’s what they are there for. However, don’t abuse it and let us write the whole note for you, tempting as it may be.  Like everything else in Ever Extra, it’s just a tool.  How well and how effectively you use that tool is in your hands.

So why is it a big deal?  Well, combined research from the U.S. Employee Involvement Association and Japan Human Relations Association reveals that the average number of ideas submitted per employee annually is 100 times greater in Japanese companies than in U.S. companies.  100 times greater!!!

So now there are no more excuses.  Ever Extra is a great tool to extract ideas from your employees.  Challenge them to come up with new services, new products, new ways to make money, new ways to save money.  You may be surprised at what they come up with once they are properly motivated.

How To Use It
All employees can access the Office Party Planner as a top level element.  Users can view upcoming parties as well as organize new ones by going here:  Log-in > Party

When an office party is created an e-mail invitation will go out to all employees  (who have notifications enabled).  When a party is canceled,  an e-mail will go out to all employees who RSVPed to the party (and who have notifications turned on).

Why It Exists
It is important for your employees to interact on a social level from time to time.  Studies have shown that when employees have social bonds (like friendships) employee turnover is reduced.

Often when an office party is thrown, “there is a sign-up sheet in the kitchen”.  Unfortunately, having a system like that isn’t very efficient for the following reasons:

• Some employees don’t use the kitchen
• Some employees use the kitchen but won’t see it
• It can’t be accessed from home
• It can’t be accessed from the employee’s desk
• There is no desktop reminder, like an e-mail in an inbox
• Etc.

Pro Tip
Use the Notes option to provide people with driving directions, party themes, suggestions on what to bring, or other special instructions.

Best Practices
Try to give people enough notice in advance of the party.  Be sure they have enough time to RSVP and take care of any party preparations.

How To Use It
Those with “manager” access or “administrator” access can end and start new surveys by logging in to their accounts and going to Log-in > Company Profile > Edit > Engagement Survey
Those with “manager” access or “administrator” access can view the survey results by logging in to their accounts and going to Log-in > Survey
Those with “employee” access can take the survey by logging in to their account and going to Log-in > Survey.  (When there is no survey running this option will not be available.)

Pro Tip
When you go to view the survey results, you will be able to see the average response across all employees from all companies.  We call this the “Ever Extra Average”.
We hope this will help you baseline the value of the question being asked.
However, at the time of this writing, we are still in beta and Ever Extra is fairly new.  So while we are collecting averages now, they will not be displayed until the sample size is large enough.

Why It Exists
It is important to measure the success of your engagement program from time to time.  How else will you know Ever Extra is working?

Best Practices
1) Have employees take the survey right in the beginning and then again after using Ever Extra for a while.
2) Create a challenge and reward for taking the survey!
3) Keep sample sizes in mind.  If you have a small company and a small number of results, take it “for what it is”.
4) Discuss the results with your employees.  If it comes out favorable, go around back patting.  If it comes out unfavorable, use Ever Extra more!

When you have a large, continuous flow of employee challenges and rewards something interesting happens to the big picture.  Namely, interaction increases, communication increases, and a dialog opens.

Plus, the ability to re-enforce positive behavior shouldn’t be underestimated.  If a boss tells an employee,  “please keep your office clean”, the employee will most likely say, “sure, will do”.  Maybe the employee will forget the request, ignore the request, do a mediocre job, or do it for a while then slip into old habits.  Offer a $10 iTunes gift card to the employee with the cleanest office at the end of the month, and it attitudes start to change.  Jokes fly around about the paperclip left behind the door, a symbol of appreciation in transferred, a chance to say “good job” can be sincerely issued, and everybody is happy they are on a solid team.  Now, have a few hundred challenge > reward opportunities running simultaneously, and you will have a well oiled corporate machine.

Every challenge, no matter how big or small, is an opportunity for communication, competition, emotion, incentive, interaction, and ultimately engagement.

In the first scenario the employee is told, “You will have a yearly review.  If you do well on your review we will give you a promotion.”

In the second scenario the employee is told, “We would like to challenge you to make 200 sales this year.  If you make 200 sales we will promote you to sales manager.  Please track your progress on everextra.com.”

So there you have it.  It sounds obvious when it’s spelled out like that, yet, the majority of companies still use a formal, yearly, fairly useless “review” process.
Let’s break down the benefits of using Ever Extra for this type of challenge and promotion.

Tracking Progress Throughout The Year
Every marathon Starts with a single step just like every waterfall starts with a single drop of water.  Deep isn’t it?

Every time that employee ticks up his sales and tracks it in Ever Extra they will see themselves inching up towards goal.  It acts as a physical reminder of progress.

Web-Access to the Information
In scenario one, the accounting department knows the sales numbers.  Or, someone has a spreadsheet with sales numbers on it somewhere.  There are most likely several barriers to the access to the information.

In scenario two, all information is centrally located online at everextra.com.  Both the employee and the managers have instant access to the progress of the challenge.

Expectations are Managed
A clearly defined goal and reward can work wonders.  Often, employees will say they are unsure exactly what is expected of them in order to get ahead.  Who can blame them when goals and rewards are not clearly defined?

Self-reliance is Emphasized
When objectives are nebulous, and promotions are based on an overall perception of performance, a failure to receive a raise or a promotion will fall on the company or the manager.  “They just forgot about all the times I did this.”  and “He just doesn’t see how that is connected to the other thing.”

However, when a challenge is clearly defined, a failure to meet that goal is less likely to be projected onto an external influence.  Thoughts turn into thing like, “I know what it takes now, if I try harder I can do it next year.”  Now I’ll admit that is a bit optimistic, but the bottom line is, the focus will shift to the challenge itself, which is where it should be.  This is especially true when the outcomes are not positive.

Putting it All Together
The big takeaway is this, use Ever Extra when promoting employees.  You’ll be glad you did.