“I love how easy it is for employees to recognize each other with kudos. Matter has boosted morale, increased employee engagement, and it's now a strong presence in our company culture.”
Company: Awarded one of Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures, Trend Hunter is the world’s #1 trend firm and an innovation consultancy with over 3.5 billion views from 250,000,000 people. They help 80 of the 100 most admired brands to predict and create the future, including Google, Disney, Netflix, Pfizer, Starbucks, IBM, Adidas, and NASA.
Trend Hunter also advises brands on corporate culture, so the team prides itself on its own culture being a flagship of flexibility, warmth, creativity and professional development.
Industry: Market Research
Employees: 50
Headquarters: Toronto, Canada 🇨🇦
Key Use Cases: Feedback Friday, Kudos, Custom Kudos, Analytics
Interview: Michael Margolese - Senior Human Resources Manager
At the time, Trend Hunter was looking for a recognition system to accommodate their experiential reward program. Michael explains, “We wanted this kind of middle ground, day-to-day consistent way to give recognition (i.e., kudos). We wanted a way in which employees can be heard and appreciated.”
Before Matter, they tested other apps and saw little to no engagement. Then they introduced Matter, and they were delighted by the results. Michael mentions, “We were surprised by how frequently people gave kudos.”
Trend Hunter primarily uses Matter for Feedback Friday recognition reminders, kudos, custom kudos (e.g., the company’s core competencies), and analytics. Michael notes, “The analytics reports are helpful in showing the level of engagement and feedback for a specific manager and their team.”
Initially, Michael inputted Trend Hunter’s core competencies as custom kudos cards. Overtime, Michael shares, “It evolved into people being creative and making their own.” This proactiveness aligns with Trend Hunter’s creative culture.
Whether it be Matter's simplicity, the features' flexibility, or how easy it is to give kudos, Trend Hunter has been able to use Matter to fit their needs.
More specifically, Michael had a simple yet effective way of introducing Matter. He states, “I did a group-wide session and ran through how to use it. I had zero questions, and people were using it the next day.”
Michael finds that Trend Hunter’s younger workforce of Millennials and Gen Z love being recognized with consistency. Matter provides the ability to quickly give kudos in Slack.
While Trend Hunter isn’t using all of Matter’s features, Michael points out, “I like that you can pick and choose how you want to use Matter. It allows us to keep everything simple and streamlined.”
Michael says that Trend Hunter employees appreciate the recognition and feedback from kudos. He says, “Even though it’s not formal feedback like an end-of-year review, kudos is a form of micro feedback. People want to know how they're doing, and kudos help reinforce that they are doing a good job.”
As for words of wisdom from Michael, he recommends, “As you’re hiring the younger generation, they want recognition, and the easiest, quickest way to give them recognition is to empower them to give each other kudos. In terms of onboarding, it took one day. It's a really quick and easy way to create employee engagement.”
