According to Bersin & Associates, companies spend over $700 million on employee engagement.
According to the Incentive Marketing Association, they spend $46 billion on employee recognition.
To build teams, companies spend $350 or more for each day they treat each employee to a corporate retreat, and even just a catered meal can cost $60 or $75 a head.
This is a lot of wasted resources.
The truth is, the one thing that employees want from their employers – aside from a livable wage – is to feel like their presence m
eans something in the company’s bigger picture. A recent study by TINYpulse indicated that “employees who give their work culture low marks are nearly 15% more likely to think about a new job than their counterparts.” Giving someone a gold watch after working in the office for 20 years isn’t going to do much for them in the 19 years that lead up to this milestone.
A low-cost solution to engage employees, recognize them for who they are, and build a team in the process is to commission a group cartoon highlighting all of their quirks and interests.
Cartoons and caricature drawings provide an opportunity to enliven newsletters, show appreciation to a benefactor, illustrate articles, or even just spread holiday cheer. But more than that, by engaging each employee to cite the most individual aspects of who they are, they will specifically cite the best and more personal aspects of who they are. And when they see these personal qualities presented in such a celebrated way, they will feel celebrated themselves.
Regardless of how a cartoon may be used, it invariably leads to a greater sense of community and good will among colleagues and customers. My cartooning clients have ranged from CEOs to human resources departments to my very own co-workers.
See the gallery below for samples and fill out this form to receive a free caricature of yourself to experience this process first hand.
“We were recently working to launch the inaugural global employee newsletter at our company, and wanted to include a creative and fun way to introduce the Global HR team.
We partnered with Neil to complete a caricature of the team that was included in our newsletter – and with rave reviews! Neil is a talented and creative artist and professional, and was a pleasure to work with on this project. The surprising part of the project was that equally fun to enjoying the comic output of the project was the engaging and fun process we went through as an internal team to answer Neil’s fact finding questions about our interests and personalities! It resulted in lots of laughter and connections across the team even before the caricature was produced.
I highly recommend Neil as a creative and talented partner for your next project.”
– Mark Daniels, HR Director, San Francisco-based software company
