While working for a professional soccer club sounds (and is!) exciting, Minnesota United FC faces many of the same challenges as any other company—including creating a strong culture of values-driven employee performance.
Building upon a winning fan experience
Since joining Major League Soccer (MLS) in 2015, Minnesota United FC (MNUFC) has amassed a passionate fan base who cheer on their beloved Loons at sold-out games at Allianz Field. While the team hasn’t won the MLS cup yet, the club won best fan experience in MLS by ESPN and was a finalist in Sports Business Journal for Stadium of the Year.
These incredible game-day experiences come courtesy of the club’s part-time guest services staff, known as the Loonatics. Thomas Turner established the team’s peer-to-peer recognition program, and credits it for its award-winning performance.
“Manager-to-employee recognition is valuable, but a recognition program can really take off when employees are empowering, enabling, and rewarding each other. Aligning our program with our guest services principles ensures that the team’s efforts are reinforcing our culture while creating a sense of ownership and belonging.”
The guest services team filled out a templated card, recognizing a peer for behavior exemplifying one of its guest services principles like “Details Matter” or “Celebrating With Others.” After turning the card into one of several drop boxes on site, employees were rewarded with points that they can redeem for gift cards.
While the system was manual, it was highly effective. In 2022, MNUFC asked Turner to replicate this success with the club’s full-time workforce of 135+ employees, creating a new role for him—Senior Manager, Guest Experience & Employee Engagement.
Creating alignment for the club’s mission through recognition
2022 was an interesting time for Minnesota United. It had endured the initial business disruption caused by COVID and hired a new CEO less than a year earlier. The club was transitioning out of launch mode and moving in a new direction focused on growth. Turner quickly realized that while the guest services principles are relevant to that team, they didn’t translate to the new goals of the full-time side of the business.
Turner held focus groups with marketing and other stakeholders, ultimately creating five beliefs and five beliefs in action. These would serve as a foundation for the full-time employee recognition program, giving staff a way to frame their behavior in a way that reinforces the club’s mission.
While the guest services program was manual due to the nature of that team’s work environment, Turner decided to implement Bonusly to create a more robust recognition program for the full-time workforce. Bonusly would also allow him to easily track activity and measure program success.
Bringing its beliefs into the flow of work
The new beliefs and beliefs in action as well as the employee recognition program were announced in a company-wide meeting in August 2023. Right on the spot, employees logged into Bonusly and began recognizing their peers. The system uses hashtags to identify which belief or belief in action the employee is representing in their work.
“Launching our recognition program and corporate beliefs and beliefs in action at the same time allowed our employees to really understand and see our beliefs in action right away. Through Bonusly, these 10 beliefs quickly went from words on a screen to the way our team carries out their work every day.”
One year later, the company’s full-time employees are regularly recognizing each other for representing their beliefs and turning in their points for gift cards (most popular: Amazon and Target). MNUFC also uses Bonusly to celebrate work anniversaries and employee birthdays.
Bonusly’s Slack integration brings the recognition program directly to where employees communicate, helping MNUFC achieve a participation rate of approximately 80%.
Today, the belief that employees are recognized for the most is “We Are Better Together.” In the professional sports industry, inter-departmental collaboration is critical to success. From partner marketing and stadium operations to finance and ticketing sales, everyone must come together—and work together—to bring the season to life.
“Bonusly is really the starting point of our culture. The sports industry attracts young, passionate employees, and Bonusly allows us to tap into their energy and make delivering great work contagious.”
