Case Study: Southwest Airlines achieves 95%+ employee participation and centralized recognition with Inspirus' SWAG platform

Centralized program management improves accountability

Southwest Airlines faced a fragmented recognition ecosystem with no single destination or common currency for employee recognition, making it difficult to ensure consistency, track expenditures, and access real-time reporting across its more than 46,000 Employees. To solve this, Southwest partnered with Inspirus to create a unified recognition program and platform called SWAG (Southwest Airlines Gratitude).

Inspirus customized a centralized SWAG platform that consolidated recognition and incentive programs, introduced SWAG Points as the common currency, and provided online peer-to-peer tools and leader dashboards for tracking participation and compliance. Since launch, more than 95% of Employees are opted in, program offerings grew from 15 to 36 in two years, monthly/quarterly dashboards support leader accountability, and in 2014 Employees earned over 1 billion SWAG Points with 73% of deposited points redeemed.

Southwest Airlines