How Galliant Centralized Recognition Across Its Clinics and Reduced Turnover by 44% with Nectar
The Business Case for Recognition in Multi-Clinic ABA Care
Based on industry standards, multi-clinic ABA providers like Galliant on average see $500K to $700K in annual value from a mature recognition program.
Retention Savings of
Productivity Gains of approximately
Absenteeism and Cultural Impact of
Challenges
Fragmented Recognition Across Multiple Locations
“Before we had Nectar, since we are individual clinics all over the place, I feel like our employee engagement and recognition was very separated. Every clinic just did their own thing. So if you have a really great clinical director who loves reinforcement, that’s something they thrive in as a leader, then the clinic may be great and have a ton of reinforcement and feel good. But then if you have a clinic that might be someone that doesn’t come as natural to, they might not get as much employee recognition. That culture may not exist or may be harder to pull out of them.”
Limited Positive Feedback
“ABA is a very feedback heavy and high stress environment. For a lot of new hires, that can be overwhelming for them. It’s tough to feel like you’re part of this team that’s already established. You have tough clients, you’re dealing with new things and just learning so much all at one time. They can get overwhelmed by all of the feedback and learning that’s happening. Sometimes having an outside set of eyes look at what you’re doing to point out to you like, ‘Hey, it might feel hard right now, but this is where we started. Look at now.’ It’s super helpful to continue to show up.”
Lead RBTs Feeling Lost in the Middle
“Our leads are very heavily involved in staff training. When you’re constantly training new hires or ongoing therapists or there’s movement to the staff that you’re working with, our leads deal heavily with a lot of burnout of the things that they have to do day to day. For them, they’re kind of the in between. Management gets a lot of their recognition for being over things. The therapists in their direct sessions get a lot of recognition and I think the lead RBTs can sometimes feel a little bit lost in between, even though they do so much for their pod.”
Disconnect from Company Values
“Before Nectar, I would have people say, ‘I don’t even know what our company values are,’ which is never a good thing, right? So really good to be able to say now like, ‘Oh, I know our values and I can actually see how it’s lived out in each clinic every day.’”
Solutions
Centralized Recognition System with Clear Expectations
“When we implemented Nectar, it allowed us to just centralize everything with expectation and give process to recognition. So not only do you have these points to give out, but now it’s an expectation that you do give them out and that you utilize all your points by the end of the month. We look at our values and how they connect to the values. So it really does connect back to who we are as a company.”
Permanent Record of Recognition
“On hard days, we all kind of scroll and look at what’s been said to remember like, ‘Okay, it’s not all bad.’ I had my supervisor give me the most heartfelt shout out on Nectar. If it would have been verbal, it would have been great and in the back of my mind, but Nectar gives me the opportunity to go back and reread it and revisit. I was going through a really difficult personal week and oftentimes I wake up and I love my job. I love coming here. That shout out I often refer back to in Nectar when I’m having those down weeks.”
Challenges and Competitions Drive Client Progress
“We use Nectar for competitions of how to use the AAC device more, model more, constantly be on it in the session. When we as the BCBA go on, we’re looking at the graphs and the data and we can see how many trial counts there are. And so we’ll do competitions with Nectar where you get points for a certain number of trials that you’ve done. And if you hit minimum requirement, then maybe you’re entered for a drawing for Nectar recognition or maybe everybody gets recognized. Because of that, I truly think the level of modeling, the reinforcement that they receive for that improved their teaching skills with the device. A child who has never been able to communicate things like that and she can navigate through and push sand when she wants to play with the kinetic sand, I just think is so huge for her.”
Analytics Help Leaders Track Recognition Patterns
“My favorite part and feature of Nectar is the analytics side because then I can go in and see which managers are using it a lot and using it well, and which managers need a little bit of a nudge to make sure they’re using their points and their team is being recognized. I will send out emails towards the end of every month to say, ‘Hey, see that you still have a lot of Nectar points left. Make sure we’re using them and we’re calling things out with intention as we near the end of the month.’ That is super helpful for me as someone who’s really trying to push our managers to be naturally recognizing their staff.”
Recognition Fills Gaps That Verbal Feedback Cannot
“Recognition has helped the team feel more connected because it gives us opportunity to support each other in a different way. There are many opportunities that we have to uplift and support each other, but oftentimes those are missed opportunities and with Nectar that helps fill those opportunities. It doesn’t have to be done in that exact moment. It can be done as an afterthought. It can be done as the next time you have the downtime to do it. It can be done when you get home and you realize that something happened. But oftentimes, if you’re in the moment, it’s a missed opportunity and Nectar helps fill that gap of making sure that support and recognition is shown.”
Results
Before Nectar
- High new hire turnover
- Fragmented recognition
- Recognition led only by leadership
- Burnout and turnover concerns in clinical roles
- Structural invisibility for some teams
After Nectar
10% Reduction in Absenteeism through attendance challenge points at a short-staffed clinic, reducing call-out-driven coverage gaps and burnout.
44% Reduction of Turnover: relative improvement in their annualized turnover rate during a period of rapid growth for the company.
90% of Employees Say Keep Nectar: in an annual engagement survey, 90% of employees said to keep Nectar. Nectar was not a prompted answer.
About Galliant
Galliant Autism Care provides Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy across 14 locations in Texas and Nebraska. With a mission to help children with autism reach their full potential, Galliant serves hundreds of families while supporting a diverse team of Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs), Registered Behavior Technicians (RBTs), and administrative staff.
Location: Texas and Nebraska
Industry: Healthcare (ABA Therapy)
Company Size: 300 - 500+