- How do you get a CEO, Leaders, or a Board to care about pride when it’s not in a spreadsheet?
Madeline Des Jardins, WalkMe
“There is so much research about the impact of recognition and employee engagement on business outcomes that I highly, highly, highly recommend building a full deck for your ELT. Pitch it like it’s a brand new product that you’re selling to your leaders and make it real. So it’s not just conceptual—it’s impacting day-to-day life.”
Ryan Costella, Wayne County Airport Authority
“We needed our leaders and managers to stop having such a negative connotation when they were out on the field. So we said, ‘Hey, go look for someone doing something right. Go see something you’re doing correctly this time.’ And then we come back, and they could push those awards or the recognition plus the award on top of the points. Oh man, it sold a whole different ballgame. There was so much activity on the site of people just saying thank you to each other. It really opened our eyes to like, oh, wow, there’s a lot of good stuff going on here that we can really use.”
- When does a milestone actually represent a healthy culture—and how do you make sure it’s more than just a calendar notification?
Christi Gilhoi, Cisco
“Your milestones are not your employees’ milestones. Maybe the milestone is three months. If you’re a new grad, three months is a long time in a new job. Perhaps you see your attrition at 18 months, so I would connect it to what you’re trying to incentivize.”
- Can meaningful recognition actually move the needle on business outcomes like EBITA? If so, how?
Ryan Costella, Wayne County Airport Authority
“When people feel welcome and happy at their job, they’re going to stay longer. That will cut down on your turnover expenses and the cost for onboarding. You won’t have to increase your headcount or work hours — less overtime — because people are doing it in the first place.”
- How do you help frontline managers (who are already stretched thin) deliver recognition that’s thoughtful, timely, and doesn’t feel like one more task?
Madeline Des Jardins, WalkMe
“What can you pre-schedule? What can you do in the moment? How can you embed it into your day-to-day? There’s a curve where at first it feels like another task, and then it becomes real for you. You have to figure out a way to help it click for your leaders.”
Christi Gilhoi, Cisco
“I like to use positive peer pressure. Put leaderboards up and say, “Here are the departments doing recognition well.” Their ENPS scores are much higher and attrition much lower. That’s when you start to feel the change curve, and the adoption picks up.”
Ryan Costella, Wayne County Airport Authority
“Frontline employees, or ‘deskless’ as you might call them, make up a huge portion of our workforce. From our police, fire, maintenance, and operations teams—I’d say about 70 percent of us are deskless. Reaching them is tough sometimes. Some of them don’t see communications right away, but having the mobile option was huge for us. It makes it quick and easy.”
