Overview

About NIBCO

NIBCO is a 120-year-old, family-owned leader in flow-control products and plumbing solutions, employing approximately 2,700 associates across 18 sites in the United States, Mexico, Poland, and China. With a guiding belief that “The best product of NIBCO is a good person,” recognition has always been a defining aspect of its culture. Sixteen percent of NIBCO’s workforce has been with the company for 25 years or more, a rare testament to long-term employee engagement. They won the Recognize Best Change Management Award.

The Challenge

Despite its strong people-first values and expanding global operations, NIBCO relied heavily on outdated, manual recognition processes:

• Service anniversaries lived in spreadsheets, often containing errors
• Birthday acknowledgements varied widely across locations
• Frontline and offline workers often lacked access to recognition tools
• Programs were siloed, inconsistent, and difficult to scale across 18 sites

Leadership wanted to modernize without compromising the personal, relationship-driven recognition NIBCO is known for. They needed a unified employee recognition platform that could support diverse manufacturing environments, global teams, and long-tenured associates (13% of whom have been with the company for 25 years or more) while reducing administrative burden through automation and driving measurable retention impact.

“We’ve always had some sort of recognition program, but never anything all-inclusive where all associates at every location were engaged in the same program—until Awardco.”
Dawn Bloch, Chief People Officer

The Solution

NIBCO partnered with Awardco to implement a long-term, 3-year enterprise recognition strategy, combining automation, modern recognition capabilities, and structured change management. This intentional approach positioned Awardco as the organization’s centralized employee recognition platform, supporting both manufacturing and office environments globally.

“We've put a lot of resources and focus on associate engagement and overall morale and wellness. Because of the initiatives that we've put forth this year, we've realized an 8.2% reduction in our turnover rate.”
Dawn Bloch, Chief People Officer

Year One: Automation and consistency

NIBCO began by automating their most critical milestones:

• Birthdays
• Service anniversaries synced through their HRIS (SAP)
• New-hire onboarding recognition
• SSO and UX improvements

This immediately eliminated errors, saved time, and ensured every associate had equal access to recognition programs.

Year Two: Scalable, employee-driven programs

With automation in place, Awardco enabled rapid expansion into high-impact, custom recognition initiatives:

• Associate of the Month & Year
• Wellness micro-learning incentives
• IT Security - Anti-phishing and ISO audit program
  
  • Associates can earn NIBCash for successfully intercepting and reporting phishing attempts quarterly and general participation
• Safety and Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) recognition
  
  • One example are the heat and hydration best practices courses distributed during UV Awareness month. Associates completing a minimum number of courses received monetary recognition, and those completing all courses were entered into a raffle for additional recognition.
• Manager-driven budgets and spot awards

The platform’s flexibility made it easy for teams to build programs tailored to manufacturing, office, and global teams alike.

“Awardco has definitely helped us do recognition even better. Recognizing someone you work with, even if you don’t see them every day, has been empowering.”
Ashley Martin, President & CEO

Year Three: Culture expansion through learning and community

NIBCO broadened their recognition ecosystem with:

• LMS micro-learning rewards for completing courses 
• Volunteer and philanthropy rewards
• STEM and school partnership incentives
• Tiered, themed recognition campaigns
• On-campus museum volunteer incentives

Awardco’s scalability and user-friendly interface supported organization-wide engagement while keeping programs easy to launch and manage.

A best-in-class change management rollout

To anchor adoption across manufacturing and global locations, NIBCO implemented:

• A CEO-led Awardco launch video
• A SharePoint resource hub
• Town Hall metric updates four weeks post-launch
• Automatic notifications
• One-on-one login outreach by HR to associates who had yet to log in
• Coordinated efforts with managers to assist their teams
• Awardco icons placed in their HRIS to quickly link to the platform
• Sustained top-down sponsorship and buy-in from executives

Frontline/offline specific materials included:

• Recognition visibility on breakroom monitors via ScreenCloud
• Offline associate kiosks
• Printed materials
• Distribution of AwardCodesᵀᴹ to frontline associates
• Specialized programs to support their formerly incarcerated employees with limited internet access so they can still receive points while they transition back to general employment

This disciplined approach ensured high engagement from day one.

The Results

A unified employee recognition platform that immediately reduced costs

Awardco created a consistent, scalable, and accessible recognition system across all locations incredibly quickly. For the first time, every associate, office or frontline, domestic or global, participated in the same recognition ecosystem. The feed has become an active hub of appreciation across states, countries, and manufacturing floors.

“People like to be recognized for what they’ve contributed. They’re proud of their work—and they should be.”
Ashley Martin, President & CEO

NIBCO is above-target for all of their goal metrics and saw a significant retention impact directly tied to engagement efforts in their first year on Awardco. 

• $5.79M in turnover cost savings for the calendar year
• 8% turnover reduction since implementing Awardco and other engagement strategies

Recognition accuracy, efficiency, and utilization skyrocketed

• 50.8% of recognitions were voluntary, peer- and manager-driven, not automated events—a powerful indicator of a thriving recognition culture.
• Service anniversaries are now 100% automated through their HRIS integration, eliminating the spreadsheet-based errors that once burdened HR
• Over 7,000 recognitions in the first year
• 80% receipt rate in the first year

“When we implemented Awardco, we refreshed everything and synced all service dates to our HRIS. It works flawlessly now—and the person who used to manage that spreadsheet is very happy.”
Dawn Bloch, Chief People Officer

NIBCO’s strategic staged implementation approach has paid off, earning the program the support of their people and the Recognize Best Change Management Award.

Get a demo today to see how recognition can transform your own organization.