Colleagues have to choose a value from The Collaborative Way when they recognize, making our recognition feed daily proof of why our values are so important. It’s such a powerfully positive place. Leaders are really taking notice—they want to see their teams at the top of the adoption leaderboard because they know the impact our values have on employee performance and retention.

Awardco has allowed people to recognize their coworkers in a public way, and we see it every day. Collaboration is in the DNA of Alera Group, and appreciation is absolutely central and core to effective collaboration.

When I pitched Awardco to our leadership team, I shared the risk of losing connection as we grow. I framed it as a strategic need. Their response? ‘Stop talking. Just do it.

We didn't want or need a bunch of bells and whistles. We needed an efficient platform that would empower the recognition and reward programs we wanted to run. Awardco has worked so well—and continues to work so well.

Soon after our implementation we created a financial recognition program through Awardco for managers and supervisors to recognize their employees for extra efforts. Now our managers and supervisors have their own budgeted amount to use at their discretion to award their employees at any time, and they don't have to wait for approval to do so.

When we unified our recognition programs, we saw a strong correlation between recognition and employee engagement. Teams led by managers who consistently recognized their people were the most engaged.

Awardco is such a great business partner for us… They really got in, learned about our culture before saying we’re a right fit, and I gave them a lot of credit for that.

I could rave to millions of people that I think this should be the platform of choice.