The Recognize Awards are meant to shine a spotlight on the amazing accomplishments our clients have made. Winners were selected based on impressive metrics and outstanding results seen on the Awardco platform. Without further ado, we’re pleased to announce, after a comprehensive nomination, review, and analysis process, the 10 winners of the 2022 Recognize Awards!
Best Incentive Program: Lendio
Since the beginning of our partnership with Lendio, they’ve shown an impressive passion for recognizing and rewarding their employees. They’ve built a culture around recognition, which has incentivized everyone to get involved in their programs. Over half of their workforce is recognized at least once per month, and with an 82.91% redemption rate, we know their employees are excited to participate in both sending and receiving points!
Lendio is all about helping businesses succeed financially. They use comprehensive financial services such as various loan options, funding options, and accounting software to help businesses find peace of mind. And with over 75 lenders in their network and over 300,000 loans already funded, Lendio has experience any business can rely on.
Most Rewarding Recognition Program: Texas Roadhouse
Texas Roadhouse is our first repeat winner, and for good reason! They run so many amazingly creative and rewarding recognition programs—they even have a program for March Madness. They always strive to think outside the box in terms of programs they can run to get their employees excited, and because of this dedication to rewards excellence, they were the natural choice.
Texas Roadhouse is a family-centric favorite that’s served mouth-watering meals for nearly 30 years. With famous dishes such as hand-cut steaks, fall-off-the-bone ribs, and made-from-scratch sides, this hometown classic combines great food with affordable prices.
Most Engaged Employees: Fanatics
When it comes to getting employees excited about recognizing their peers, no one beats Fanatics. With their peer-to-peer recognition program that allows each employee to recognize their coworkers with points every month, Fanatics averages an impressive number of recognitions per user; and that’s with 2,900 users! That shows that the employees at Fanatics are engaged with the platform and excited to spread the love to those around them.
Fanatics has a mission: to amplify the already-impressive passion of sports fans. They’re the global leader in high-quality licensed sports merchandise, and their mission is to connect fans with the teams and players that they’re passionate about in simple and affordable ways.
Best Program Launch: Okta
Launching a new recognition program isn’t an easy process, but Okta knocked it out of the park with their “recognition champions.” These select users got additional points to hand out during the first month, which gamified the platform and got people excited about participating. They’re promoting adoption, providing rewards, and getting their people engaged, all at the same time!
Okta provides cutting-edge, cloud-based authentication and security solutions for many different industries. Their mission is to allow everyone to safely use any technology, accelerating innovations and reinforcing connections around the world.
Best Life Event Program: Ampirical
Every employee at every company goes through life events, and Ampirical has done a phenomenal job at recognizing and celebrating these types of milestones. They’ve created a “Moments that Matter” program that rewards employees for reaching personal milestones, such as getting married or having a child. At Ampirical, employees get recognized for both personal and professional achievements!
Ampirical has been around since 2006, and they have an outstanding track record of using cutting-edge 3D modeling and design to bring technology to the power industry. They're passionate about pushing the T&D industry forward while prioritizing safety and security.
Best Milestone Program: Chick-fil-A
Service anniversaries are the greatest milestone an employee can celebrate at work, and no one celebrates them quite like Chick-fil-A! Because of their extremely generous reward system, employees are rewarded a ton of points as they reach certain milestones. This has made retention a strength of Chick-fil-A.
Known as the “home of the original chicken sandwich,” Chick-fil-A has been serving their signature chicken since 1946. Besides their famous food, they have always endeavored to make their locations fun, supportive, and wholesome for both their employees and their customers.
Most Creative Recognition Strategy: Vineyard Vines
Creating engaging recognition programs can be difficult, but not for Vineyard Vines. They pioneered the “Snap and Claps” program and the “We Give 50, You Give 50” program, each designed to make recognizing and rewarding employees easier and more fun than ever. Because of these innovative programs, Vineyard Vines has a staggering amount of unique recognitions!
Vineyard Vines, a family-owned and -operated company, has been creating comfortable, stylish clothing for over 20 years now. They love creating styles that make men, women, and children feel confident and happy, and they’ve even expanded into accessories, outdoor equipment, and adorable whale plushies.
Best Remote Recognition Initiative: Premier Research
As a global, fully-remote clinical research organization, Premier Research has used Awardco to keep their culture of quality collaboration thriving. Despite the fact that employees rarely see each other in person, Premier Research has used their recognition programs to keep teamwork and team bonding alive and well.
Premier Research is dedicated to helping cutting-edge biotech and pharma companies take their amazing ideas from benchtop to bedside. With decades of strategic development experience, they help medical companies change lives.
Best Global Recognition Strategy: Trimble
Trimble works in dozens of countries around the world, which you may think makes recognition hard to pull off. But Trimble created an amazing peer-to-peer program, allowing employees to easily hand out points to their coworkers, and they also have a huge variety of other programs, such as life events, holidays, and overachiever awards. Trimble is always looking for ways to improve the recognition and reward options Awardco offers globally—they’re truly inspiring!
Trimble takes pride in “helping the world work, better.” They connect the physical and digital worlds through hardware, software, and services in the agriculture, construction, and geospatial industries.
Best Change Management Strategy: Zendesk
Zendesk had a goal: to make the adoption of their new recognition platform easy and exciting for all their employees. To accomplish that, they created a branded guide and a branded video that really showed off the capabilities of the program. In their first week alone, they had 785 unique recognitions, which is awesome! They also used Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) to ensure their global employees were rewarded equally from the very start.
Zendesk has been innovating and improving the customer service industry for over 15 years. From humble beginnings, they’ve become a titan in the customer service space, helping customers improve customer relations in as many ways as possible.
An avid lover of fantasy books, a proud Hufflepuff, and a strong proponent of escapism, Jeff has a love of good storytelling. He relies on that for both his professional work and his writing hobby (don’t ask about the 10+ novel ideas collecting virtual dust on his computer).
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