Creating a Unified Culture Through Leadership Buy-In

In order to increase excitement and buy-in for a new recognition programme, PENN Entertainment created a project team made up of high-level executives for each of their 45 properties. Once this project team understood the impact of recognition, they went to the corporate executives with evidence that all of the properties wanted Awardco.

Because of this groundwork, the CEO supported the decision right from the start.

After executives bought in, PENN Entertainment focused on other leaders and managers:

“Up to this point, we’ve been focusing on leaders because if leaders aren’t recognising, employees won’t either. We’re prompting leaders, explaining to them why recognition is important to our culture, and helping them recognise their team members appropriately.” - Amanda Benedick, Director of Internal Communications at PENN Entertainment

By focusing on a top-down approach to obtaining buy-in and building excitement, PENN Entertainment has seen massive adoption and engagement in their platform.

Getting 45 different companies to agree to a single recognition solution could have been a challenge—but not for PENN Entertainment. They’ve always allowed each general manager to maintain a lot of control of their company, and with Awardco, it’s been no different.

PENN Entertainment taught each leader how to create customised recognition programmes to fit their own companies’ needs, which has led to 18 different recognition programmes being created. This flexibility and creativity led to over 12,000 recognitions in Q1 of 2023 alone!

‍“Leaders were able to see how much they could customise their programme to fit what they need. I think that’s helped with buy-in across the entire enterprise.” - Kristina Carroll, Internal Communications Assistant Manager at PENN Entertainment