Why recognition is really a retention strategy
People thrive when they know their contributions matter. A manager notices the extra effort. A customer win gets celebrated. Someone who quietly carried the team hears "you made a difference." These moments send a powerful message: you're valued, you belong, and there's a future for you here.
Most organizations want that. Few have figured out how to make it happen consistently.
Recognition programs ship on time and still land flat. Managers are great at managing work and less confident recognizing the humans doing it. And in a distributed workforce, where culture doesn't always happen in the hallway, the gap between intention and impact gets wider every year.
The good news: this is fixable. And it doesn't start with a bigger budget.
Thoughtful recognition brings an organization's values to life. It celebrates impact, makes appreciation personal, and helps managers build stronger connections with their teams. A gift can help deliver that message — and its meaning grows when it reflects a specific contribution. At its heart, meaningful recognition tells people something simple: someone noticed. Someone cared. Someone said so.
In this lively, provocative session, executive leadership coach Leila Bulling Towne and Chief People Officer Cris Barrett challenge the way organizations think about recognition, culture, and retention, especially when your people are spread across offices, cities, time zones, and kitchen tables.
This isn't a conversation about swag, points, platforms, or shipping boxes.
It's about using recognition as a culture signal: a powerful way to tell people what matters here, who matters here, and why their contribution matters. Because in a distributed workforce, culture doesn't always happen in the hallway. You have to create it on purpose.
This session is for you if:
- Your recognition program ships on time and still lands flat
- Your people work across time zones and rarely share the same room
- You're sending gifts when what you really need is connection
- You want recognition to reinforce your culture, not just your calendar
- You're tired of the recognition budget conversation and ready to have the retention conversation
- Your managers are good at managing work but not always great at recognizing the humans doing it
You'll walk away with:
- A better way to think about recognition: a practical framework for turning recognition from a siloed program into a culture-building practice
- A manager-ready playbook: simple language and examples managers can use immediately to make recognition specific, timely, and meaningful
- A distributed-workforce strategy: ways to create connection and reinforce culture when your people aren't physically together
- A stronger business case: how to position recognition as a retention and engagement strategy, not a feel-good HR perk
- And one new rule: Stop asking "What should we give them?" Start asking "What do we want them to feel?"
Meet the Presenters
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Leila Bulling Towne
Leila Bulling Towne is the creator of AwesomeLeader.com and founder of The Bulling Towne Group. She’s been featured in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, NBC.com, Inc magazine and the BBC.com. She’s also the host of the podcast, “The Leadership Shot.” Her clients range from startup executives to super smart technical people managing teams for the first-time leaders with EQ challenges to newly promoted directors with a new span of control, to seasoned execs at Fortune 500 companies. Her sweet spots include emotional intelligence, teamwork and collaboration, executive presence, leadership brand, self-esteem as a high achiever, teamwork dysfunction and 1:1 “training” in leadership and management skills. She has over 270,000 online students.
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Cris Barrett
Cris Barrett is a seasoned talent and organizational development leader with three decades of experience shaping cultures, growing leaders, and building high-performing organizations. An architect, facilitator, and change catalyst, Cris partners with executive leaders and teams to sharpen strategy, elevate people practices, and deliver lasting business impact for employees, customers, and shareholders.
Over the course of his career, Cris has held senior leadership roles spanning global business partnership, employee communications, talent acquisition, talent management, rewards & recognition, IT and facilities at companies including Silicon Graphics, Johnson & Johnson, Yahoo!, Facebook (Meta), and Aurora, as well as several smaller high-growth technology and healthcare organizations.
His work has included launching large-scale leadership and technical development programs, advising executives through complex organizational transformations, and designing communication strategies that align thousands of employees around a shared vision.
SHRM certification has approved this webinar for 1 PDC toward SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP recertification. A program code will be provided at the end of the webinar.