My name is Christina Chau. I'm the senior content manager at O.C. Tanner, and I'm so excited to share the latest research on five workplace culture trends with you today. I do this webinar every year for probably the past four or five years. I don't even remember, but it's just really fun. I like my webinars to be very interactive because you all have the best best practices. You all bring these trends to life.
You all know how these are, you know, living and breathing in your organization. So I'd love to hear from you. As we go through the webinar today, if you have any questions, comments, things that you do at your organization, best practices, examples of any of these trends or any of these stories, please share them in the chat. I know that you all love to learn from one another as well and hear from one another and be inspired by one another. So let's have some fun conversations in the chat.
Alright.
Well, if you're like me, you may feel that the pace of change in the workplace and really the world, frankly, is relentless right now, and you can't seem to keep up, but you're not alone. Research from our O.C. Tanner Institute finds that employees are also feeling the same way. They're feeling a little unsteady, a little uninspired, even hopeless at work.
And this is why workplace culture is so important, even more important than ever. Employees are looking to be inspired and energized at work, and they're wanting to have that in their workplace experience. So today, we'll talk about the multiple ways that workplaces can do that, how workplaces can do that and build cultures that help employees thrive throughout the year.
Now what you might notice in these culture trends as we go through them is this human element this year. And while we talk about HR, AI and HR a little bit later in the webinar, just keep in mind that the importance of human connection and interactions really resonates in this year's five culture trends.
So culture trend number one. It's not just leaders. Teams inspire too.
So thriving cultures and cultures where people feel inspired, have teams that inspire them, not just leaders. Teams that provide hope, that create community, that builds belonging.
And, traditionally, when we talk about creating great cultures and inspiring or motivating employees, we typically focus on leaders. Right? How can leaders strengthen purpose? How do leaders build connection? How do leaders increase engagement? How can leaders improve retention and prevent burnout and foster well-being? And it's all a lot for leaders.
But the latest research shows that while leaders play a pivotal role and they're really important in helping shape teams and work environments that do all of these things, they can't and they don't do it alone.
In fact, the O.C. Tanner Global Culture Report reveals strong teams actually have a greater impact on inspiring employees, building belonging, and fostering well-being than a single leader, even if that leader is very inspiring, right, or the most motivational leader you have. Teams play an even stronger role there. And workplaces with strong supportive teams also have less anxiety, less depression, and less burnout on their teams.
And in fact, when we looked at the most common sources of inspiration for employees, when we asked them what are they most inspired by, we found that the biggest source of inspiration is actually other employees. So conversations with their coworkers came up on top.
Team or group discussions at work. Right? Having those informal and formal discussions.
We found also that sixty eight percent of employees have at least one coworker who inspires them at work.
So leaders really need to focus on encouraging employees to connect and share ideas with one another because that team aspect of inspiration is really powerful.
Employees also told us that they want this. So they told us in focus groups. Seventy four percent of employees said they want their experience at work to feel inspiring. They're looking for inspiration at work.
So often, we assume that employees work a hard day. They go home. They feel rested and relaxed and inspired by something at home, and they come into work the next day with that inspiration.
When, in fact, that's not always the case.
Right? Employees work hard at work, and then they go home, and then they have more work a lot of times. They have dishes to do and dinner to cook and they have kids to take care of or pets to take care of. And so they really don't get that rest and relaxation and that reenergization at home.
But the workplace could be a source of inspiration for them, and that's what they're looking for. Sixty nine percent also are actively looking for ways to gain new ideas or a new perspective from something they've read or heard from others. So they are seeking inspiration, and it's up to organizations to provide it for them.
Now inspiring teams are not just nice to have. They actually bring about important outcomes. And our research finds that employees in inspiring teams feel more fulfilled. They feel more engaged. They feel more connected. They wanna stay, and they wanna recommend the company as a place to work.
Teams also help build that sense of belonging and inclusion and connection, which I think, particularly this year, everyone is really looking for.
So what can organizations do?
Well, one, provide employees with opportunities to connect with one another.
And I think a lot of organizations maybe assume employees are doing this on their own or that they just do this in their normal, the course of their normal day to day work. Right? But we don't always have time to connect and truly have these conversations with one another when we're busy getting projects done or meeting about work.
So give employees time on the clock to share ideas, to brainstorm together, to have discussions and ask questions, to review projects together that they're working on, but also to connect on nonwork related things.
That's what I love so much about the holidays is that people actually take so much more time to have fun team building activities or holiday celebrations or parties where employees are connecting and inspiring one another even if they're not talking about work.
Have set times and regular opportunities for that connection. And ask the questions. Right? What can we do differently? What's working? What should we change? How can we do x, y, and z better?
Those are all opportunities for employees to have discussions and connect with one another and inspire one another.
Also, foster open communication and collaboration. And actively encourage employees to share ideas and try new things together. So have them set goals together as a group. Have them take risks together.
Encourage them to support and cheer each other on when they confront obstacles.
Create a team culture where employees feel safe to try new ideas and even fail, or where they can experiment and learn.
And then have tools for peer to peer recognition. Recognition just builds that sense of appreciation and belonging on teams in ways that nothing else can.
It's just a truly special tool.
And you can celebrate the accomplishments when employees try new things and fail. Right? When they are inspired and they do something new.
You can tell stories of great work that employees are doing with others across the organization because that public recognition is a great way to inspire others. You're sharing specific stories of what's successful, and other employees can hear those stories.
And as you may have felt in your own recognition experiences, recognition, even if it's not us who's being recognized, actually can be very inspiring. Even if you just observe someone being recognized, you can feel inspired by that.
I'd love to just take a moment in the chat. If you do any of these things well at your organization, please share. So if you have set opportunities, how do you kind of schedule those opportunities, or how do you set aside that time for employees to connect with one another?
If you have effective ways where you're enabling employees to inspire one another, whether it's things like aside from conversations, things like book clubs or motivational, you know, training or anything like that, share that in the chat. How are you helping employees feel inspired?
And particularly, if you recognize and reward employees when they fail, when they try new things, and even if they fail, but they've tried it, please share that in the chat. Not a lot of organizations do that. I think companies are scared sometimes to kind of encourage that failure, but it's a great way to spark innovation and to inspire employees.
So if you have any of those best practices, share them in the chat, and I'll check back in a little bit.
As I mentioned, peer to peer recognition can inspire employees and build that sense of belonging and inclusion. And I think a lot of companies have tools for leaders to recognize employees, and that's wonderful, and we definitely encourage that. But with the research that we're learning and the impact of teams and peer to peer recognition, I would really encourage you to consider broadening that tool and allow employees to recognize one another. So if you have tools for leaders to recognize employees, consider letting employees be part of that recognition as well.
And I'll share an example of a company that does this, Newgen, which is a global tech company. They're headquartered in India, but they have offices in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Singapore, UAE. I mean, they're everywhere. And they wanted to strengthen the sense of team connection, not just across departments in their organization, but across borders, across geographies, across the world.
And it's particularly important for Newgen because, you know, they started as a startup, really, and they've really grown and expanded a lot in the past few years. And so that sense of team and that sense of connection and that bond has always been a part of their culture. It's a key aspect of their culture because they grew up together. So they wanted a recognition platform that could facilitate that peer to peer global recognition.
So they created Ignite. We helped them on our Culture Cloud platform. And Ignite enables employees worldwide to recognize and nominate their colleagues who demonstrate their core values. So they have all of their employees now on a single platform where they can appreciate and inspire each other regardless of where they live.
It allows for swift recognition, appreciation across borders, and that way, all employees can see the great work. You might be able to see on here on the screenshot here, there's a social wall that they use so employees can see each other's great work and be inspired by that. And it really just helps to foster that sense of peer to peer appreciation, that sense of team, that sense of belonging across the globe.
So I'm gonna pause real quick and just check the chat and just see what you guys have going up. I see some peer to peer recognition awards, gratitude chat that you guys have.
Let's see. More peer to peer.
Having each team lead a conversation or training on something they're passionate about. That's a great way to share ideas.
Mondays, a team's channel to post quotes for inspiration, some more excellence awards, annual awards, formal awards, social area to recognize. That's fantastic.
So I love that you guys are using specific spaces for this, whether it's a channel on Teams or a specific chat on Teams or your recognition program or some certain meetings. I think that's a great way for you to set aside a special place where employees can connect with one another.
Alright. Keep adding. Keep sharing in the chat, and I'll keep checking that.
Culture trend number two, human connection over AI.
So in the age of AI, employees really want a human connection more than ever, and that's kind of what I was alluding to in the beginning of the webinar. But we'll talk a little bit more about in detail in this in this culture trend.
So AI, I think you guys might have, might be able to feel, has really exploded in the workplace over the past year.
And it's not surprising that companies are using AI in their culture initiatives. But is it helping to meet employees' needs? How is AI really working when it comes to building culture? And our research shows that while seventy percent of employees believe technology is important for experiences like employee recognition, sixty three percent of employees fear that AI will make their experiences less personal.
And I'll repeat that because I just feel like it's something important that we need to listen to. Seventy percent believe that technology is important for experiences, for culture experiences, and employee experiences at work like employee recognition. But sixty three percent fear that AI will make their experiences less personal. And I don't think that's an unfounded fear. I think that's a very realistic fear.
I'm curious in the chat. We'll pivot. And last year, I asked this question, and I think it was silent. I don't think anyone had an example or they they didn't wanna share an example.
So this year, I'm curious if there'll be more examples because I again, I feel like AI has just grown so much just in the past twelve months.
But how are you using AI in your HR or culture initiatives? And I don't just mean, like, using Copilot to, like, write an email or proof your emails. I mean, like, really, how are you using AI in HR in some of your culture building projects?
Are you using AI? Are you just kind of waiting to see, you know, what's coming out or what other peers are doing, or have you guys been going in and actually piloting things or trying new things out?
So, with the rapid pace of AI, I think there'll be more examples this year, so I'm really excited to to share or to see. So you guys please share that in the chat.
And I'll just keep talking about how even technology, no technology, independent of that, employees just wanna feel seen. Right?
And it's not that they don't want to use technology or AI at work. We found that seventy percent of employees believe it's important to use AI responsibly in a recognition program, and forty five percent have used AI tools themselves to help write recognition messages.
So it's not that they wanna eliminate tech or eliminate AI. They know, we all know AI is a very real part of our everyday lives. We're gonna only use it more and more, and so they don't expect us to completely abandon AI.
And they use AI themselves.
So there has to be this balance, though, between AI and human connection. And something like employee recognition, your culture initiatives, whatever you're doing around people in your workplace, it's a great way to build that connection to help employees feel seen.
So when it comes to recognition specifically, we asked employees what they wanted in their recognition experiences. Because recognition is something that could be very taken over by AI, I would say. If we are using AI to write recognition messages, to send recognition, it could become very impersonal.
And so when we asked employees, well, in an ideal recognition experience or your day to day recognition experiences, what do you want? And we actually heard a lot of things about being recognized in person.
So having personalized messages of recognition, but also celebrating with others. Sixty nine percent said they want a celebration with others being recognized as well or others involved.
Sixty five percent want time to socialize after the recognition moment.
Sixty four percent wanted food, whether that was coming in, you know, to the organization or going out to lunch with coworkers afterwards.
Handwritten notes, a card signed by peers. All of these are very personal human kind of experiences that AI can't necessarily replicate.
So as the systems and processes we use become more and more automated, the more employees still crave and want to feel seen, and they want to feel valued by other humans, and they want to connect with people personally.
Employees know the difference. They can tell, right, between an AI generated recognition and true appreciation. So this is a quote that came out of one of our focus groups that our Institute did. And this individual said, "at the point that recognition is just auto generated, where did it really come from? It's different when it comes from a person. If somebody really took a moment to write out their thoughts and how they felt about whatever it was I'd done, I would definitely cherish that more."
I think we all would agree.
So there are AI tools that could help with culture building initiatives, with recognition. We have a recognition coach in our Culture Cloud platform that allows leaders and employees to use AI to help them write recognition messages that have the best practices, like being specific, being timely, connecting the accomplishment to company values, but don't completely erase the tone or intention of the writer. So it keeps them the heart of the message and just helps perfect those best practices a little bit.
And it strikes a nice balance between personal and genuine and help from technology. You all may have used Copilot or ChatGPT or any of the other AI tools out there to write your own messages, whether it's emails, recognition messages, thank you notes, that kind of thing. And that's perfectly fine as long as those messages still maintain that heart and that intent of what you really wanna communicate and and what you wanna what you wanna share.
And I just wanna emphasize the importance of personal, genuine, sincere recognition that's delivered in a meaningful way. And this, I think, is what can't get lost with AI, and I think it's hard for AI to replicate this in some ways. When recognition is delivered in a meaningful way, when it is personal and sincere, employees are fourteen times more likely to find that recognition moment inspiring.
So if we use technology unwisely, it could lead to more generic, more superficial, more impersonal experiences, and that's not anything that will make anyone feel appreciated or seen.
This quote made me laugh. This engineer in our focus group said, "I've got to admit, if I sniffed out AI on a congratulatory note, it would probably be a really big turnoff. My supervisor is a Bostonian. So if all of a sudden the message came out as, Mr. Jones, we greatly recognize your dedication, that's not my boss doing that."
So, again, employees know what's genuine and what's not. Employees know when too much AI is being used versus when AI is just kind of enhancing a message, and they really crave that personal sincere recognition.
So what can organizations do?
Well, to balance technology and human connection, companies should create meaningful personal employee experiences for their people with the help of AI. So AI should enhance and not replace human interaction and culture initiatives.
You can use AI to help craft a recognition message, as we talked about, as long as you're starting with your own words and putting your own personal touch on it.
As a writer, what I never do is take what AI gives me and just copy and paste it. Right? I take what AI gives me as an idea starter, as an inspirational tool, as a way to think outside what my normal you know, outside the box, outside the way I normally think. But I never just copy and paste.
I always take what's given to me and put my own spin on it, you know, put my own voice in there.
And just remember that Copilot, AI tools can't physically make an interaction or experience meaningful. Only we can do that as humans.
Also, train and ensure leaders and peers are creating those meaningful in person moments and experiences for their people.
A lot of people don't inherently know how to give recognition. So they don't know how to create a recognition moment. They don't know how to invite others. They don't know how to, you know, make a meaningful moment. So there is a little bit of training that has to go into that.
Get to know employees and see how they like to be recognized. Invite peers and other leaders or even family to recognition presentations to observe and comment and, you know, participate in that recognition.
Include photos or stories, treats to celebrate. Give memorable, meaningful awards. All of these types of things is what creates that memorable experience for employees.
So even if you use AI to write the message, if you use AI to even help plan the event, it's the in person element that will make it more meaningful and memorable.
So I think it's a great step to ask ourselves as we're embarking on a new culture initiative or program or activity to think about how we wanna use AI. Is the use of AI enhancing that culture initiative, or is it taking away from the human connection at the organization?
I'm gonna check the chat and see. I saw a lot of chat messages this year, so I love that.
AI to generate for images.
That's fun. Yes. And AI is getting a little bit better at that. To broadcast out to the field. Okay.
Brainstorm. Yes. That's how I use it too to brainstorm ideas, Jean.
Analyzing voice of the customer data. Yes. Oh, yeah. AI is actually great for summarizing, I mean, I think that's probably where a lot of companies are using AI the most in these culture initiatives or people initiatives. It's just a lot of summarizing, drilling, analyzing data. I think that is a great use of AI.
Develop interactive roundtable exercises. Yeah.
So I love all these ideas. I love that this year, we're seeing a lot more examples, and I think it's just gonna increase and increase as the years go on. AI is changing so quickly, so rapidly.
I wanna share this story of Deloitte India, because Deloitte does a great job of balancing the human and the technology quite nicely. And Deloitte, you all know, is a global multidisciplinary professional services provider. They do tax, consulting, advisory.
Their India location specifically has thirty five thousand professionals. And I do think that maybe their business is being hit a little bit hard by AI.
But Deloitte India puts people at the front and center of everything that they do. So people before processes, explains Dr. Badari, who's the executive director of talent at Deloitte India.
The recognition platform, Dot of Fame, that we help them with is fully customized to reflect the organization's unique culture, including the idea of people first.
So despite you know, being a consulting company and putting customers, you know, as front and center of everything they do, they still care about their own employees.
And before they implemented their Dot of Fame platform, they spent several months socializing it around. They conducted training sessions so people understood what it was for and how to use it.
They shared recognition best practices so people knew how to make recognition meaningful and didn't just rely on the technology.
The team gathered testimonials from people who received appreciation and shared that around the firm to further humanize this technology, this program, this platform they're putting in.
And Deloitte India has integrated AI into Dot of Fame. So they do use the AI recognition tools to help employees craft thoughtful, well toned recognition messages.
But they also conduct regular manager training and communication to amplify that message of fostering a culture of appreciation and having managers create recognition experiences that are meaningful and having leaders and employees, you know, craft their own messages.
And perhaps the most significant impact of all of the efforts that they've been putting in to Dot of Fame is the numerous LinkedIn posts by Deloitte employees when they're recognized or celebrate a milestone at the firm.
If you look on LinkedIn and search Dot of Fame, I mean, you will see there were pages and pages of people just posting their recognition, talking about how it inspired them, talking about how their colleagues helped. I mean, it is overwhelming.
Doctor Badari says, "the joy shared on LinkedIn is overwhelming and completely unsolicited. This kind of joy can't be measured in percentages. It's not about money. It comes from the heart and reflects the genuine appreciation that we're advocating."
So while they use the tech, the platform, and they use AI to help, Deloitte India still ensures that genuine human recognition shines through.
And I think they strike a great balance between the tech and the human connection.
Okay. Culture trend number three, process over programs.
So to be successful, culture initiatives must be more than just an HR program. And we've talked about this, I think, through the years, but this year, it's becoming even more obvious than ever.
It can't just be a program. And you guys know that. Right? I think you guys have enough experience to realize that it has to be integrated into your organization's culture, your expectations, the processes you have, the practices that employees have, training, everything in your organization.
Otherwise, it's just another program. It's just another activity that employees have to do.
So the Harvard Business Review found that seventy two percent of culture initiatives led to no improvements in trust, engagement, or retention because employees felt that they were very superficial.
I read this stat, and I was really surprised. And I was really saddened because we put so much effort into creating these initiatives and making better employee experiences for our people, building trust, building engagement. It's not easy.
It takes resources and time and effort. And the fact that HBR found that seventy two percent saw no improvements was really sad.
Fifty seven percent of employees actually felt worse after a culture building perk was launched, viewing the perk as a bandaid for deeper challenges. That was also very disheartening.
Contrary to that, they found that companies where senior leaders changed their behaviors and their ways of working, even if there was no formal program, no official, you know, initiative to support that, trust scores actually rose twenty six percent.
So it was the leader's behavior that changed even if it wasn't a formal thing that they were doing that actually had an impact.
And those formal programs, if there is no change in behavior, don't have the same impact.
Integrating culture initiatives like recognition requires more than just a communication plan and a platform.
Truly integrated solutions are built into the daily employee experience. All of the interactions your employees have, the processes that they go through, the practices that they encounter each day, the support of senior leaders, role modeling it and using those, the behaviors or tools or whatever it is you're doing, measurement of it, reporting of it, all of that makes your initiative become naturally part of the company's DNA.
And for integrating something like recognition, which is our model on the screen, employees need to see it happening often. They need to experience it in a meaningful way.
They need to see leaders modeling the behavior, and they need to see that there's multiple ways to give recognition and receive recognition and have the tech and the programs to support that.
And when culture initiatives like recognition are truly integrated into the employee experience, employees are ten times more likely to feel successful at work, eight times more likely to feel positive about leadership, five times more likely to feel a sense of purpose.
It makes a difference. It makes a difference compared to another program that a company is putting in versus a solution, a strategy that's fully integrated into the company's culture.
So what can organizations do?
Well, culture building efforts can be successful when everyone from senior leaders all the way down to interns play a role. When behaviors and practices are the foundation of company policies, their processes, their training, their expectations, and their rewards, that's when they come to life.
So treat culture initiatives like any major company initiative.
I think if you've been a longtime viewer of this webinar, you hear me say this, I think, every year. But it's really, really important. Culture initiatives have to be a major company initiative and not just an HR program. So it has to start at the top.
Senior leaders should communicate what they want to see, why they want to make the change, and then also take visible action. They need to model those behaviors. They need to change it. They need to change the processes around it.
And they need to recognize when employees are adopting and changing those processes, too.
Build practices into your daily interactions with employees. So a lot of, I think, HR initiatives or programs are one off touch points. But in order for it to be truly successful, it has to be part of the daily employee experience, expectations, leadership development, formal decision making procedures, team building activities. Whatever it is you're introducing or you're wanting to change, that has to be the daily conversation that you're having with employees and that they're having with one another.
Every every experience that your employees have should reinforce that culture, that attribute you're trying to build.
Also, empower employees to use new tools and hold leaders accountable and recognize employees and leaders for changing their practices. So tools and programs only work if employees can have access to them and are encouraged to use them often. And leaders are also regularly using them and modeling that them as well.
And if you recognize employees and leaders for adopting a new behavior or using a new tool or doing something differently, It's a great way to just encourage and reinforce and inspire them.
And then finally, solicit employee feedback and make improvements based on it. This helps build a sense of ownership in any new culture initiative that you're doing or new program that you have.
And be clear on what feedback that you've heard from employees and what you did to make that improvement and and the impact that it's had.
So Delta Air Lines really makes recognition a process in their culture, not just a program. They wanted to help employees feel connected to their company mantra of never stop climbing.
And recognition in general is built into the systems and processes at Delta. It's not just an HR program. It's really part of everything that Delta does, the way they live and breathe. Charles White, the managing director of compensation, recognition, and mobility, says this.
He says, "recognition is a part of what Delta Air Lines does. It's part of the fabric of our culture and part of our DNA. Delta's culture is to ensure employees feel loved, respected, heard, seen, and recognized."
So they live and breathe this anyway.
But they implemented Unstoppable Together to really tie everything together and have kind of formality around that process. So first, Unstoppable Together, through our Culture Cloud platform, empowers Delta leaders and employees to recognize one another with the typical things, points, ecards, group point deposits, custom awards. I mean, they use everything.
When employees do something aligned with their mantra of never stop climbing, they spare no expense at making sure their employees feel valued and seen.
Special initiatives honor divisional and team achievements. And when they celebrate company, major company events, like their one hundredth year anniversary that they celebrated this year, they celebrate in both big ways but also regular appreciation throughout the centennial year.
That's the recognition platform, you would say, one part of it. But another big part of making recognition part of just the daily culture is that their senior leaders really live it. They do more than just talk about recognition. They talk about the importance of recognition, but then they model it.
Their CEO in particular, when I was learning this from our Delta folks that were here at our Influence Greatness Conference, it was amazing to me how involved their CEO is in recognition. So when, the minute he hears about an employee doing great work, whether it's from another employee or a customer, he will take the time to personally ensure they're recognized. He starts every major event, every big company event, whether it's a recognition event or even just, you know, a town hall about something else, he starts every company event with some form of recognition.
He recognizes someone or a team.
He uses Unstoppable Together himself. He goes in the platform and recognizes, which is very rare for a company, such a big global company like Delta. He gives it, he gives it himself, but he also expects his leaders to give recognition through the platform. And because of that expectation and the accountability he holds his leaders to, sixty four percent of top executives at Delta regularly use Unstoppable Together to recognize, so over half.
Third, they empower individual divisions to customize and personalize recognition for their employees. And they've, and actually, what they do is they build regular interaction between their divisions and our customer success contacts to improve and evolve recognition.
So there's no barrier. There's no gatekeeping. They let individual divisions and unit leaders and departments work directly with O.C. Tanner to make sure that Unstoppable Together is perfect for their area and customized to their people.
They leverage ambassadors to promote the program, and they help employees write great recognition nominations and create recognition moments and plan recognition events.
So Delta really has wrapped a lot of things around recognition, their leadership, their communication, how their teams interact with one another, to truly make recognition a part of their everyday processes and an everyday part of the employee experience.
And I had mentioned that best practice about soliciting employee feedback and making improvements based on it. Delta does that. Right?
Things like creating a new onboarding experience for their returning employees, their alumni employees. They have red carpet events for recognition. They even have a company mascot, if you all didn't know. His name is Widgey, and he or she is adorable.
That was all developed as a flight attendants idea. So these were all developed by listening to employees, getting feedback, listening, and making changes based on it.
Because of this, they've seen some incredible improvements. Recognition's a process, not just a program at their organization.
So forty percent increase in recognition moments after implementing all of this, fifty three percent increase in the amount of recognition given via their mobile app, which is what a lot of their flight crew uses and people working in the airports.
Twenty three percent increase in the number of employees recognized, and seventy six percent of employees are excited to go to work each day at Delta.
This one is my favorite stat because not a lot of employees are excited to go to work anymore, and they have seventy six percent. Three fourths of their people are excited to go to work at Delta.
And I think you can feel that when you interact with a Delta employee.
They've also made it to the top of all the best companies to work for lists, Forbes, Fortune, I mean, everything you can think of. And Nicole Bell, their director of global employee engagement, says, "these results are the outcomes of recognition, which is part of our core. Delta listens, we act, we keep listening, and we'll never stop climbing."
So I'm curious in your own organizations, how are you ensuring that your culture initiatives are part of your organization's systems and processes and a living, breathing part of your culture and not just another program or another activity or another event or another thing that they have to use, another tool they have to log in to.
Right? How do you, what do you do to truly build it into your organization and build it into processes, all the expectations, all the, you know, daily interactions that your employees have? If you have even a little bit of advice for other attendees on the webinar, please share that in the chat. And I think you guys can learn a lot from each other and what works and what doesn't work.
Alright. Culture trend number four, finding true ROI of culture efforts.
So in the past, companies have typically been measuring success of culture initiatives based on improvements in employee engagement and have been pretty satisfied with that. And that's been great, and that's worked so far.
But I think now many companies are finding that that might not be enough. And in 2026, we're seeing that organizations and clients of ours are looking beyond engagement to measure the impact of culture building initiatives on things like tangible business outcomes, innovation, efficiency, customer service, revenue, all sorts of metrics.
And I think the reason why we're hearing this more is because in times of uncertainty, when companies are pulling back on employee experience programs, when resources are at stake, we're fighting for budget, we're unsure of what's gonna happen in the future, you really need a strong business case for any of the initiatives that you're putting in place in an organization, particularly culture initiatives, which sometimes don't have the same tangible ROI that you can find in an easy way as opposed to a technology program or, you know, something else that you're doing.
So I just wanted to share some examples of how some of our clients have measured ROI on outcomes beyond engagement and just give you an idea of what organizations are looking at right now.
So AWS is Amazon Web Services, and this is actually their own research that I'm gonna share on a LinkedIn post, that their HR team posted. But, they have found several instances of their AWSome awards influence, it's a program that we help them with, comparing employees who received recognition and those who didn't. And they actually found that giving their AWSome awards improved employee loyalty, culture, and innovation.
They did all this research on their own, but they saw that people who received an award were less likely to leave the company within a year, more likely to get promoted within a year, less likely to transfer, implying more job stability, more, you know, happiness in the current role and growing and working in their current role. They also found that employees were happier about their jobs. Job satisfaction increased.
They felt seen. I talked about in the AI culture trend that employees just want to feel seen. Well, employees felt more seen after being recognized. They felt greater respect and visibility. Scores went up there.
They were more satisfied with their managers. That's one of the highest jumps according to Amazon Web Services. Scores improved, suggesting improved relationships with managers.
And then they felt more connected to teammates. We talked about that impact of team in culture trend number one. Well, this was especially strong for Amazon Web Services six months after receiving an AWSome award for employees.
So recognition really impacted how employees felt, how they interacted with others, whether they would stay longer, and also the great work that they're doing. So award recipients received higher evaluation scores from their leaders, a three percent increase in innovation based on their manager scoring them on great work and innovation.
So some really tangible results outside just engagement from AWS.
Another example is Wellstar Health System. They wanted to inspire employees to find new ways to improve their revenue cycle management, which is just billing and insurance claims after a patient gets discharged from their hospital. So Wellstar turned to recognition.
And their ShineWell platform through O.C. Tanner enabled the company to recognize employees in that billing and claims team, so specific initiative for a particular group, when they take steps to reduce their work queue age, fostering a sense of accomplishment and teamwork.
They do this in a fun way. They actually use ecards. They use they made custom badges with really creative names. So the one you see on the screen here is hospital revenue cycle genius. But they had a lot of really creative badges that they were giving away. These were virtual badges.
They have points, the contests. They held a lot of contests to recognize employees in this group in addition to their normal recognition nominations and ecards and symbolic awards. And employees actually loved, they loved this initiative.
They loved seeing who was achieving badges. They loved getting badges. They loved seeing who was leading in the recognition. That sense of competition was really fun for them.
And they loved sharing when they received recognition. So our contact at Wellstar Health told me the the greatest story at their holiday party when employees would introduce themselves for an activity or in front of the audience. They would go up and say their name, but then they would also say what badge that they had just earned or most recently earned. And I loved that.
I just thought that was, I mean, it showed how much employees embraced this initiative, embraced the recognition, embraced, you know, all of this.
Wellstar made recognition personal and fun for their employees. They connected to a specific purpose and a specific goal, and they saw some really great tangible results.
So this was remarkable. I mean, we don't have a lot of clients who are able to measure it down, to this level, tie it back to revenue. But Wellstar saw after this initiative for this particular group, they achieved the lowest number of days in accounts receivable in over a year.
They reduced aging accounts by twelve thousand. They improved net collection ratio by one percent in just one month. In one month of having this recognition, these badges, these contests, they've already had saw improvements financially. And they reduced their aged insurance accounts receivable balances by thirteen million in just one month.
They got those claims through. They got the paperwork done. I mean, they were really productive. And thirteen million is huge for just one month.
So they just saw incredible results as a result of the recognition, as as a result of the great work that other people were doing, and they tied it to financial outcomes. And I think that's really important, especially next year when budgets are tightening up and companies are pulling back.
So what can organizations do?
I mean, these are pretty easy in theory, but really hard to do in person. So define how you want to measure success of your culture building initiatives. Maybe engagement is enough.
Maybe you can stick with engagement. And as long as engagement scores improve, that's enough. But if it's not, you need to figure out what is it that you want to measure? What is it that you want recognition or culture building initiatives to improve?
Do you want it to connect, and you want to connect it to business outcomes. So whether that's retention or customer service or whatever is important to your organization, maybe it's something specific to a particular work group. Whatever it is, you want to define it. You want to gather those baseline metrics, and you want to measure often.
If you're not measuring often, you have no idea if it's improving. You can't track it.
And then you also need to hold leaders accountable for improving those metrics.
What, it's that saying, right? What gets measured gets counted or whatever that saying is. I think that's true.
I think it's when leaders are held accountable at every level of leadership, they will work towards that goal, and they will meet that goal.
And then, like I said, in the different culture trends, solicit employee feedback. Address it in leader action plans, and you can watch results improve.
And I'll show you how AAA Auto Club Enterprises did just that.
They basically, they are the largest member group of AAA in the country. And they conducted an employee survey, and they found that employees wanted better recognition experiences. Recognition scores were low. People didn't feel appreciated.
So they challenged their leaders to create action plans to improve recognition. That was the goal, create an action plan for this whatever year it was to improve recognition. And out of those action plans, Live Legendary was born.
Live Legendary is an integrated recognition strategy where employees are recognized often.
They have tools for peer to peer recognition, mobile tools. So when they have employees going out to respond to an accident or an insurance claim, they have recognize, they have tools to recognize a peer or someone to help them with that.
They have a robust communication campaign that ties recognition to their overall total reward strategy of care for their employees. So like I said, it's not just a program. It's actually tied to a lot of things in the organization.
And as a direct result of leader action planning and that Live Legendary strategy, fifty one percent of leaders recognize at least once a month. So half of their leaders recognize monthly, sometimes even more than that. Right?
And they've seen other outcomes, increase in recognition happening, increase in the awards that are being redeemed, six percent increase in "my team takes time to celebrate our successes," seventy five percent increase in employees say their leader is a strong advocate for their development, eighty two percent increase in employees say they feel successful in the organization.
And they pointed out that those last two metrics, those aren't metrics that are typically measured with recognition.
But because they've integrated recognition into their company's processes, into the culture, into the daily cadence of employees' lives, and into their leadership development and growth efforts, they've seen an impact on those areas because of recognition.
So question for you in the chat. How are you measuring ROI of your culture efforts? What metrics other than engagement are you looking at for next year? Are you sticking with engagement?
And that's totally fine too. And that's probably, honestly, the easiest way to measure the ROI. But are you looking at retention, innovation, customer service? And then how do you make that connection between recognition and business outcomes?
That's a question we get a lot from our clients is how do I measure this? How do I make that connection? How do I know if it's correlated or causal, or how do I know there's nothing else that kind of factors in to the increase in improvements that I'm seeing?
Do you work, do you do regular analysis on, you know, an annual basis? Do you work with an outside partner? Maybe you've used our measurement and analysis services by our O.C. Tanner Institute. Whatever you do, please share in the chat some of those best practices, some of the tips that you have for measuring ROI.
While you guys do that, I'm gonna go back and look at my question from last time.
I see a lot of chat about leaders actively doing it and show showcasing it.
A culture podcast. That's cool. Leadership podcast. That's great. Let's see.
Having access to recognition, I see a little bit of discussion there. We can definitely talk about that in the Q&A at the end as well. Surveys, pulse surveys to employees is really important. An app.
Lots lots of great, lots of great ideas here. I love that they're all different as well, a diverse set of ideas, not all the same thing. Measure employee feedback and sentiment.
Great. Fantastic. Keep sharing. Keep adding your comments in there. Alright.
Last culture trend, number five. That went by really fast. Sharing recognition builds belonging.
So sharing news of great work builds a sense of community, connection, and belonging. And while that's always been the case, we are seeing an uptick in the amount of sharing that's happening with recognition in this upcoming year.
So I always say recognition works best when it occurs often and is shared. And I think we all know inherently that recognition doesn't just impact the person giving and receiving it, but everyone who observes it, everyone that that's part of that recognition experience.
Actively participating in another employee's recognition can deepen connection and that sense of team and make employee accomplishments more visible across the organization and really inspire everyone to do great work. Right? We talked about that inspiration in culture trend number one, and sharing recognition is part of that.
So if you think about a time when you witnessed someone being recognized, it could be formally, informally, at an event, or service award presentation.
We actually have been having a lot of service award presentations at O.C. Tanner this month. I don't know if we just hired a lot of people in December, I guess, but I actually just went to one in Salt Lake yesterday. I flew out for my former boss' service award presentation. There was one this morning in my department. There's another one next week for a retirement.
But I know every time I attend these service award present presentations, I feel inspired. I feel a stronger sense of team. I hear all about the great work that that individual did, how they touch people's lives in and outside of work, the impact they've had on their team and the company.
And then I reflect on my own experiences, right, working with that individual. And sometimes if it's a really great service award presentation, people cry and get emotional, and it's just it's inspiring.
But after the presentation, somehow I feel really proud to work with that individual. I feel a stronger sense of pride in my company. And it just reinforces that sense of team and that community and that belonging to see that recognition.
It happens every time recognition gets shared, whether it's in person sharing in a presentation. It gets shared on social media. It gets shared through your platform.
Anytime people are invited to participate in recognition, that all gets shared. Sixty five percent of employees feel inspired when they hear about accomplishments of others. They're twice as likely to try something new when they observe recognition, and teams are more likely to be inclusive when they frequently share in recognition moments. So there is a tangible impact here.
And when we talk about sharing recognition, I know there's many ways to do it. So I know a lot of companies use their Intranet feed, their recognition platform social feed if they have one. They use shared screens in common areas like break rooms and cafeterias and lobbies for those people who may be offline or aren't working at a computer.
I know a lot of companies have started each meeting or a town hall or a company event with shared recognition just like Delta does.
And your recognition platform may have its own sharing capabilities and invite peers to participate in someone's recognition.
So I just wanted to quickly go through just three cool ways to share that we use for Culture Cloud that have been really meaningful for employees.
So the first is a Post a Win where you can share someone's recognition. So if one of your teammates gets recognized, you can actually repost that. It's like a Facebook or an Instagram or a LinkedIn repost.
And it's just a great, easy, quick, free way to amplify that recognition.
And there's boost. If someone has received recognition and you wanna add more points to that recognition, it's a great way to encourage people to really boost up and magnify that recognition as well.
And then the last way is for leaders to share recognition with people outside the platform. So if you wanna share it with vendors or customers or family members, you can do that through a broadcast email.
Just three short examples of how you can use your recognition platform to really share that recognition in an easy way. Oftentimes, it doesn't require additional resources, but it can meet a really broad set of people, a larger audience when you're sharing it.
Use the tools that you have. Whether you share it, you open it up to include the participation of others, whatever you do, just make sure you broaden the impact of recognition because that will really help build that meaningful connection for employees, that sense of team, the belonging, the inclusion, all of that great stuff that employees really want right now.
So what can organizations do?
Well, ensure that you can share the joy of recognition across the organization. Ensure that you have tools. Your platform makes it easy to share the accomplishments of others.
Enable and empower leaders and peers to add to an employee's recognition, whether they're resharing it, they're commenting on it, they're adding more points, including others to participate in the recognition.
And then integrate. We mentioned this in culture trend number three. Make it a process, not just a program. Integrate recognition to make it part of your workplace community and an everyday part of the employee experience.
My last story for you today is St. Elizabeth's health care. St. Elizabeth's culture is all about building care and belonging for patients and their employees too. And their recognition strategy really reflects that culture.
So they have a recognition platform with us that copies leaders on recognition so leaders can call out associates to recognize them in person in daily team huddles. So you have two elements here for St. Elizabeth, and most health care organizations have that where you have platform recognition on technology, but then you also have daily huddles with your team, or leaders might do rounding and meet with different employees and different teams around the hospital.
So for St. Elizabeth, they do both. They have recognition where leaders can get copied in an email, but then leaders take that recognition then go to the huddle and present that recognition or reinforce that recognition in person with their employees.
Leaders are automatically notified. The social wall also enables people to see great work happening across the organization. Their Yearbook solution for service anniversaries gives leaders and associates the opportunity to add comments and pictures and memories and just add to the celebration of that person.
They also celebrate life events, employee life events, birthdays, new babies, homes, all of that together as part of their program to build belonging and community.
Their manager of associate and provider experience, Sara Warning, says, "you don't always think about the impact you make. So when people tell you, it really moves you. Our culture is one where you care about each other, and that is so rare. And these programs we have just add to that culture." So it really is part of their day to day and how they live and how they breathe and their purpose.
Because of this, they've seen really great improvements in a lot of areas. Steady decline in turnover with increased recognition. Belonging is the highest scoring area on their engagement survey. That is really hard to do, and I think that's something we all want in our organizations.
But for them, they brought it to life. Belonging, that sense of belonging, inclusion, being part of a team, being part of the organization, highest scoring area on their employee survey.
Their engagement score for the physicians group is at an all time high. Their patient experience scores are at an all time high.
And ninety two percent of their associates are recognized just in the short time that they've been doing this.
Again, this ties back to the last culture trend around ROI. They're measuring it against not just satisfaction and engagement, but they're measuring it on belonging, turnover, patient satisfaction scores.
Also not shown on this chart that I think is really cool, they did an analysis themselves, or maybe with us. I can't remember. But it shows that associates who are recognized less than once a quarter, so they have not they haven't been recognized more than once a month or once a quarter, have lower engagement. So the less you're recognized, the lower your engagement scores are.
But by building recognition to the new hire process, they make sure all new hires are assigned a personal adviser liaison, that they all receive an ecard welcoming them to the team. When they built that recognition and that sense of belonging into the orientation process or the onboarding process, they actually saw first year turnover go down.
So their first year turnover is very low because they've created this recognition experience for their people and that sense of belonging the minute they join the organization. And I think that's a really cool way to show ROI as well.
And then Peggy Essert, who is their manager of human resources, she says this. She says, "when you recognize people for the great work they are doing and the impact they have, they feel good about being part of the organization. And when people feel good and feel connected to the organization, they stay. We really do see that play out in our numbers. You can have lofty goals around belonging, but it's the people you work with day to day that make you feel like you belong."
And I just think this quote just sums up all the culture trends that we, I know I put it in this last culture trend around sharing recognition and building belonging, but I just think it sums up everything we talked about today.
The idea of connecting inspiring within the team, that the team and the people that you work with are the ones that inspire you, the human element and that personalization of recognition, the ROI that they're seeing.
So I just love this quote. I think it's a great quote to wrap up, just the importance of everything we talked about today.
So last question in the chat for you. How do you share a recognition at work?
Do you have a social feed that highlights recognition? It's pretty common now, whether it's on your Intranet or on your platform. Do you use shared screens around the company? I know that's a big thing as well.
Do you invite employees to participate in the recognition? Do you have other cool tech? Is there other cool tech out there to help create shared experiences around recognition? I'd love to hear about that as well.
I love learning new things. So if you have any cool ways, any new ways, any effective ways that you're sharing news of great work, you're sharing recognition across the company, please add that into the chat.
Alright.
So to summarize the five culture trends for 2026.
First, teams inspire, not just leaders. So leaders play that pivotal role we know, and they're so important to a team. But the team itself is actually equally, if not more important, in inspiring and building hope and supporting employees.
Number two, connection over tech. So as much as we wanna use AI and are using AI, we can't forget that element of human connection and creating personal employee experiences for our people.
Number three, process, not programs.
Any culture initiative has to be integrated into your employees' daily processes, behaviors, expectations, development, team building activities. It can't just be a standalone program.
Four, looking for ROI beyond engagement or finding new ways to measure ROI.
And five, sharing recognition and the impact it has on building community and belonging and inclusion.
And again, I just want to end by saying and emphasizing the human element of these culture trends, the importance that remembering employees are people. They want that human connection in their employee experience no matter how much technology we use.
Alright. We made it. Okay. All the research I shared today, unless otherwise noted in the slides, comes from our 2026 Global Culture Report from the O.C. Tanner Institute, and you can find it on our website, octanner.com.
There's so much additional research on topics and trends that I didn't even have time to cover today, practicing hope in the workplace, building healthy performance cultures, four areas of workplace transparency that have the most impact.
The report is completely free. You don't even have to fill out a form. You don't have to put your email or anything.
So I encourage you to check it out.
And then also our state of recognition report, which is available on our site. This really dives into how to make recognition meaningful and personal and impactful in the age of AI, the customization, that genuineness of recognition.
We will have another one of these coming out for 2026 in the spring, I believe, of this year. But while you're waiting for that, go check out this report. It's a fun one to read.
So thank you for listening in today. Thank you for listening to me talk for an hour. I wanna thank you for participating in the chat. I saw so many great best practices and questions.
I love that you guys were all interacting with each other. Please continue to do so in the last five minutes. But I appreciate you being part of this webinar with us today. I'm gonna check for some questions.
I'm gonna throw up the SHRM and HRCI codes while I do so so you guys have those to write down. And I'm just gonna check the chat one more time.
MODERATOR: Christina, I think it would be great to talk about working with offline populations. We had lots of questions come in around that.
CHRISTINA: Oh, perfect.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So around recognition on offline populations, or is there a particular...
MODERATOR: Recognition and team building, culture building.
CHRISTINA: Sure. Yeah. So I think a lot of times, we, companies put in initiatives, programs, tools, and nowadays, they're mostly online. Right?
And we forget about that. Our research found out eighty percent of employees don't work at a desk. And that's not true for every organization, obviously.
But across the board, for most, if you look at organizations across industries, eighty percent of employees are not spending all of their day at a computer.
And so there are tools that they need and considerations that they need for recognition for any, obviously, HR or culture building initiative.
And so we really recommend that companies think about that when they're building their strategy for recognition. What tools can you make available? How can you make your online tools available to them?
So the easiest way to do that, obviously, is to have mobile tools for any of your people that don't work at a computer. If you have a recognition platform, make sure it has a mobile app that they can use. Make sure they have shared kiosks that they can go to to do recognition. 3M does a great job of that.
But beyond that, it's really taking their needs into consideration. So maybe they can't check their phone if they're working on a manufacturing line or if they're working with heavy machinery, or like BHP, who's a mining company for us, they're down in the mines all day long. There's no internet access down there.
So really taking into consideration how they would access recognition tools. How can they recognize a peer? Maybe it's offline tools that you're providing them. Maybe it's written forms of recognition, thank you notes, that kind of thing.
But also, how are they receiving recognition? If they aren't online, are they still able to access using the tools but able to be empowered to receive recognition? Are people recognizing them for their great work? And there's all sorts of physical recognition tools you can use.
We have swag boxes that we often have clients use that have water bottles or, you know, fun company products in there.
We have a company store that, you know, employees can go to and get, you know, a T shirt or a sweatshirt because they love those types of things with their company logo on it.
So how do you really connect those offline employees to your online recognition tools? And it doesn't have to be technology.
And also just making sure that they're recognized equally. What a lot of people say is that as an offline employee or maybe even a back office employee, if you're in a client facing role, that they're forgotten a lot. People might recognize the customer service agent. They might recognize the salesperson at a retail store, but they don't recognize all the support behind them.
Zions Bank is a great example of this, and I know Raven's adding these case studies in the chat. Zions Bank, a lot of great customer service bankers, frontline tellers working with their customers, but everyone in the back office is feeling neglected. So how do you make sure those folks also are equally recognized and have access to those recognition tools as well?
We have a great chapter on the eighty, it's called the eighty percent experience in our Global Culture Report from a couple years ago.
I encourage you to check that out. It's got a lot of really great examples, research, details on how to make that experience more, more personal for them.
Alright. I think I am out of time, which always happens with this webinar. I, again, just wanna say thank you for listening to me. Thank you for participating in chat. I'm gonna read all of your comments.
And if you have questions that I we didn't get to or weren't answered in the chat, please feel free to email. I think it's webinars at octanner.com. Send us an email, and I'm happy to respond to that, to connect on LinkedIn. Thank you again for listening in.
I hope these were helpful. I hope this research was informative and these stories were helpful. And have a very happy holidays. Enjoy your holiday events at your organization.
Enjoy the time off, and we will see you in 2026.
Thank you, guys.
