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Recognized employees are more engaged and productive, argues Darian Kovacs, Partner at Jelly Digital Marketing & PR.

In just a few short years, the corporate landscape has undergone a seismic shift due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many organizations that once adhered to fully in-person work policies have transitioned to hybrid or remote work models.

While some major corporations are pushing for a full in-office model, hybrid work remains a strong preference for many employers. Organizations that embrace this flexibility must find ways to maintain engagement and recognition to retain top talent.

For employees, the allure of hybrid work environments has grown so strong that some are willing to accept pay cuts to enjoy the flexibility and benefits they offer. However, as the frequency of in-person interactions declines, it’s essential to retain practices like employee recognition, which are critical for fostering a strong engagement culture. Therefore, the challenge is clear: how do you maintain effective recognition in a hybrid workplace?

One answer lies in leveraging employee recognition software like Altrum or Nectar, which can help sustain a robust workplace culture. These platforms simplify employee recognition with a unified platform integrating peer-to-peer recognition, incentive rewards, turnkey gift management, and exclusive manager training—empowering leaders to enhance daily recognition effortlessly.

But why should hybrid companies invest in employee recognition initiatives and software? The answer is simple: recognition enhances engagement, drives productivity, boosts retention, and cultivates a positive, enduring organizational culture. It’s the fastest route to success.

Consistency is Key

Gone are the days of sporadic acknowledgments and annual awards ceremonies. To achieve sustained employee engagement and retention, organizations must recognize every contribution—big or small—throughout the employee lifecycle.

Consistent recognition begins with welcoming new team members and extends through milestones like birthdays, anniversaries, and everyday accomplishments. It doesn’t stop there – continuous recognition should remain a cornerstone until an employee’s retirement.

The data backs this up:

• Employees are 2.7 times more likely to engage when they expect recognition for their efforts.
• Organizations with recognition programs see a 14% boost in employee engagement, productivity, and performance.
• 79% of workers say increased recognition rewards would enhance their loyalty to their employer.

Small Gesture, Big Impact

While consistent recognition is key to fostering engagement, it’s important to remember that impactful recognition doesn’t have to come from grand gestures. In hybrid work environments, small, thoughtful acts often matter more than ever. A personalized “thank you” email, a quick shout-out in a team meeting, or a note of appreciation in a group chat can make employees feel seen and valued. These micro-moments of recognition reinforce trust and connection, especially when physical interactions are limited.

Everyday gestures like acknowledging a teammate’s effort in a Slack channel or celebrating a small win during a virtual check-in can create a ripple effect of positivity. These simple actions show that recognition is woven into the fabric of your workplace culture, making employees feel appreciated in meaningful and immediate ways. It’s not about the size of the gesture but the sincerity behind it that drives loyalty and morale.

How to Facilitate Recognition in a Hybrid Workplace 

If you’re looking to take things further and incorporate employee recognition software into your workplace, here are some key benefits and features:

• Peer-to-Peer Recognition: Users can celebrate each other’s achievements, whether it’s between managers and employees or among peers. Features like this help to foster a sense of belonging and connection, providing a platform for team members to effortlessly recognize and appreciate one another’s contributions no matter where they’re located.
• Meaningful Rewards: Software can help to provide reward options for you and your team, from gift cards and extra paid time off to donations and even tickets to sporting events. This ensures that everyone can choose a reward that genuinely resonates with them.
• Celebrations and Badges: In the busy corporate world, milestones are often overlooked. Automated anniversary and birthday celebrations act as a constant reminder, helping you never to miss an important moment—keeping celebrations top of mind, 24/7.
• Incentive Campaigns, News Feeds, and KPI Management: Recognition software enables you to create customized contests, campaigns, and challenges to motivate employees. Users can share performance updates and tips through an interactive dashboard accessible 24/7 on any device. This helps keep your team informed and inspired, no matter where they are.

Recognition is more than just an HR initiative—it’s a fundamental element of a thriving, high-performing workplace. It drives engagement, builds loyalty, and enhances overall performance.

In hybrid workplaces, where physical interactions are less frequent, software tools are vital in bridging the gap, ensuring employees feel consistently valued and connected. By prioritizing a culture of recognition, organizations can elevate employee satisfaction, attract top talent, and maintain a decisive competitive edge.

Investing in thoughtful and consistent employee recognition isn’t just an investment in your team’s well-being; it’s a strategic decision that fuels business success. Recognized employees are more engaged, productive, and likely to contribute positively to the workplace, fostering a sense of happiness and belonging. As the hybrid work model evolves, investing in your recognition practices to match this dynamic environment ensures that every accomplishment is celebrated and every employee feels genuinely appreciated. Let’s build workplaces where recognition is a daily habit, shaping a brighter, more connected future.

Jelly Digital Marketing & PR is a member of the Institute of Canadian Agencies (ICA). Report on Marketing is where leading Canadian agencies showcase their insights, cutting-edge research and client successes. The Report on Marketing provides a valuable source of thought leadership for Canadian marketers to draw inspiration from. Find more articles like this at the Report on Marketing.

Dustin Rideout, Partner and Chief Strategy Officer at creative marketing agency The Hive identifies shifts required to unlock growth for brands.

For many brands that have found initial success through direct response methods, “performance marketing” has been the engine behind much of their growth. These brands have relied on highly targeted tactics to drive quick wins in customer acquisition.

Performance marketing strategies, such as search marketing and digital performance ads, have helped sustain sales and maintain visibility in competitive spaces. But as brands reach a certain stage, they often realize that continuing with a pure performance marketing approach may no longer be enough to unlock their next wave of growth.

Brands at this pivotal moment may find themselves at a tipping point: performance marketing has allowed them to hold ground, but a new approach is needed to move from maintaining sales to capturing a larger share of the market. Growth marketing offers a way forward by focusing on long-term brand-building efforts, expanding brand awareness, and deepening customer relationships – areas that many brands haven’t yet fully explored.

Performance Marketing Holds Ground

Performance marketing is primarily designed to target the low-hanging fruit – customers who are ready to make a purchase or take immediate action. Its success is often measured by short-term metrics like return on ad spend (ROAS), cost-per-acquisition (CPA), and conversions. This approach allows early-stage businesses to maintain a steady pipeline of sales, keeping them competitive and relevant. However, the scope of this approach is limited to those who are already in-market and aware of the brand.

In other words, performance marketing excels at keeping a brand visible to those already considering it, ensuring that the company holds onto its existing share of voice in a crowded marketplace. But by focusing on these immediate, lower-funnel activities, businesses are missing the opportunity to reach entirely new audiences and unlock untapped market potential. For any brand outside of number one, and especially those that consider themselves as challengers, this approach alone to marketing simply won’t achieve their ambitions.

Growth Marketing Expands Market Share

Growth marketing, on the other hand, is about increasing market share by focusing on brand-building efforts and creating value. It’s designed to reach not just customers who are ready to convert but those who are still in the awareness or consideration phases of the funnel. By increasing brand exposure and fostering deeper emotional connections with consumers, growth marketing helps brands break through clutter and capture new customers who are not yet aware of them.

Instead of merely maintaining share of voice, growth marketing expands it. It elevates the brand beyond immediate performance-driven campaigns and invests in activity that builds visibility with new audiences. This, in turn, fuels future conversions by creating a stronger brand presence that drives sustainable growth.

Shifts For Brands Moving Toward The Next Stage of Growth

From Short-Term Sales to Building Awareness
Performance marketing has been great for driving quick sales, but for brands ready to scale, the focus needs to shift toward building awareness and attracting a broader audience. Growth marketing allows brands to move beyond short-term transactional relationships and start investing in the top-of-funnel activities that create new customer pipelines.

From Conversion Focused to Brand Equity Building
While the returns from performance marketing are beneficial in the short-term, growth marketing focuses on building brand equity to increase volume. Brands must begin investing in brand-building tactics that may not result in immediate conversions but will drive customer pipeline. These include creating engaging content, building communities, investing in sponsorship, or collaborating with influencers to reach new segments of the market.

From Visibility to Advocacy
In the performance marketing model, maintaining visibility in search engines or paid channels has been a way to stay competitive. But growth marketing goes beyond visibility to focus on advocates who will champion the brand organically. By creating meaningful experiences and fostering emotional connections with consumers, businesses can turn customers into advocates who help spread the word, driving organic growth.

From Immediate Transactions to Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
Performance marketing has often been about driving one-off purchases, but brands aiming for the next stage of growth need to prioritize customer lifetime value (CLTV). Growth marketing builds strong, ongoing relationships with customers that lead to repeat business and referrals, which in turn increases CLTV. This means focusing on retention strategies, loyalty programs, and personalized customer engagement to drive long-term growth.

From Lower-Funnel to Full-Funnel Strategy
Performance marketing traditionally targets the lower funnel—those ready to convert. Growth marketing, on the other hand, looks at the entire funnel, from awareness to retention. This means creating a seamless customer experience across every stage of the journey, ensuring that brands not only attract new customers but also keep them engaged and loyal over time.

Setting The Stage For Sustainable Growth

For brands ready to enter their next phase of growth, transitioning from performance marketing to growth marketing is a critical step. Performance marketing may have been enough to drive early success, but it’s growth marketing that will enable brands to scale and capture new market opportunities.

In a landscape where competition is increasing, brands that continue to focus solely on maintaining sales through performance marketing will find themselves outpaced by those investing in awareness and long-term relationships. By embracing growth marketing, brands can build a foundation for sustainable growth, drive new customer acquisition, and ultimately increase their market share.

The Hive is a member of the Institute of Canadian Agencies. Report on Marketing is where leading Canadian agencies showcase their insights, cutting-edge research and client successes. The Report on Marketing provides a valuable source of thought leadership for Canadian marketers to draw inspiration from. Find more articles like this at the Report on Marketing.

Jill Priestman, the Director of Workplace Strategy at Bennett Design Associates Inc., argues that understanding culture and employee expectations is essential when reimagining the workspace.

 “In all my years as a workplace strategist, there has never been a time quite as fascinating as right now,” says Priestman. “The dynamic interplay between employees, employers, and the workspace has been dramatically reshaped, sparking a wave of discussions on how organizations should reimagine their workspaces for future ways of working.”

It has become blatantly clear in the past few years that having a strong, amplified and transparent company culture is necessary.  By considering the corporate culture, the business strategy and the employee needs through a comprehensive transformational change, organizations are realizing a new level of employee commitment.

If companies are going to make a transformational change that is embraced throughout the organization, they must be willing to hear and consider what employees are concerned with and care about, before that change happens.  That input will be critical in shaping the holistic business planning direction and the resulting success of that strategy.

What the Bennett Workplace Strategy team knows from its work over the past few years is that it’s imperative for employees to have connections within their organization to build trust, create a sense of belonging, and to align like-minded values to support a strong corporate culture.  To do this, they must be heard so that their input can shape the narrative and policies for the return to the office, guaranteeing that the physical space will be successfully utilized, resulting with employees who can be productive, efficient, and engaged.

Remote, hybrid or onsite?

Finding solutions to these challenges is only possible by understanding employer expectations and the employee experience.  Workplace Strategy has never had a more vital role than it has today, and the path to creating harmony, inspiration and engagement in the workplace begins with asking the right questions throughout all levels of the people within that specific organization.  One size does not fit all, and fully remote, hybrid or fully onsite are not mutually inclusive or exclusive for many organizations.

The Bennett Design team has identified several emerging trends in workplace strategy thinking that are shaping the future of workspaces. These trends, which are foundational in its proprietary d.i.g. Workplace Strategy, are proving to be powerful tools in collecting the significant data that influences and informs an organization’s strategic space direction with defensible accuracy.  Six key indicating trends are:

1. Analyzing Industry Benchmarks

In the ever-evolving workplace landscape, many organizations are turning to industry benchmarks to gain clarity. Decoding these benchmarks is akin to piecing together a dynamic puzzle, each piece crucial for providing reference points to help steer an organization’s direction towards their unique and optimal workspace strategy.

2. Evaluating Space Utilization

Space utilization extends beyond mere occupancy. It’s about understanding how every area of the workspace is being used and why. Deciphering these subtleties allows for a more tailored and efficient design that resonates with the evolving needs of the workforce.

3. Fostering a People-Centric Workplace

The rise of roles such as Chief People Officer (CPO) signifies a pivotal shift towards a people-centric leadership paradigm. This move is reshaping the very fabric of organizational dynamics, with the focus squarely on managing the intricate needs of the people who will be working together.

4. Enhancing Organizational Alignment

Improving organizational alignment involves addressing the widening gap between employees and employers in values, management practices, culture, and the envisioned future of work. Bridging this gap entails not only a rigorous commitment to communication, but reimagining physical spaces by orchestrating a comprehensive workplace transformation that encompasses behavior, culture, and the organizational fabric itself.

5. Navigating Technological Impact

Negotiating technological change has become a major factor in workplace strategy. Organizations need a holistic approach that finds the sweet spot between technological innovation, cost-effectiveness, adaptability, and a reimagination of suitable spaces to support the elevated and seamless tech experience for both on-site and remote participants.

6. Managing Change Effectively

Change management has stepped into the spotlight recently. It involves the systematic application of a structured process and a suite of tools aimed at effectively leading the human aspect of change, ensuring the success of desired outcomes.

Priestman notes that the research indicates that hybrid work will be with us for the foreseeable future and, while we know that there isn’t a single solution for navigating the future of the workplace, having a comprehensive strategy that aligns the employees’ values with the leadership’s vision is the place to start the conversation.

She concludes: “A strong workplace strategy will give you the data-driven roadmap for the way forward and each space layout, process, and finished product will be as unique as the people that make up the organization. The value of employee input in shaping workplace strategy is undeniable. By including the employee voice, organizations can successfully create an engaging, inspiring, and productive workspace that supports the people who drive our businesses forward.”

Jill Priestman is the Director of Workplace Strategy at Bennett Design. Bennett Design is Canada’s largest independent interior design firm and is wholly Canadian and woman-owned.

Bennett Design is a sponsor of the Institute of Canadian Agencies. Report on Marketing is where leading Canadian agencies showcase their insights, cutting-edge research and client successes. The Report on Marketing provides a valuable source of thought leadership for Canadian marketers to draw inspiration from. Find more articles like this at the Report on Marketing.