How to Turn Recognition Into Real Business Data (and reduce turnover)
In this episode of our On The Road series, we sit down with Jennifer Reimert, SVP, Consulting Practice at Workhuman, to explore how organizations can make recognition reach the people who are often hardest to reach: frontline and deskless workers.
Jennifer spent 20 years as an HR practitioner and total rewards leader before joining Workhuman. She was also a Workhuman customer back when the company was Globoforce, using recognition to help bring two merged companies together when culture, identity, and belonging were under real pressure.
Her message is clear: recognition cannot only work for people at a desk. If most of the work that defines your culture happens on the floor, in the field, in hospitals, in plants, in stores, or across customer sites, then recognition has to meet people where they actually work.
🎓 In this episode, we get into:
Why 4–6 recognition moments in a year can help reduce turnover by half
How to build a recognition business case that speaks the language of the CFO
How to make recognition work for frontline workers who are not sitting at a desk
How recognition data can reveal skills, networks, high performers, and hidden talent
Why recognition needs to reach people through kiosks, text, physical cards, and manager-led moments
What if recognition was not just a moment of appreciation?
What if it was also one of the clearest signals of trust, performance, leadership, and culture inside your organization?
Workhuman helps companies turn recognition into something much bigger than a thank you. It becomes a source of real-time human intelligence, helping leaders understand who is influencing others, who is strengthening culture, and where meaningful work is happening across the business.
Because the future of work will not be built by technology alone. It will be built by organizations that know how to make people feel seen, valued, connected, and motivated to do their best work.
With Workhuman, recognition becomes more than a program. It becomes a way to improve retention, strengthen engagement, uncover leadership potential, and connect culture directly to business outcomes.
00:11
Jennifer, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm very well. How about yourself? Nice to see you. I feel like you've been avoiding me because you was at the last event. You didn't even come say hi. I'm devastated. I think it's more hard to get to you. You are so busy. I don't know how you even refresh and recharge your batteries. Can you tell your teens to give me a raise?
00:30
Sure. I mean, I used to be in charge of compensation at one point. So, you know, you are talking to the right person. Before we jump in, tell everyone a little bit about your background and your role. Sure. So I used to be an HR practitioner. I led total rewards at a high tech company for about 20 years. In that time, that's actually when I was introduced to recognition, which is what brought me to work human.
00:55
So you was a customer? I was a customer. Is that when they were under a different name? Yes, that was with Globoforce. Globoforce, yeah, yeah. Oh, you were the original. I had essentially had the problem of we merged two big companies together. So we doubled in size overnight. And you probably know what that's like. Everything breaks, including your culture. And we needed something to really kind of bring the two worlds together.
01:22
You know, it was also kind of apparent that all the acquisitions we've done before, people were still proudly wearing those T-shirts with the former company names, introducing themselves as I'm from X, Y, Z. And it's like, no, you're a part of this company now. So we leverage recognition to build the culture. And I thought if I can affect one culture and I have the opportunity to affect multiple, like that became my purpose. So you get to do on both sides now.
01:50
At scale, I get to still stay in the HR world that I love and I get to talk to the total rewards leaders that I understand and help them and my team, that's what we do. We help our customers throughout the entire customer life cycle. From the very beginning, when they're thinking about a problem and how they can solve it, we work with them, build the business case, help them then implement, optimize it, and then grow. And that's really the fulfilling part of what we do. Amazing. Yeah, you're in the right place. Yes. Yeah, and you've lived it and breathed it, which is also different. Yeah. You've been on the other side. So when you're chatting to your clients, I'm sure working with them, you're like, I breathed, lived and breathed. And I can relate. Yeah. And I can understand the challenges. Right. I understand all the different priorities that come up and the balance of those things. And I also understand the challenge of having to prove an ROI to a CFO.
02:43
Yeah, which is fun stuff. I can relate. So we've already been, like, quite a lot of interviews yesterday and today touched upon a few things we're going to chat about. And one is obviously around how WorkHuman helps support frontline employees for years, right? But this week, you announced the next evolution of frontline recognition capabilities. Give us the rundown.
03:05
Sure. So, you know, most of the work that can define an organization's culture, especially when they're heavily frontline, it doesn't happen at a desk. They're not digitally connected and it happens on the floor. It happens in the field. And so we,
03:21
essentially thought we don't just have a workforce challenge here. We don't just have a frontline challenge. We have this whole ecosystem challenge.
03:30
I'm really proud of the data that we derive from recognition moments. It was critical in my role before I came here.
03:39
And I see the same pattern with companies when they have these sort of two populations. They know a lot about what's happening in the corporate and less so in the frontline. And when that's 70 to 80% of your workforce, you need to put those two pieces together. It's critical. So how are you connecting that now? So the fundamental shift that we're doing is we're thinking about making sure that the communication pathways to those frontline workers reaches them no matter where they are and how they are and how they work.
04:12
I'm sure you've visited many places where there are large-scale operations in manufacturing, and they need a facility to do that. They need it either at a kiosk when they go into a break room. They may not be checked. They probably don't even have e-mail. You just straightened my mind. I'd say a lot of cases don't even have an e-mail. They don't have an email. They cannot have a mobile phone with them. That's a safety protocol hazard. It's got to be locked away in a locker. And in some countries, it's prohibited to even use your personal device. So we have to kind of get through all these challenges. I didn't even know that. Yeah. That's a challenge to have a mobile or like. Yeah. If they have the mobile, if they were to use their personal device, the company might be on the hook to pay for that personal device. Right. Which they're not prepared to do. It's complicated. Right. So what we've thought about is all the different communication pathways to reach them.
05:06
And we've done that by having our clients invite us in and spending a day in the life really watching and observing, which has been enormously helpful. I mean, I love that our clients are our true partners in designing this. And so we're thinking about, managers might often know a personal text number. You have a closer relationship with your manager. If they recognize you, they want to make sure that you see it. If you're not on an email and you can't, but they have your personal device, they can send you a text with a link that connects it to the web.
05:39
We want to make sure that we can do some physical cards that can hand in the moment. You might have a safety huddle and that would be an opportunity for organic recognition. Somebody says something that you're like, that was really smart and brilliant, we're going to do that. You want to be able to hand it to them. I think the difference between what we're building though is we're thinking about security in every step of the way.
06:02
You don't want to have preloaded cards. That'd be the same as having something in a desk drawer. It could get lost, could get stolen. So everything that we're building is to maintain that secure identity and make sure that if I handed you a card to say, you know, thank you and wrote a message, that until it's actually complete and you claim it, then it's live and you can use it. Yeah, otherwise your risk. Otherwise the risk goes up, exactly. How do you...
06:29
collect data like for frontline because you mentioned like some of the scenarios you just mentioned yeah but how do you so identify right eventually it will all get um stored and logged in the platform it's just the vehicle to do it has to be easy simple and and automatic and in the moment but that that information is still captured um so that we can collect the information i think the other thing too is when we're helping people to nominate.
06:58
We encourage them to use a recognition advisor so that they are writing the message in a way that provides us the data. It kind of prompts them for what did they do, how did they do it, what was the behavior you witnessed, so that it makes it easier, much better than just, thank you, Jane, thank you, Bob.
07:14
Yeah, because it can feel inauthentic. It's nothing worse than a, like, good job. For what? For what? What did I do? Tell me what the good job was, because then I might want to do more of that. Correct. Right. And also, it provides that rich data for the organization.
07:30
When we think about skills, which I know is an area we're going, you actually have those insights, right? Yeah, 100%. And perspectives. Where do you... I think most people, when we think about recognition data, they're not thinking about skills.
07:44
And I think that's so exciting. Most people I talk about, they're like, what? I didn't know that was a... And I love that as soon as I've given recognition, there's an automatic prompt that kind of summarizes and just highlights free. I mean, I will quickly, if I'm doing it on my mobile, I will screenshot it as like a save it because it's telling me something about either somebody on my team or somebody that I work with. And that information is so helpful in the moment. Yeah.
08:10
aggregate and understand so that when you think about a project or you think about maybe you need an ambassador to help roll out some new program, you can go find the person who's got those natural skills. Yeah. What's the most common challenge that you're solving for when you're speaking to customers? Oh, sometimes it's having
08:31
It's having time. They feel like they're out of time to be able to do something and they need help to execute.
08:38
I think another challenge can be financial investment. You know, there's a finite amount of dollars in HR. Yep, yep. And so it's trying to figure out how do you
08:48
How do you share the value of what you're bringing in a way that speaks to those that have to approve it?
08:55
I know when I used to lead Total Rewards, I was very accountable. I felt like I was the portfolio manager for every dollar that we invested in employees. So I had to make sure that I knew that ROI story. What resonated the most?
09:09
It's usually proof points. You have to be able to, like I would say to my CFO, things like, did you know that when we give four to six recognition moments in a given year, we reduce our turnover by half?
09:25
Which means we're having to spend less on hiring and the lost productivity time is lower. And that's speaking in their language. They listen. Yeah, they listen.
09:39
But if it's culture-based or you're looking for high-performing teams, there's also recognition data that can tell you...
09:47
Who are those people who are working together? Because you can see the connection from who's recognizing whom, and you can draw this organizational network analysis.
09:57
That's a really cool thing. The organizational network analysis part is something I think that people don't talk about enough. what's that the organizational oh yeah you know because it creates a stickiness and like you can have a global organization but people people like working on projects that can recognize each other and build community in different parts like and that i don't think people really think about that i think there's like traditional like a manager to employee relationship right right or a peer-to-peer right like what i've seen is like the communities and the camaraderie and the
10:27
It's almost like a glue that brings everyone together. And the fact that you can be recognized in public from someone else across the world, it's pretty incredible. It's incredible. To be able to do that. Yeah. I mean... I appreciate seeing that so much because as a leader myself, it gives me insight as to who to tap for different initiatives.
10:54
I sometimes feel like I'm air traffic control when people call me up and they say, who can I, who on your team can do? And so sometimes that's where I go back to the data and say, well, who is a good speaker? Who could do a good class or workshop on XYZ topic? Yeah. And I use the information that's at hand. I don't sit with anybody that I work with. I'm a remote employee.
11:17
They're scattered around the globe. So that is also the way I see what they're doing to kind of figure out that air traffic control of, oh, I should call Hari for this, or I should call Claire for that. Yeah. Also, there's so much untapped talent and potential that you don't know about otherwise, right? Because you're not going to pick a lot of that up on a CV. No.
11:42
And a CV is you marketing yourself. It's you yesterday. Yeah. Right, it's not you where you are now. Or maybe where you want to go. Or where you want to go, right? Right, not your aspirational goals. So we typically don't see any of that data, we don't collect any of that, right? So knowing that you have people that you can identify particular projects or have a specific set of skills that normally maybe you'd go externally for that you can identify internally is huge. Even I feel like the diversity of thought and innovation piece is really interesting. I think it's also cool when others see a skill in you that you maybe didn't know you had. Or you didn't know it was a skill. Right, it's maybe something you just do. Yeah, oh, that's a skill. You're like, oh, that's just who I am. And somebody goes, no, that's a real skill. Yeah. I feel like that's most people. Yeah. Because when something comes easy to you, you take it for granted. I mean, I feel like I do sometimes take it for granted. And someone else is like, that's really hard.
12:37
Right, right. Like, I think you're a natural relationship builder.
12:40
For some people, that would be a real struggle. Yeah. In my mind, I'm like, you're just having a chat with a friend. And they're like, no, it's not that easy. That's the way I look at it. I'm just trying to talk to you how I would talk to anyone that I meet. But I get that.
12:55
That's something I had to build. If you listen to episode one of the HR Leaders Podcast, one and a half thousand episodes ago, it was rough.
13:02
It was rough, and I feel like it's the reps, right? You put the reps in. Yes, yes. Yeah.
13:08
As you look ahead, what are you most excited about? Obviously, there's great announcements happening throughout WorkHuman Live, so many great sessions taking place. What are you most excited about? I mean, I'm excited about all the new developments that we've been talking about. One, the frontline workers, of course, reaching them, including them, building beyond that to think about...
13:30
External recognition is another interesting element. We have so many... What do you mean by external recognition? So every company has loads of customers. I mean, think about every airline that you fly on. When you're in healthcare,
13:45
the healthcare workers, the caregivers, patients want to thank those people. There's never been a way to do that. And we're looking at how do we do that? How do we do that so that it's part of the regular recognition program and platform? Because we heard from our clients that nurses actually value their patient recognition more than their coworker recognition. Of course they do, because that's who they serve, right? Yeah. I never really thought about that. That's incredible. And you could also link that both for the organization and the customers. They'd be really interested to see the data points between when they recognize externally, oh,
14:25
How that increases their own job satisfaction, their purpose for being there.
14:30
Absolutely. Makes a huge difference also to patient satisfaction. It's a view from a business lens of how much, if there's a lot of recognition coming in, like you are really serving your patients. Think about the airline industry.
14:44
I don't know about you, but I get survey fatigue. Every flight you take is... I think everyone does. Right. But when do you actually take the time? You take the time when you want to say somebody really went out of their way or did something extraordinary. Maybe you were...
15:00
I don't know, maybe there were thunderstorms everywhere and you couldn't get on a flight and they managed to make it work to get you to where you needed to go. You want to thank them for that. The reverse is sometimes people are just angry about something. So those are the two polar extremes of when people will give feedback. And yet we're bombarded with it all the time.
15:19
We're just trying to break through that wall of saying, allow for the positive to come in because that will... help to capitalize and build on repeat performance. People, when they hear something they did well, they want to repeat that. 100%. Yeah.
15:34
As you said as well, sometimes people don't know what they did well. Right. So it's like, tell me. Yeah. Tell me because I'll do more of it, right? Right.
15:43
As well. What else comes to mind? Oh, I'm very excited about future leaders. Future leaders is our ability to predict the potential vice presidents, executives at your organization. I foresee that it will go beyond that. What does that look like? Is it like the people that are being most recognized or the reverse? They're recognizing the other way around, right? So it picks up again using...
16:09
natural language processing on the words that are used in the recognition moments and can find the sort of leadership principles and trajectory in your organization and it maps it on something that we're calling the ascend model. And so every company would have their own. This is not like one for every single, one for all of work human. It's every client would have their own model because everybody's leadership looks different. Oh, so they can put that in there. They can load theirs in, but they don't, what we can, I think this is the beautiful thing. We'll have the data. You don't even have to do it. We'll be able to, you could almost use it as a way to say, gosh, what we're saying, is it what's happening? Are we very far apart? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating because I feel like what it means to be high potential is just so different now. But also it was never really, in my opinion, ever really inclusive.
17:06
you'd always have different pockets of the organization, especially if it was in person. There's total bias, right? A leader who sees you every day. Exactly. Versus now, having that data. It surfaces maybe somebody that you thought, oh, it goes back to our skills thing. I didn't even know that that was something that they did or they were on this trajectory. How do we keep growing them and moving them forward? So many of our listeners are still kind of early on this journey. What advice would you give to them as they kind of look to seek out, you know, obviously WorkHuman is one of the many companies they're looking at. What advice would you give them on their journey, both as a customer before, but also someone who now lives and breathes this every day?
17:48
I think first and foremost, I would say, you're not going at it alone. We're here to help you. That is exactly what my team is in place for.
17:57
And many of the people on my team are former HR. Some are former customers. They've been there, done that. They've helped launch.
18:04
large to small, everything in between companies. So I want them to be confident that they have almost like a Sherpa, a guide to help them and a trusted advisor. We're going to tell you the good and the bad because I think that's only fair. That's how you build trust. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so we want you to succeed because we're so invested because we've probably been there and done that. Yeah. I think the hardest thing is to take the step.
18:36
And you have to just be ready for the change. And change is hard. But you're not going at it alone, I think is the main thing I want to say. There's resources. There's people to help. We are a very giving team. We'll come on site. We've helped pitch to executive teams on your behalf. Yes. Wow. Because we're that passionate. It makes sense. Yeah. So I would say don't go it alone. We're here to help. And we want to help. Is there anything that we haven't discussed that we should have? It's interesting. Once you start being on the lookout for recognition, I mean, I see it every day now. I mean, I can't. And my kids are, quite frankly, like, if I had to point out one more time, they call me Recognition Reimer.
19:21
You're like, no, we get it. We get it. But at the same point, I will say like I was sitting doing a bathroom remodel in my house and I'm not a designer by any stretch. This is stressful for me. I just want it done. I can't make decisions. I'm a Libra. So I weigh everything. My husband calls me a control enthusiast. And he's like, just get on with it. Yeah. He's like, just make a decision. It's not going to it's not like it's going to end the world, but I want everything. You know, I feel like it's harder to anyway. Long story short, I was sitting with someone helping me. They happen to be a customer. It wasn't just they're just in that business. And she was working with another supplier and he was helping her. So she was trying to find a part for me.
20:06
And she's like, oh, I always work with Alex. Alex is so great.
20:10
And it was like, what if you could recognize Alex? He doesn't work for the company, but he's a supplier. Just helping you. And he's helping. So he's helping me as a client. Right. So what if I could recognize him? What if I'm working with Lily and Lily could recognize Alex?
20:28
Like, she's like, oh, my God, I would love that. He is like my number one person I go to more than her own team.
20:34
Oh, wow. So that is another thing that we are thinking of in the future. Sure. Is how to break that fourth wall, if you will. Yeah. Because that's the entire ecosystem. That would be incredible. Yeah. If you can achieve that. Yeah. I mean, it's a matter of time. Right. It's not really a technology issue. Technology is already there.
20:53
Right. This is more of a mindset shift, a big transformation. Also, just the way we operate needs to change. The way you think about it, right? Right. So completely different. Right. It's more of a cultural shift than a technology. You think about everybody that makes you successful. It goes beyond the walls of your company. Yeah. We've already broken that wall now. That wall is fully gone. It's smashed. You're breaking the next wall. Yeah. Right. That fourth wall, like you're saying.
21:18
Cool. Well, listen, I appreciate you coming on. Yes, thank you. Super jealous that you have such an amazing job that you're so passionate about. I'm joking. I'm passionate about mine as well. But it's like when I speak to people like yourself, it feels like there's a reason you're in this role.
21:30
And that's nice. It's aligned with your why, your purpose. It's what gets you up out of bed every day. I wish you all the best in the next week. All right. Thank you. Thank you.
Jennifer Reimert, SVP, Consulting Practice at Workhuman.