The Engagement Lab: 30-Day Experiments Managers Can Run Without Waiting for HR

Welcome, everybody, to another webinar with Recognize, the Engagement Lab: 30-day experiments HR can run with your managers, with your team, with your company. It’s a practical shift, a practical sprint framework for driving real engagement with people managers and their teams. And we’re going to talk about what “sprint” means, how that will work, and all the things you can do. Super excited.

To have a special guest with us, we have Ellen Butler here. She is an evangelist, she is a subject matter expert on the employee experience, so really happy to have her. Ellen, do you want to say a couple things before we keep going?

Ellen Butler:

Yeah, just happy to be here. I think engagement, with all its different intricacies and whatnot, is an extremely important topic, and in particular addressing it at the manager level, the people manager level, I think is a great place to start.

Alex Grande:

Yeah, and Ellen, tell us a little bit about your experience. I know you’ve worked with Apple and a number of amazing companies.

Ellen Butler:

Yeah, most recently I was with the retail division of Apple with their HR team there. And before that I was with Wells Fargo, Charles Schwab, Cisco, some technology startups, kind of a range. Workday—I was at Workday for a little bit, I know many of you are familiar with that.

So yeah, and recently I got my certification in employee experience design, which has been a great way to kind of pull together my prior background in HR communications and employee engagement, change management, etc.

Alex Grande:

Very cool. We’re really excited to have you here today, and also excited about talking about Agile. Sprints come from this concept of software engineering. It’s a strategy of not trying to climb a mountain in one day, but rather taking a series of hills to get there.

So you make sure that you’re in the right place. But before we get into all that, it’s always fun to warm up the call. I’m actually traveling right now. We had the webinar last week, I was in Madrid. I have now driven to Barcelona, which funny enough I actually got pulled over along the way, and I think my Spanish lessons paid off when speaking to the Spanish police.

Apparently in Spain they are very serious about staying in the right lane, and the left lane is only for passing. They will pull you over if you’re in the left lane, and I honestly wish we had that in Seattle, where people just go 40 miles per hour in the far left lane.

But I would love to have everyone chime into the chat—where is somewhere cool that you love to visit, or you’re going to visit this year? Where is a place that you recommend people check out?

While people are chiming in, Ellen, where is somewhere in the world that you love?

Ellen Butler:

Well, there are a lot of places I love and I’ve loved to return to, but during COVID I had plans to go to Croatia, which I had to cancel, and I haven’t been able to reschedule that. So that’s kind of one of the big ones on my list, followed by Portugal, Japan, and then obviously, like I said, places I want to get back to.

Alex Grande:

I love that. I love that. People are chiming in— Iceland via camper van, that’s a great idea. I once did Hawaii in a van, and that was really cool because there’s your car slash your home, different beach each night.

You technically weren’t supposed to sleep at the beaches, but we did anyway.

Yeah, Croatia—David chimed in. I hear it’s amazing. I would love to visit Croatia, I’ve never been. Larissa chimed in, Brazil next month—that’s really exciting.

Gosh, a lot of cool places. Venice, Italy, Amsterdam. Even local like DC.

Being from the West, I just love Nevada, Utah, New Mexico—so enchanting. We’re so lucky to live in the United States and have such diverse places to go. Alright, well it’s 6 minutes past the hour, let’s get into it. We have a lot to cover.

So yeah, as I mentioned, we’re going to talk a bit about this idea of experimentation. And I think one of the problems that we see is that we go after these big projects, and often we take on so much that people will say, “well, how about we add this, or how about we add that,” before we’ve even started.

And then sometimes we just give up. We get fatigue from trying something without even getting started. So we’re going to talk about how to do things in bite-sized pieces and run experiments in that process.

And then in the end we’ll have Q&A. If you have a question, write it down, and we’ll do a Q&A at the end with Ellen. We’re really lucky to have her.

So I’m going to talk a little bit about what is a sprint. This comes from Agile Software Development.

Basically, a number of years ago software engineers got tired of spending a long time building a big project and then it gets canned, or it fails without ever finding out if it could be something useful.

So this idea of a sprint—it’s not about rushing. It’s really just spending a week, two weeks, three weeks, or four weeks on a bite-sized project. And there are four steps: planning, execution, review, and retrospective.

And I think we often forget to do that last step—were we successful in this? It’s always important to do that.

So that’s what a sprint is: doing something in a bite-sized piece and making sure we’re moving in the right direction.

Part of that is check-ins with your team, making sure you’re on track. It could be a 15-minute weekly huddle. Here at Recognize we use a tool called Geekbot. I would check it out. It’s a great way to do asynchronous check-ins if you don’t want meetings.

Even just a 15-minute meeting to stay aligned, especially if you’re a remote team. Remote teams can be hard—keeping things visible, not being next to the same water cooler.

And also making sure with your direct reports you’re doing one-on-ones in a meaningful way—not just talking about the weather, but actually talking about projects.

And if you’re using pulse surveys, you want to make sure you’re catching real-time sentiment.

So what we’re going to do here is talk about how to start small and grow, prototype ideas, and create feedback loops.

And then we’ll work with Ellen to learn how we can get leadership to take us seriously, and how to balance the soft side with the quantitative side of validating ideas.

I want to touch on agile employee experience versus traditional. A traditional approach is perfection at launch. At Recognize, I see decision paralysis where companies feel they need to launch a recognition program to 5,000 employees at once, when they could test it with a small team first.

One pro tip: don’t use the word “trial,” use “pilot.” A trial feels temporary and can give false signals.

Ellen Butler:

Well, I agree with the idea of looking at it as a pilot. You’ve got a hypothesis, a theory, an idea, a point of view, and you want to pilot it with a smaller group.

And agile methodology beyond software is becoming more common in product design, marketing, science. It’s about not rolling out everything at once, but testing, getting feedback, iterating, and going back out again.

In HR, there’s often pressure to roll out something big, but more teams are realizing that if you experiment and pilot things, by the time you roll it out you’re much more confident. And you can use those results to help justify expansion.

Alex Grande:

Totally. I love the iterative idea—start small and grow.

So moving into an exercise from the startup world with Techstars. I’m going to pull up a whiteboard in Zoom.

Let’s say you have goals like streamlining onboarding, lowering expenses, becoming a best place to work, improving morale, increasing engagement.

Then you score them, prioritize them, and brainstorm ideas like HR wiki, peer-to-peer recognition, simpler performance tools.

Then you map which ideas impact which goals, and you get a quantitative way to prioritize experiments.

Ellen Butler:

And you can use that approach for anything. If you come out with increasing engagement as the priority, you focus there—but this can apply to any program or department priority.

Alex Grande:

Exactly. So now we’ve got a poll: what describes your team’s ability to test engagement ideas? Leadership roadblocks, no time, need a framework, or experimenting?

Ellen Butler:

I would say leadership roadblocks.

Alex Grande:

You got it—leadership roadblocks was the top answer.

So let’s talk about how to make experimentation more bite-sized so leadership is more likely to support it.

Now, Ellen, why do managers or HR struggle to run engagement experiments?

Ellen Butler:

It’s often because they try to do full programs all at once instead of starting small. Managers also lack bandwidth, and engagement takes skills like listening, coaching, and relationship building.

Plus, results aren’t always immediate or easily quantified, so it’s hard to justify time spent on it.

But even small improvements through experiments can make a real impact.

Alex Grande:

Yeah, no one got fired for buying IBM, right?

But if you do something small and meaningful, you can stand out.

Ellen Butler:

And experimentation is how innovation comes about.

Alex Grande:

Exactly. Now another poll: is your org risk-averse or experimentation-driven?

We’re seeing a mix—some experimentation, but no clear process.

So how do you run 30-day experiments? That’s the sweet spot. Enough time to get feedback, do mid-sprint check-ins, and measure impact.

Ellen, how do you adapt sprints for deskless vs desk-based employees?

Ellen Butler:

You meet people where they are. Understand how they communicate, how they meet, and how work differs across environments. Then adapt the approach rather than prescribing one method for everyone.

Alex Grande:

Exactly.

Week one: set goals and align. Without clarity, people drift.

Week two: gather honest feedback and create psychological safety.

Week three: check progress and adjust.

Week four: evaluate results and decide whether to scale.

So Ellen, how do you prevent a 30-day experiment from feeling like just another HR initiative?

Ellen Butler:

Involve employees in the design so they have ownership. That creates engagement and trust.

Alex Grande:

Love that.

So in week two, how do you create psychological safety fast?

Ellen Butler:

Set expectations early, make it a team effort, and ensure people feel included in shaping it.

Alex Grande:

Should feedback be anonymous?

Ellen Butler:

Depends on team trust and culture.

Alex Grande:

Then week three is iteration, and week four is decision-making and presenting results to leadership.

How do you balance data and storytelling when presenting to the C-suite?

Ellen Butler:

Tie everything to business outcomes. Some data is anecdotal, but if you connect it to efficiency, productivity, or revenue goals, it lands better with leadership.

Alex Grande:

I love that—use the language of leadership and values.

Final poll: what’s driving your recognition program?

Most people said they already have one but are improving it.

That’s very common—many programs are still anniversary-based, but organizations are shifting toward peer-to-peer recognition and more strategic visibility of success.

We’ll share a worksheet so you can design your own sprint and take it back to your team.

Thanks everyone for joining—we’ll see you at the next webinar.