The People ROI Playbook- Benefits, Recognition & Compensation that Retain in 2026

Hey, everybody! Welcome back after the New Year break.

This is our first webinar of 2026. This is a two-part series, the People ROI Playbook, okay? So we’re going to be talking about benefits, recognition, comp, and a lot of things that you may already be doing, but we’re going to look at it with a fresh lens.

I’m Alex Grande, the CEO of Recognize App. We’re a software that helps companies boost their employee engagement by making recognition, rewards, and company values easy to track and celebrate across the whole organization, no matter if companies are remote, hybrid, or co-located.

I’m here in Seattle, Washington, where, as you can expect, it is cloudy, and I’m sure it’s going to rain at some point. But I’d love for everyone to put in the chat: where are you coming from?

Where are you calling in from? Where do you work? Link to your company, right? Promote your business. There’s a great chance to promote your business. What’s your job title? What do you do? Where are you? And where do you work?

Put it in the chat. The great thing about these live webinars, rather than maybe listening to a podcast or listening later, is that this is live, so you can actually connect with people in the chat right now.

And we’re all here together because we care about people and culture, and everyone here cares about the same things you care about. So let’s connect with people. So let’s put that in the chat: where you’re coming from, link to your company, what’s your job title.

And let’s get started from there. So we’ll give people a couple minutes to get started.

Awesome, you’ve got people calling in from Oakland, present.

Florida… awesome. Another organization from Cindy’s in San Francisco, that’s awesome.

Carrie’s calling in from Maine, I love that. San Diego, Dave, what’s up?

Austin, Texas—I used to live there. I’ll be there in a couple months. I love Austin.

Tim’s in Utah, I love that. Look at all the people calling in, this is so cool.

Awesome.

Well, let’s get started here. So, the thing is…

This is a two-part series, as I mentioned, on people and culture, helping you build people systems that actually hold up under pressure, right? So this session is about total rewards. It is about benefits. This is not a concept, this is not a list of programs, it’s an operating system that your employees can understand.

Your managers can use, and your leaders can measure. That’s the main point here. Awesome, still people coming in. Chief People Officer coming from Detroit. Joyce, nice to have you on.

Gina calling in from New York, love that.

Awesome. Let’s get started.

If you want to follow me, by the way, there’s my link to my LinkedIn. It’s real easy to remember, it’s just LinkedIn slash IN slash my name, Alex Grande. So find me on LinkedIn, connect with me, I love chatting with people.

If I don’t get back to you immediately, I definitely will get back to you within a couple weeks. Sometimes it takes a little bit, but I will definitely get back to you. I love connecting with everybody I can.

Alright.

So, why does this matter now? Why does people and culture matter right now? I just… it’s so hard when I meet with leadership teams, and they don’t understand so much about what they need to do, right? I never hear from leaders that they don’t care about their people. Every leader I talk to wants to be profitable, wants to be a best place to work, wants a great culture.

But how they go about that may differ, right? And that’s why we can help them create systems and playbooks to understand that better.

The problem is not how much money you’re spending. Oftentimes, companies are spending enough on benefits and things like that, but they’re not utilizing them in the best way, or they’re not communicating them in the best way, or it’s not clear. So it’s all about clarity, consistency, and connection.

When a manager can’t communicate value and leadership can’t measure it, then what do we do? We need a measurable system with structured data and systems where managers know how to communicate these benefits.

So, we’re going to do a survey in just a second, but some things may feel familiar to you, and if they do, don’t worry, you’re not alone. One of the number one things is you have strong benefits in your company, but they’re underutilized. Your benefits package may look impressive on paper—you may have mental health resources, learning stipends, etc.—but employees don’t know how to utilize them or where to utilize them, or how to access them.

So we want to help them with that. If you’re feeling that way, we’ll put that into the survey in just a second. Another thing that happens a lot is recognition feels random. Maybe you have that once-a-year recognition program, or the criteria is not clear, or maybe it’s just a very basic recognition program. You can make your recognition program so much stronger when it’s more structured and systematic. We’ll talk about that in this talk today.

Another thing is helping managers know how to communicate those comp conversations. If they don’t know how to talk about salary, or they feel anxiety around talking about salary or benefits, they’re just going to avoid it. And that’s a problem. If employees are going into those one-on-ones and they never get to talk about what’s really important, then that’s a huge problem—by the factor of how many managers you have.

Another thing is you may have a survey, which is great, but are you actually tackling the issues that are found in that survey? Oftentimes HR is inundated with day-to-day minutiae that they don’t have actual time to go after something.

So that’s why we want to make simple, small changes that can be done over time, and even work backwards. I like to look at my year goal I have on my whiteboard behind my desk here every month. I have January to December and what I want to accomplish each month, and I have it set by December, and then I work backwards. That helps me understand the full plan.

So that can really help with those action plans. But let’s go ahead and do our first poll.

So if Rue or Jess can help me out with that.

You know, the question is…

Wait for it to pop up.

Alright, here we go.

So… what is the hardest part of Total Rewards today?

Of the things we just talked about there.

What’s the hardest part? Manager enablement, employee understanding, measurement, or budget restraints.

Okay, across the board, all these issues, everyone kind of says all in the 20s, only 20% of what’s a part of. That’s… usually when we do surveys, there’s like one thing that’s the call-out. So look at that, we had all the things are a problem—everything is a problem. Interestingly, of the percentages, budget restraints are the smallest of the… they’re all kind of similar, but I thought that was really interesting. The biggest ones seem to be employee understanding and measurement and proof. Well, measurement and improvement actually can be some of the easier things to do when things are put in place, right?

Being able to tie it to KPIs, you know, that’s why the more data in the recognition program, the better, right? The values—we’ll talk about that in a little bit.

So let’s go ahead and go forward. I love that. Employee understanding, that’s interesting as well—understanding the benefits, understanding why this is important, and we’ll talk about a little bit of that in this talk.

Cool.

So… the hidden cost, right? So as I mentioned, the biggest cost may not be the budget, it may be how you accumulate these things, and the damage of uncertainty, right, with the lack of communication. The biggest cost isn’t necessarily the budget, it’s uncertainty.

And the damage of uncertainty can accumulate slowly over time. So what can happen? You hire somebody.

Right? And in that first 90 days, it’s critical that the employee understands where they are, right? We use our job description—the thing that they applied to to get the job—actually used to show where you are today and where you’re going to head to. What is good, what is great, and what is bad? And you want that all clear in that job description.

I recommend making sure that the job description isn’t just something that once they get hired you throw away. You continue to look at that in one-on-ones throughout the entire time. So within the first week, that employee needs to really understand what is the comp package, what are the benefits, right? And that ties into…

Managers don’t default to silence. So managers need to have understanding of how to communicate about these conversations, about the benefits, and where the employee is now, and where they can go. That reduced ambiguity can really help employees excel.

Another thing that’s important to mention is that if these things don’t happen within the first 6 months or 12 months, there’s attrition, because your top performers have moved on. They’re not visible in the organization, they don’t know where they’re headed, and these are simple things to solve—just communicating effectively where someone is and where they’re headed, and making sure you’re recognizing those accomplishments.

So there’s a framework that’s really easy to follow here, and it’s a nice visual. I think we all know these things, but it’s a nice visual to see. So I like to work backwards. What is the outcome you’re trying to reinforce? What’s the outcome you want to see?

And for your company to get there, you need the values, the compensation, the recognition, and the benefits. So benefits, recognition, and compensation are the inputs of what you offer.

And one thing to touch on in recognition that’s dear to my heart is I recommend a shift on rewards. Recognition isn’t line items—they’re signals. What you reinforce every day is what people should repeat.

But again, benefits, recognition, compensation are the inputs that are filtered through the values, assuring alignment on what matters most is the values. And what we’ve done in previous webinars, when we’ve surveyed people coming in, is people love their values for the most part, which is great. So let’s make sure we promote them in the right way to get the outcomes you want to reinforce and scale.

The result will be better retention, more performance, more growth.

So we want managers to be communicating consistently so leadership can measure the impact.

Start thinking about all these things not as individual components, but as interconnected components of a single system designed to reinforce company values, shape employee behavior, and drive measurable business outcomes.

And then we can tie it back to… a lot of people in the survey said they’re not sure how to measure the impact of recognition programs. When it’s all part of one cohesive system, it becomes more clear.

Here at Recognize, we work with companies with 50 people and companies with 80,000 people. And there are a few trends we’ve been seeing that are consistent across all of them.

The first is: in a recognition program, clarity beats generosity. A simple, well-designed program always outperforms a more complicated, disconnected one.

What you want is something inside their workflow, the tools they’re already using. When things are ad hoc or not frequent, it can create a sense of favoritism. Recognition can actually backfire.

That also ties into frequency. You want consistent appreciation. It doesn’t have to be big, just consistent. People feel seen in the organization, which increases engagement, revenue, and productivity.

If you’re doing surveys, great. If you’re not doing any, do an annual survey. If you’re doing annual, do biannual. You can even go up to an NPS every week.

But what’s even more powerful is real-time data from recognition programs and other signals like benefit utilization and manager actions. In the age of AI, data is king.

Rather than ad hoc surveys, it’s better to measure more often or use systems that provide continuous data.

Recognition is real time. It’s not just a program—it’s a connective tissue that turns values into actions.

Benefits are passive. Compensation is periodic. Recognition is continuous. It reinforces behavior in the moment and creates feedback loops.

That’s why recognition is so powerful.

Recognition is always on. It should be embedded in workflows, not separate systems. When tied into daily habits like standups, engagement increases significantly.

There are no studies showing that recognition decreases performance or engagement. Every study shows neutral or positive impact.

And you can tie recognition directly to values by structuring it with forms, dropdowns, or systems that capture data like manager, value, time, and message.

Unstructured recognition (like bulletin boards of kudos) is okay, but structured data is what allows real analytics and AI use.

Recognition data becomes a strategic asset when structured correctly.

For example, if innovation is a company value but never shows up in recognition data, that’s a signal. Either reinforce it differently or reconsider the value.

Structured recognition also helps identify which managers or teams are leading in recognition and which are not. That allows peer learning and better cultural alignment.

You can also analyze velocity—how often recognition happens. Is it annual or weekly? High-performing organizations don’t just collect kudos—they analyze them.

Moving into benefits: even strong benefits are often underutilized. EAP programs and learning stipends are common examples.

Managers need to communicate these benefits. A study from Lincoln Financial Group found that 43% of employees are more engaged when managers talk to them about benefits.

That conversation alone increases engagement.

Managers should also understand salary ranges and growth paths. Ambiguity creates disengagement.

People need to know where they are and where they’re going.

Simple language matters. Avoid jargon and acronyms. Clarity builds trust.

Clear salary bands, milestones, and comp progression help employees stay engaged.

Role-playing and scripts help managers have better conversations. Practice matters.

The rehearsal example shows that practice improves performance. Even listening to yourself helps you improve.

Managers should be trained to have structured conversations instead of vague ones.

As for measurement, there are four key metrics to track:

Recognition participation, recognition frequency (velocity), benefit utilization, and attrition at 90 days or 6 months.

What gets measured gets managed.

Recognition doesn’t have to be instant—delayed recognition is still powerful and meaningful.

Benefit utilization is especially important. If benefits aren’t used, they lose value.

A healthy team is a healthy company.

Finally, closing thoughts:

Tie rewards programs to values. Make systems accessible inside existing tools. Simplify language. Track benefit utilization and changes over time.

We also had a comment from Sandra about recognition programs being inconsistent and hard to track. That’s common.

Ideally, recognition should be structured and reportable. Even simple workflows using tools like Zapier, Airtable, or internal systems can help centralize it.

The key is making recognition visible, trackable, and embedded into daily work.

If recognition is only leadership-driven but not operationalized, it won’t scale.

You can reinforce recognition through visibility—TV dashboards, messaging, or embedded workflows.

And finally, recognition tied with rewards (like gift cards or experiences) can strengthen engagement even further.

Try one thing this month: improve values alignment, integrate recognition into workflows, or simplify comp communication.

That was our webinar. We’ll see you in Part 2 on January 28th: Culture, Not Campaigns—How Everyday Recognition Multiplies Manager Impact.

Follow us on LinkedIn, visit RecognizeApp.com, and feel free to reach out anytime. I love connecting with people.

Have a great afternoon, and enjoy the rest of your morning. Take care.