Sponsored Article
Now in its third year, the Reworked IMPACT Awards celebrate individuals and teams, practitioners and vendors who excel in delivering exceptional employee experiences for their internal employees and external customers.
Earlier this year, Reworked announced the winners and finalists of the 2024 Reworked IMPACT Awards program. This article goes further into winning applications and judges’ responses, to give a better understanding of how the best of the best approach employee experience and the digital workplace and the many components that go into award-winning employee experience.
Practitioner Award Winners: Employee Experience Leader of the Year
Winner: Diane Psaras, Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, VITAS Healthcare
At VITAS Healthcare, the nation’s leading provider of end-of-life care with more than 10,000 employees in 14 states and the District of Columbia, Psaras is responsible for the entire HR function to include talent acquisition, education & training, human resources business partnership, employee relations, benefits, compensation, payroll, HR information system functions, employee communications and employer branding. She provides strategic leadership across all aspects of the organization to enable a high degree of focus on employees’ talent and their ability to learn, grow, and thrive at VITAS.
Judges were impressed by the number of initiatives Psaras had undertaken to enhance the employee experience and improve recruiting and retention for VITAS Healthcare. Judges praised the layered nature of Psaras’ initiatives and her use of survey data to demonstrate the measurable impact of her initiatives. Her role within the organization is a challenging one, but all our judges felt Psaras had risen to the task beautifully.
Finalist: Chris Harrer, Associate Vice President, Internal Communications, Comcast
Under Harrer’s leadership, the Comcast Internal Communications team won the Gold award for Collaboration Excellence at the 2022 Reworked IMPACT Awards and Silver Award for Innovative Use of Workplace Technology at the 2024 Reworked IMPACT Awards.
Finalist: Emily Youngerman, Director, Employee Engagement and Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, Tricon Residential
At Tricon Residential — a rental housing company serving North America’s middle-market demographic — Youngerman effectively drives initiatives focused on employee engagement, talent management, diversity, and inclusion. Her work shapes the entire employee lifecycle and ensures that every individual feels valued, supported and engaged throughout their career. This broad spectrum of influence reflects her integral role in shaping the company's culture. This wide-ranging list of responsibilities impressed the judges in its scope.
Finalist: Kerry Klein, VP of Talent Experience and Learning (TEAL Team), CrowdStrike
Kerry has built a solid foundation as a collaborative leader in support of CrowdStrike’s incredible growth. Her decades of experience in HR and consulting have given her a solid background to define the strategy and execute CrowdStrike’s objectives in the employee experience, talent readiness, leadership and learning and development spheres. Her work aims to holistically support and enable CrowdStrike employees as they work to fulfill the company’s mission to stop breaches. Judges were impressed with all Kerry has accomplished in just a short amount of time.
Practitioner Award Winners: Employee Journey Innovation
Gold: Employee Engagement Team, Monster
Monster’s cross-functional employee engagement team is composed of leaders from several functions within the organization. Together, this team is tasked with designing, developing, launching and maintaining a number of employee engagement initiatives, with the goal of improving employee well being, communications and development.
Judges felt the team’s actions were well thought out, with a clear strategic approach backed up with metrics to support the return on investment.
Silver: Talent Development & Organizational Capability — Employee Experience & Corporate Learning, GM Financial
The Talent and Organizational Development team supports GM Financial’s workforce in its quest to achieve business objectives, improve efficiencies, and build and nurture skills and behaviors that advance individual and organizational growth. This team develops strategies and solutions that empower team members to own their professional development. Judges were impressed with the team’s application of success metrics and the dual approach of tackling employee and customer experience together (as the two are often intertwined).
Practitioner Award Winners: Collaboration Excellence
Gold: The Engagement Catalysts Community, IBM Research
Within IBM Research, the Engagement Catalysts Community is composed of employees who join it as an extracurricular activity to improve their own wellbeing. They identify key issues that may impact employee engagement, help to clarify strategies and operational directions, and work to solve issues through collaboration. Many things impressed the judges about this application, including the community’s collaborative approach, their willingness to try new things and the degree to which they sought employee input when crafting initiatives.
Silver: Human Resources & Merit System Department, DeKalb County Government
The Human Resources and Merit System Department of DeKalb County, Georgia, which serves over 6,000 employees, believes it is essential to have an efficient strategy for creating, communicating, and implementing policies and practices that align with the county government’s standards. For this reason, an HR Policy Council has been formed to consistently communicate and receive feedback on the effectiveness of HR policy development, implementation and management. The council is made up of representatives from every department, including directors, deputy and assistant directors and other personnel who deal with HR issues. The council acts as a platform for vetting proposed policies and revising or updating existing ones. This exchange of information enhances the opportunity to communicate policies and procedures to all stakeholders, creates policies that are pertinent at the operational level where it really counts, and guarantees consistency, impartiality and transparency in policy implementations countywide. The council convenes quarterly.
Practitioner Award Winners: Innovative Use of Workplace Technology
Gold: Digital Workplace Team, BlackRock
The BlackRock Digital Workplace team designs and supports a modern and flexible technology experience, allowing employees to work collaboratively and securely with their internal or external partners and clients. The team supports workers no matter where they are — at home, in the office or in hybrid situations. Employee and technological mobility is at the heart of this team’s mission. The scale and scope of this team’s initiatives wowed our judges.
Silver: Digital Internal Communications, Comcast
The Digital Internal Communications team is charged with defining and implementing the vision and strategy of communications channels and content distribution methodology that enables seamless content delivery to over 100,000 Comcast employees. One of the team’s most recent initiatives involved sunsetting a legacy intranet system with something modern, with mobile support, emphasis on local news and engaging content that would reach more of Comcast’s workforce than the old system was ever able to.
The Digital Internal Communications team is led by Employee Experience Leader of the Year finalist Chris Harrer.
Vendor Award Winners: Most Innovative Workplace Productivity Solution
Gold: ActivTrak
ActivTrak is a workforce analytics platform that helps organizations make data-driven decisions to optimize work.
Conference
Oct
20
Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo Orlando 2025
Register
Conference
Oct
27
Gartner HR Symposium/Xpo Orlando 2025
Register
ActivTrak worked with their client — a financial solutions company — to deploy a solution that would increase agent productivity and capacity, with a custom dashboard that would help the client identify agents at risk of burnout. Judges were impressed with the quality of the initiative and the clear measurable metrics delivered in the solution.
Silver: Robin
Robin is the leading hybrid workplace experience platform, empowering people to do great work and foster a sense of community regardless of location. Robin worked with their customer — a global financial data and analytics software company — to successfully transition from a mostly remote working model (necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic) to a hybrid work model, with a smaller office footprint than ever before.
Judges were impressed with the quality of the demonstrable metrics in how the customer was able to benefit from Robin’s solution.
Vendor Award Winners: Excellence in Employee Intranet & Communication Platforms
Gold: NetSfere
NetSfere provides next-generation secure messaging and mobility solutions to carriers and enterprises globally through its enterprise-grade, secure mobile messaging platform. The secure nature of its platform drove NetSfere to work with its customer — a law enforcement agency — to produce a more secure way for its workforce to communicate with each other. Judges were impressed with the customer’s clearly defined scope and challenges, which were expertly met with NetSfere’s solution.
Silver: Poppulo
Poppulo is a leading communications and workplace experience software company. Its platform helps enterprise organizations achieve more by connecting their employees and customers through omnichannel employee communications, digital signage and workplace management. Poppulo worked with its customer — an AI communications company — to develop an employee communications campaign around employee well-being. This topic resonated with our judges, who felt the campaign reflected Poppulo’s own commitment to improving the employee experience.
Vendor Award Winners: Best Learning Innovation for the Hybrid Workplace
Gold: BILT Incorporated
BILT is the leader in 3D interactive instructions, creating fully manipulable 3D experiences with visual, voice and text guidance. BILT worked with a line of business within a global technology company to develop mobile learning for employees to access. The training had to address the needs of everyone from manufacturing employees to sales agents. Judges felt the resulting solution was innovative and well-suited to address the needs of multiple learning groups.
No Silver award was given out in the Best Learning Innovation for the Hybrid Workplace category.
Vendor Award Winners: Best Innovation in Employee Engagement
Gold: HiBob
HiBob enables companies with people-first strategies to thrive, thanks to its all-encompassing HCM suite. HiBob’s solution avoids the complexity of ERP and has the look and feel of social media. HiBob worked with its client — a Canadian coffee roasting company — to modernize a legacy HR system that was still reliant on pen and paper. Judges were impressed with the quality of the transition, as well as the adoption of the platform (as defined by download rates) that demonstrated how well employees took to the new solution.
Silver: Confirm
Confirm injects science into performance reviews, ensuring advancement is based on data, rather than company politics or the loudest voice in the room. Designed for the new world of collaborative and remote work, Confirm is the first to leverage organizational network analysis (ONA) in performance reviews, quantifying employee influence and impact, and giving leaders clear visibility into who they can’t afford to lose. Leading businesses rely on Confirm to make data-driven decisions on employee development, promotion, and retention. Confirm is the #1 momentum leader in performance management according to G2. Learn more at confirm.com.
Methodology
Final winner determination is at the sole discretion of Reworked’s Research and Editorial departments. Applicants who may be customers of Reworked and Simpler Media Group have no influence in the selection of award winners. In addition, organizations who apply for the practitioner awards must reference their company’s internal policies, processes, workflows and outcomes. Organizations who use the practitioner awards to reference their products or services are disqualified.
Judging is done by a group of volunteers, who are practitioners, consultants and otherwise experts in their respective fields. Applications are scored according to a weighted rubric and multiple judges review each application to ensure consensus. Judges are not given applications within their industries and are required to recuse themselves of any application that might be a conflict of interest to avoid bias.
Learn more about the Reworked IMPACT Awards here.
