Pioneering Excellence

Madison is a global leader in employee recognition and incentives, pioneering digital programs since 1995. As an employee-owned company, we deliver recognition, events, and incentive travel solutions that strengthen culture and drive results.

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employee traveling
What Actually Drives a Successful Incentive Travel Program After 20 Years in the Field
Incentive travel has never been about the destination. That may sound surprising in an industry that...
employees working together
Sustainability Without Operational Discipline Is Just Messaging
Sustainability is now standard language in meetings and incentive travel. RFPs reference ESG commitments....
Lake Tahoe
Planning a Corporate Retreat in the U.S.? Here’s Why South Lake Tahoe Belongs on Your List
South Lake Tahoe isn’t your typical meeting destination. Nestled where California and Nevada meet, this...

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Blog

Turn Employees From “Satisfied” to Truly “Happy”

What makes an employee happy? We talk a lot about recognition in this blog — being appreciated for what you do by the people you do it with. And while consistent recognition is the key to keeping an employee satisfied, it’s what people feel as they are being recognized that…

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Blog

Start Recognizing Employee Efforts Now

December’s Jobs Report, released last Friday, made news for a variety of reasons. The 252,000 net new jobs created along with positive revisions made to previous postings were considered healthy signs by experts. But to me the real story was not in the monthly numbers, but in the aggregate figures…

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Blog

What You Missed at HR West

I wanted to thank everyone who came out to hear me speak at HR West last week. What a great group I had — smart, engaged and forward thinking. Everything the progressive HR community represents. My topic was Optimizing the Impact of Employee Recognition Strategies on Enterprise Performance, but it…

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Blog

Recognizing for the Long Haul

How can you build an environment that looks and feels promising to career-oriented workers? Consider this reality first: today’s employees are different in many ways, of course, but one of the biggest distinctions is how they view and value the progress of others. Younger workers, in particular, are more communal…

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Blog

Self-Fulfilling “Success” Prophecies and Recognition

We have all heard about self-fulfilling prophecies — a sense or prediction that eventually becomes true because we believed it to be. A recent paper from Quantum Workplace on the Cultural Insights of Awesome Workplaces is filled with some interesting stats. One noted that more than 90% of engaged employees…

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Blog

Three Words Sum Up Non-Cash’s Utility

Businesses are always looking for an advantage. Often that comes in the way they utilize the various resources at their disposal to affect outcomes that are important to them. In just about any business model the most expensive (and most critical) business resource is compensation. It can account for a…

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Blog

Soft Skills and Social Recognition

Here’s a piece of irony for you. Today’s workforce is the most educated cohort in history. Thanks to curriculums heavy on science, technology, engineering and math, most current (and future) employees have no trouble grasping the functional requirements of their jobs. The problem is (and it’s a big one) that…

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Blog

SlideShare: How to Make Your Sales Team Perform Better

Almost half of sales professionals are not performing to plan and not contributing enough revenue to support their business’s growth goals. Why is that? What improvements should you help them focus on? This SlideShare will outline how to make your entire sales team perform better. How To Make Your Sales…

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Blog

6 Things You Need to Know About Employee Feedback

Employee feedback is the foundation of personal growth and professional development. It increase motivation, enhances performance, elevates engagement and provides the blueprint for continuous improvement. Yet, it can be one of the most misunderstood, and as a result, one of the most neglected activities within the employee-employer dynamic. Here are…

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What Actually Drives a Successful Incentive Travel Program After 20 Years in the Field
Incentive travel has never been about the destination. That may sound surprising in an industry that loves to showcase beaches, rooftops, and luxury properties. But after decades of designing and operating programs across the globe, one thing is clear. A successful incentive program is not defined by where you go. It is defined by what it drives. The real purpose of incentive travel is behavior change. Revenue growth. Market expansion. Retention of top performers. Cultural alignment. If those outcomes are not clearly defined at the beginning, no resort, no experience, and no production value will compensate for it. The most
Sustainability Without Operational Discipline Is Just Messaging
Sustainability is now standard language in meetings and incentive travel. RFPs reference ESG commitments. Hotels promote certifications. Destinations highlight environmental initiatives. Carbon calculators appear in proposals as a matter of course. This evolution is positive and necessary. However, the presence of sustainability language does not guarantee sustainable execution. There is an increasing gap between what is promised and what is operationally delivered.
Why Recognition Is the Most Powerful Tool to Protect High Performers
Organizations often treat recognition as a perk — something nice to have, something extra. But for high performers, recognition is not a perk. It is protection. High performers carry tremendous emotional and cognitive weight. They take on more work. They solve more problems. They mentor more peers. They generate more impact. And they do it all without asking for much in return. But every human has a tipping point. And without recognition, high performers hit theirs much faster.
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