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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Designing Sales Meetings That Drive Business Outcomes, Not Just Attendance
Annual sales meetings often represent one of the largest internal investments an organization makes each...
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....

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Workplace Culture

Knowledge Center

Knowledge Center

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Blog

How to Become a Talent Magnet in 2019

Attracting top talent is a key priority for companies as the talent pool becomes more diverse and skilled, and expects more from employers. To achieve this goal, businesses must create a company environment where employees would want to work, grow and thrive. Here are ways businesses can become a talent…

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Blog

Savvy Workspace Design Increases Engagement & Boosts Productivity

Decades of research confirm that a person’s environment affects their mental and physical health. Being complex human beings, employees cannot be treated like machines. They thrive in places that cater to both comfort and focus, that enable social engagement and collaboration, and that reflect the corporate values they share. A…

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Blog

3 Steps to Take if Your Company Culture Has a Bad Reputation

Founding Father and inventor Ben Franklin said it best: “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” A company’s bad reputation quickly casts a shadow on the positive aspects of that organization. All it takes is a couple of unfavorable…

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White Paper

4 Tips to Fostering a Peer-to-Peer Recognition Program

The one thing more powerful and efficient than managerial recognition is having a peer reward you for a job well done. However, over 80 percent of employees don’t think they receive enough recognition in their workplace. How do employers engage their employees through more appreciation? Is saying “thank you” often…

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Performance Perspective

The Battle for Diversity in the Workplace is Just Beginning

Companies know that employee diversity in the workplace ultimately promotes acceptance, respect and teamwork. However, these diversity efforts many not address three areas that can have a major impact on corporate culture and team success: diversity of thought, personality diversity and socioeconomic status. How can improving workforce diversity programs allow…

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Blog

Why Diversity of Thought Should Matter to HR & Managers

A Deloitte case study on diversity of thought focused on a major airline that posted a loss of 2.8 billion Australian dollars in 2013. By 2017, that airline posted a record profit of AU $850 million and won several industry accolades. The purported secret to their historic turnaround? Diversity of…

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Blog

Why You Should Care About Psychological Diversity

Say the phrase “workplace diversity,” and a fairly specific concept comes to mind: A group of employees composed of different genders, races and ages; one that you’d easily be able to distinguish as heterogenous just by looking at them. This is just about everyone’s top-line definition of diversity, but what…

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Blog

6 Tips for Bridging the Gap Between Remote Employees

There are many benefits to letting your employees work remotely, such as employee satisfaction, reductions in attrition, increased productivity, and improved overall performance. Companies can benefit by lessening the on-site expenses and having a larger talent pool – after all, it’s a lot more cost effective to let someone work…

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Blog

3 Ways to Ensure the Well-Being of Your Remote Workers

As we discussed in our previous post, 6 Tips for Bridging the Gap Between Remote Employees , there are many benefits to letting your employees work remotely, such as helping them achieve work-life balance. However, working remotely may not be the right fit for every business and every employee. Studies…

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Blog

5 Employee Onboarding Steps For a Higher Retention Rate

Almost 30 percent of new hires say they’re willing to walk out within the first 90 days if they find their new position unsatisfactory. In fact, a recent study showed that a remarkable 34 percent of corporate turnover came from workers in their initial 12 months on the job. While…

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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.
The Myth of the Unbreakable High Performer
High performers are often described with an almost mythic quality: resilient, unstoppable, reliable, self-driven, limitless. They are the employees leaders depend on — the ones who say yes when others hesitate, who push harder, who deliver when the stakes are highest. But there’s a dangerous flaw embedded in this mythology: High performers are not unbreakable. They are simply quiet about the breaking. This misconception is costing organizations dearly.
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