15Five Celebrates HR Leaders Making an Impact With the First Annual High Five Awards

Here at 15Five, we believe that behind every successful employee is a dedicated HR professional or team that is working hard behind the scenes to make their employee experience amazing. We’ve also seen how, over the years, the role of HR has shifted from simply enabling the company and employees to survive, to unlocking employee potential and empowering employees to thrive.

Everyday we are inspired by the HR leaders among our customers who are making real change at their companies to empower their employees. We know that the hard work done by HR professionals often goes unnoticed or unappreciated, so we created the High Five Awards to highlight HR leaders that are going above and beyond to make an impact in their organizations.

Our first High Five Awards celebration took place this year at the first annual Thrive by 15Five gathering! Read on to learn more about the finalists and winners in each category.

The HR Superstar Award

The HR Superstar Award recognizes top contributors and those who have gone above and beyond to help others in the HR space.

Finalists: Nicole Miller from South Carolina Federal, Tiffany Lessler from Summitry, and Dennisse Bray from Snap! Raise!

Winner: Dennisse Bray from Snap! Raise!

Engagement Excellence Superstar

The Engagement Excellence Superstar Award highlights an HR leader who has shown significant improvement in the employee engagement at their company. 

We all know how important it is to keep our employees engaged, now more than ever, so we can all learn from our amazing finalists.

Finalists: Carol Cochran from Flexjobs, Lanett Austin from Curaleaf, and Kirsti Grant from Auror.

Winner: Lanett Austin from Curaleaf

Lanett has built an entire training and enablement team around 15Five internally. They have decks, training material, and weekly training sessions for their managers on 15Five! She has really created a culture and environment that is hungry for growth. Lanett does not stop, she is willing to try and do anything to engage with their employees. Congratulations, Lanett!

Positive Performance Superstar

The Positive Performance Superstar Award highlights someone who has worked hard this past year to significantly improve their employee’s performance. 

Finalists: Scott Morgan at Pendo, Rob Santos at Arrowroot Family Office, and Stefanie Bishop at Hi Marley. 

Winner: Scott Morgan at Pendo

Scott and the team at Pendo have been working closely with our Product team to give us great feedback about some of our releases, some of which is coming soon! He’s been a great partner to us but also to the Pendo employees with the amount of encouragement and support he rallies around the usage of 15Five.

Manager Momentum Superstar

The Manager Momentum Superstar Award highlights a customer who has seen significant improvement in the performance of their managers based on the programs that they’ve run, which is no small feat. 

Finalists: Christan Cavanaugh at OpenSignal, Caroline DeConto at Nugget, and Deanna Tom at Opensense.

Winner: Christan Cavanaugh at OpenSignal

Christan has been a key 15Five advocate at OpenSignal especially when it comes to their leaders. Recently, they’ve run a survey to better understand what might be missing and what has the most valuable impact for their leadership program. That’s just one example of the range of work that Christan owns to ensure the managers at OpenSignal are successful.  

Tackling Turnover Superstar

The Tackling Turnover Superstar Award highlights a customer who has seen significant reduction in turnover due to their work. 

Finalists: Stephanie Smith at Tagboard, Cleo Valeroso at ZEDEDA, and Dr. Chris Augustine at World Vision Canada. 

Winner:  Dr. Chris Augustine at World Vision Canada. 

Chris has deployed 15Five for the last 3 years at World Vision Canada and has personally created strategic plans for building Engagement, Experience, and Performance & Development Plans for their staff of over 400. They delivered this through regular check-ins & curbed annual turnover by 5%.

Shoutout to all of the nominees for the first annual High Five Awards. Your continued dedication to your work is what is helping us all transform the workplace into a place where people can truly thrive.