How Cisco’s employee engagement practices drive success at the $56bn tech giant

For the past decade, $56 billion-revenue technology giant Cisco has been on a journey to advance its purpose and culture.

One of the programs they’ve incepted to drive employee engagement and value is exemplified in its ‘

It first started with a few employees in the UK who wanted to move the needle to ensure that the employee experience and the company’s goals were aligned.

As part of that culture shift, the tech giant looked at its recognition strategy and thought it could do better for its 80,000 people in 90 countries.

This new focus on recognition over the last ten years was what Cisco’s Head of People Experience Amber Howe-McCarty and Head of People Intelligence Roxanne Bisby Davis spoke about on stage at UNLEASH World 2024.

The UNLEASH Editorial team caught up with Bisby Davis and Howe-McCarty on-site in Paris to dig in deeper.

Recognition builds connection at Cisco

In 2014, Cisco didn’t have a formal recognition program – “we had the ability for leaders to do spot bonuses”, but “there was a very inconsistent experience across people globally”.

The process “didn’t have visibility and it lacked governance”, Howe-McCarty tells UNLEASH.

So, the HR team looked at how they could transform the current system “into a more employee-centered program” – the result was ‘Connected Recognition’, which is a tech-powered program and is part of the wider Connected Cisco HR strategy.

The aim of ‘Connected Recognition’ is that people were empowered to recognize others. Plus, it created more “fairness and consistency” across the company’s global footprint.

It also creates a “shared language” around celebration – and that’s “aligned to our cultural values and purpose across the entire company”.

This builds momentum; “it’s powerful because greatness inspires more greatness,” notes Howe-McCarty.

Given the name, ‘Connected Recognition’ is also about those workforce relationships and interactions. The new program ensures everyone can “really see and celebrate all the amazing things that people were doing, which was hidden in the old spot bonus world”, adds Howe-McCarty.

Bisby Davis sees Cisco’s focus on purposefully investing in human interaction as a “uniqueness” – she shares that part of why the tech giant is a great employer (it is currently number 2 on Fortune’s Best Places to Work list) because it is such a relationship-based organization.

“We care about our impact on each other at an individual human level”, adds Howe-McCarty.

 The business case around recognition at Cisco

Another key part of formalizing recognition at Cisco was to collect data about “the value all of these amazing recognition moments were bringing”, states Howe-McCarty.

She adds that Cisco is investing real money into this recognition program – “we have to make sure it’s not just fun to do, but the story actually backs up the business value”.

The data shows that 93% of leaders have recognized someone, and 90% of Cisco’s 80,000 employees have received recognition.

And this level of recognition is having a real positive impact on employees, which makes sense as “attention is a thing all humans want”, states Bisby Davis.

Her People Intelligence team discovered that recognition drives greater connection to the organization, as well as a more engaged, happy workforce.

“We have found the connection between recognition fueling engagement, and super strong correlations between engagement and our ability to retain our employees,” adds Bisby Davis.

At the end of the day, “we want high levels of engagement because that is ultimately the thing within a business to keep people giving their discretionary effort”, she continues.

‘Connected Recognition’ has truly enabled Cisco to make more “data-driven decisions”, and it has helped “to be able to show the value proposition to our leaders”, notes Bisby Davis.

What does the future of recognition look like at Cisco?

While the Cisco’s recognition program has seen huge success, there is still more work to be done.

Yes, nine in 10 workers have been recognized, but Bisby Davis’ team also looks at who isn’t interacting – “are there parts of the population that maybe are missed?”

This has helped Cisco to create more personalized campaigns around recognition and the value – “you can build the most amazing program, if people don’t use it, it doesn’t have the value you’re seeking”, states Howe-McCarty.

Plus, recognition data can empower managers and HR to talk to employees about their future careers at Cisco – Bisby Davis gives the example of saying to a colleague, “it looks like you’re doing a great job on a project we put you on; I’m noticing you’re getting a lot of recognition on this work.”

“It’s a conversation starter, and you can utilize that as you bring in understanding of the strengths of an individuals,” she adds.

“We’re doing great, but we still have more to do” on recognition and experience,” states Howe-McCarty.

The next step of the recognition program for Cisco is to focus more on peer-to-peer recognition, and appreciation from direct leaders, because the data shows these types of recognition drives even more engagement.

The tech giant is also thinking about AI, and specifically generative AI, in HR.  “

“Cisco is always looking at how we drive for a better you in your space as an employee,” continues Bisby Davis.

Howe-McCarty adds: “Being a large company, there could be ways that generative AI could help us build more connection, even easier”, as well as provide “visibility of how recognition is happening [and] the fundamentals to continue on our journey with getting people to play” with recognition.

“We’re going to have to play the fine line between the mass amounts of data available to us, and how we use that data in a way that our employees are always in full agreement” about its use, concludes Bisby Davis.

Bisby Davis and Howe-McCarty thoroughly enjoyed their time at UNLEASH World 2024. Are you feeling the FOMO? No need to worry, you can sign up for our digital webinars and roundtables, plus passes are already live for UNLEASH America 2025 in Las Vegas!