The Win-Win Workplace™ Awards
The Win-Win Workplace Awards recognize leaders and organizations that redesign work and technology as systems that expand human agency while delivering measurable business results.
Unlike traditional workplace awards that focus on culture, perks, or popularity, the Win-Win Workplace™ Awards honor organizational design choices. They recognize how work is structured, how decisions are made, and how technology is deployed in ways that give people real agency and create sustainable performance.
Grounded in the Win-Win Workplace™ framework, these awards highlight organizations and leaders who treat work as leverage rather than necessity. Honorees demonstrate that when agency is built into work systems, people thrive and businesses become more resilient, innovative, and competitive.
The awards are presented annually at the Win-Win Workplace™ Summit and reflect real-world implementation, not aspiration alone. Winners are selected based on evidence of work redesign, expanded agency, and measurable impact, with a focus on practices that can be learned from and replicated by others.
Award Categories
Together, these recognitions showcase what is possible when people are centered in the design of work and technology and when leadership is defined by systems built, not personalities amplified.
Agency by Design Award
This award recognizes an organization that intentionally redesigned core work systems to expand real agency for people at multiple levels.
Human-Centered AI as a Force Multiplier Award
This award recognizes an organization that used AI as a force multiplier for people, redesigning work and job roles to expand agency in an AI-enabled workplace.
Shared Agency Leadership Recognition
This award recognizes four to six individual leaders across multiple organizations who exemplify the next generation of enterprise leadership by redesigning work systems so both they and the people they lead gain greater agency.
Award Winners
We are proud to announce the winners of the Inaugural 2026 Win-Win Workplace Awards.
Hoai Scott
Universal Pictures
Polly Eldringhoff
Peoples Gas
Anna & Tuan Huynh
VietFive Coffee
Universal Pictures is being recognized for its leadership in advancing fair chance hiring and reimagining workforce systems in ways that expand access to opportunity for all while strengthening organizational performance. It operates in a highly competitive, creative and fast moving industry where the need for innovation and the pressure to deliver results necessitated a more human centered approach to work. A core challenge was to broaden access to talent, reduce unnecessary barriers and build a resilient workforce without compromising performance or quality.
Through Hoai Scott’s leadership and unwavering partnership, the organization has demonstrated a clear commitment to building inclusive talent pathways for system-impacted individuals—moving beyond pilot programs toward more embedded practices. This work reflects a broader effort to redesign roles, improve hiring strategies, and promote career mobility opportunities within a complex, creative, and technology-driven environment.
The organization removed unnecessary barriers in hiring by eliminating four‑year college degree requirements where they were not job related, broadening access to roles and increasing opportunities including for system‑impacted candidates. Fair‑chance hiring practices were also thoughtfully integrated into recruiting strategies, supported by leader education, and alignment with business needs helping to ensure fair, consistent, and sustainable success beyond the point of hire.
These efforts were reinforced through a broader set of human‑centered practices, including championing a culture‑focused mindset grounded in core values, demystifying mental wellbeing in the workplace, investing in leadership capability to optimize performance, and supporting career growth and internal mobility. What distinguishes this approach is its alignment of business and human outcomes: expanding access to available talent pools while enhancing the workplace value proposition.
The Win-Win Workplace Award recognizes organizations that are not only innovating, but operationalizing change in ways that deliver measurable impact. Universal Pictures stands out as a leading example of how employers can drive inclusive and human-centric workplace practices that strengthen performance, adaptability and resilience as the workforce evolves.
The Win-Win Workplace Award recognizes leaders who are moving beyond intention to execution—redesigning how work gets done in ways that create measurable value for both their business and the broader community.
This year, we are proud to honor Polly Eldringhoff, whose leadership exemplifies what it means to build a truly “win-win” workplace. Rather than launching a standalone workforce initiative, Polly partnered with a community-embedded model and adapted it to meet real business needs. She expanded the approach to create new pathways into long-term, high-quality careers. Through this strategy, she demonstrated that inclusive hiring is not only possible, but commercially viable. She delivered strong performance, high retention, and a scalable model that others can adopt.
At a moment when many organizations have made commitments to expand opportunity, Polly’s work stands out for its rigor, adaptability, and results. It offers a clear blueprint for how employers can translate aspiration into action—aligning talent strategy with business priorities while opening doors for historically overlooked talent.
This recognition is not only a celebration of Polly’s leadership, but a call to action. It challenges all employers to ask: What would it take to make this work inside our own organizations—and who can we partner with to get there?
Kathryn Kocanda is recognized for expanding agency across both employees and emerging talent within Global Technology at McDonald’s. Through the redesign of job architecture, the launch of a career navigation tool, and the continued cybersecurity apprenticeship program in partnership with City Colleges of Chicago, she has helped build clearer, more accessible pathways for growth.
Under Kathryn’s leadership, McDonald’s Global Technology team has reimagined how careers are designed, navigated, and accessed—both within the organization and beyond. She led a comprehensive redesign of job architecture and leveling, bringing greater clarity and transparency to career pathways that had previously been difficult for employees to navigate. This work was paired with the development of a career navigation tool (Career Compass) that enables employees to better understand how their skills and interests align with opportunities across the organization, empowering them to take ownership of their career trajectories.
Importantly, this shift unlocked not only upward mobility, but also lateral movement—encouraging employees to build diverse experiences across the organization and positioning them for long-term leadership. In doing so, Kathryn helped shift decision-making around career progression from a narrow focus on available roles to a more expansive, skills- and experience-driven approach.
Beyond internal talent development, Kathryn also expanded access to opportunity through the launch of a cybersecurity apprenticeship program in partnership with City Colleges of Chicago. This initiative has created new, high-quality entry points into a growing field for community college students, with multiple apprentices successfully placed into roles at McDonald’s over the past several years.
Together, these efforts exemplify “agency by design”—intentionally creating systems that increase transparency, expand access, and enable individuals to shape their own pathways. Kathryn’s work demonstrates how investing in career mobility and alternative talent pipelines can drive both employee engagement and long-term business value.
VietFive Coffee is redefining what it means to design work for people and proving that when businesses expand human potential, performance follows.
Structured by educator-turned-entrepreneur Anna Huynh, and founded by her husband Tuan Huynh, VietFive has intentionally reengineered frontline work systems to unlock agency for every team member. From customized workflows and adaptive training models to integrated assistive technologies and inclusive hiring practices, VietFive has created a workplace where individuals of all abilities can contribute, grow, and lead.
At VietFive, over half of the team are individuals with disabilities, alongside team members rebuilding their lives through second chance employment. Rather than treating inclusion as an add on, the company has embedded it into the core design of work itself, ensuring that every role is structured for independence, mastery, and upward mobility.
According to the Chicago Department of Public Health, nearly 1 in 4 Chicagoans has a disability and 13,000 people are on parole. Both of these untapped workforces have the highest unemployment rates, are eager to join the workforce, and strive towards upward mobility. VietFive will continue to use their family business as a vehicle to equip, empower, and uplift their team so, collectively, they contribute to a safer, more accessible Chicago.
The results are undeniable. VietFive has achieved industry leading retention, built a deeply engaged workforce, and sustained 20 to 40 percent year over year growth while expanding into catering, wholesale distribution, and product innovation. Their model demonstrates that investing in people is not a tradeoff, it is a competitive advantage.
Beyond their own walls, VietFive is emerging as a learning lab for the future of work, hosting employers, institutions, and community leaders eager to reimagine what inclusive, high performing workplaces can look like.
For boldly redesigning work to expand agency at every level and for showing what is possible when businesses are built around human potential, we are proud to honor VietFive Coffee with the Agency by Design Award.
Kathryn Kocanda
McDonald’s Corporation
-
Yes. The 2026 awards are inaugural.
This year marks the first time the Win-Win Workplace™ Awards will be presented at the Win-Win Workplace™ Summit. In addition, four to six leaders will be recognized as the Founding Shared Agency Leadership Cohort, setting the foundation for a future leadership fellowship and deeper collaboration within the Win-Win Workplace community.
-
No. Company size is not a determining factor.
We welcome nominations from organizations of varying sizes and industries. What matters is not scale, but substance. Judges are looking for intentional work or system redesign, meaningful expansion of human agency, and credible evidence of impact.
A smaller organization that has redesigned core decision rights in a disciplined way may be more competitive than a larger organization with a high-visibility initiative but limited structural change.
-
Yes, self-nominations are allowed. However, they must include clear evidence of work redesign and measurable impact, along with references where appropriate.
The awards are designed to be accessible but serious. The standard of review is the same for all nominations.
-
All nominees are evaluated based on:
Clear evidence of intentional work or system redesign
Explicit expansion of human agency
Removal of structural constraints that limited initiative or performance
Measurable or observable business impact
Alignment with the Win-Win Workplace pillars
Practices that others can learn from and reasonably adapt
The awards prioritize system change over programs and real evidence over storytelling polish.
-
Nominations open publicly in early February and close at the end of February.
Following the close of nominations:
Internal review and shortlisting takes place in early March
Finalist validation occurs in mid-March
Final selections are confirmed by March 16
Award recipients are notified privately approximately seven weeks before the Summit
The awards are presented live at the Win-Win Workplace™ Summit on May 5.
-
Competitive nominations clearly demonstrate:
Intentional redesign of work, roles, decision rights, incentives, or technology
Removal of a structural constraint that previously limited initiative or performance
Concrete expansion of agency for identifiable groups of people
Measurable or observable outcomes
Practices that others can learn from and reasonably adapt
The awards prioritize signal over volume and evidence over narrative.
Awards Ceremony
Awards will be given at the 2026 Win-Win Workplace Summit™ on May 5, 2026 in Chicago, IL. Award winners will be notified ahead of time to allow ample time to coordinate travel. If you’re interested in attending the Summit, you can request an invitation here. Attendance is not necessary to nominate an award recipient.