Highlights from Ragan’s awards for HR, employee comms & top workplaces

On Tuesday, communicators and HR pros from across the world gathered at New York’s City Winery to celebrate exemplary. The ceremony recognized winners of Ragan’s Employee Communications Awards, Ragan’s Top Women in HR Awards and Ragan’s Top Places to Work in Communications Awards.

The afternoon kicked off with a performance of showtunes by Broadway performer Caroline Bowman, establishing a jovial tone for the event, capping off her set to a roar of applause with a performance of “Don’t Rain on My Parade.”

Ragan CEO Diane Schwartz paid tribute to the achievements of the attendees.

“Today we celebrate the people and teams that make workplaces stronger,” Schwartz said. “This room is full of people who make work, work.”

Forging connections through employee communications

As the winners of each award were announced, the honorees took the stage in front of their peers. They offered a few words of thanks and answered a prompt to provide more insight into the personalities behind the communicators and HR pros doing the work.

Darcie Rosenthal, communications director at ADM, said that if she had to pick a song that best described her winning manager comms campaign, it would be “Help,” by The Beatles.

“Managers are really overwhelmed, and they’re just looking for any kind of help,” Rosenthal said. “We were able to give them that help through our campaign. There’s also the bonus of those managers helping us refine our communication all the time as well.”

When asked how her campaign proved doubters wrong, Sarah Jones, senior associate for ethics, learning and awareness at EY, said that just because a comms campaign is about ethics doesn’t mean it needs to be boring.

“We’ve proven that messaging about ethics and compliance can be fun, and we use humor to make that happen,” she said from the stage. “People love that and the tone drives engagement.”

Niamh Emerson, editor of the YourYale Newsletter at Yale University, responded to a prompt about what the most unexpected reaction a campaign ever generated by talking about how the team featured a story in the newsletter about an on-campus locksmith.

“People started reaching out to him and he told us that he felt truly seen,” Emerson said. “That’s the perfect embodiment of our newsletter. It was just an unexpected and beautiful moment.”

Making places great to work

The Top Places to Work in Communications Awards honored the companies that turn work into an enjoyable experience. When asked about something they stopped doing to make their place better to work, John Gogarty, president at Coyne PR, said that his organization stopped caring as much about what time people showed up to work in the morning.

“One person’s kickboxing class might be as important as another person dropping off their kids at school,” Gogarty said. “You need to understand that and worry less about exactly what time people show up in the office.”

Stacy Hope, senior vice president at the Fair Labor Association, answered the same prompt by telling the audience about her organization’s once-monthly Wellness Fridays, in which employees are given a day off to focus on themselves.

“The senior leadership team is pretty strict about it,” she said. “No calls, no emails — no nothing. If you send an email, someone is going to get in touch and tell you to get offline.”

The Top Women in HR Class of 2026

The Top Women in HR Awards featured honorees sharing about their work and backgrounds, in addition to what set their work apart. When asked if her organization had a tagline, Annette Green, chief people and global experience officer at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, referred to the company’s existing tagline and tied it to her work.

“One team, one mission,” she said. “We support an incredible mission across the globe and and we’ve got great people that help support it.”

When asked about what advice she’d give to rising HR pros, Bridget O’Brien, senior vice president of learning and organization development at Jefferson, said that HR pros should keep their mission and values at the top of their priority list.

“It’s our mission to improve lives,” she said. “My advice is to build relationships, do what’s right and pursue excellence.”

To learn more about Ragan Awards, click here. For Ragan Award winners, click here.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.