For businesses & organizations
Pennies for Praise: Build a Culture of Caring and Employee Appreciation
What if the smallest gesture could create the biggest impact? A keynote and workshop on employee recognition and workplace culture, built on a true story of an executive whose penny reward sparked unexpected celebration and loyalty.
250+
25,000+
30
40+
Success is built on caring
Inspired by a true story of an executive who rewarded outstanding employee contributions with a simple penny — leading to celebration and rejoicing because the gesture symbolized genuine recognition and care — this session shows that praise and caring cost little but yield immense returns in loyalty, productivity, and joy.
Drawing from 250+ workshops delivered to over 25,000 attendees across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, including Fortune 1000 companies and more than 40 radio and TV interviews, Hank Tate shares practical strategies from leaders of successful companies. Attendees leave with actionable tools — morning micro-greetings, five-minute praise posts, Management by Walking Around, and Hank’s Business Health Assessment framework.
The essentials
| Formats | Keynote or breakout |
| Keynote length | REPLACE-ME-KEYNOTE-LENGTH |
| Breakout length | REPLACE-ME-BREAKOUT-LENGTH |
| Audience | Leaders, whole teams, or both |
| Delivered in | US, Canada, and Mexico |
| Track record | 250+ sessions, 25,000+ attendees |
Learning objectives
What your people will learn
Five objectives, delivered as a keynote or as an interactive breakout session.
01
Discover the Power of Caring Leadership
How leaders at Microsoft, Delta, and Starbucks used empathetic meetings, profit-sharing, and tuition support to build loyalty and resilience.
02
Implement Practical Recognition Systems
Morning micro-greetings, five-minute praise posts, and Management by Walking Around: recognition your managers can start using tomorrow morning.
03
Identify Hidden Culture Killers
Filtered data that never reaches the top, and the toll of narcissistic leadership, where self-focus quietly erodes culture.
04
Build a Culture of Joy and Service
Shoulder-tap rescues and co-worker caring that build trust and joy, mirroring the Serving.LOVE healing principles.
05
Measure and Improve Workplace Health
The Business Health Assessment uses anonymous surveys to uncover honest insight and improve employee and customer relationships.
What changes
What your team walks out with
Participants leave with a physical, absurdly simple mechanism for noticing and naming good work on purpose — and with the understanding that caring is not soft. It is strategy. It changes how people show up, how long they stay, and how much they trust the person next to them.
A habit, not a poster
Appreciation becomes something people actually do each day, not a value painted on a break-room wall.
Language for it
Specific, non-awkward ways to tell a colleague what they did and why it mattered.
Trust that compounds
Teams that notice each other take more risks, escalate problems earlier, and stay longer.
“Caring is not the soft part of the business. It’s the part everything else rests on.”
Who it is for
Two audiences, one culture
Pennies for Praise is built to be delivered to a leadership team, to a whole workforce, or to both in sequence.
For managers & leaders
Lead so people want to stay
- ▪Model empathy from the top, the way Satya Nadella built it into Microsoft’s meetings
- ▪Share the reward: Delta’s profit-sharing as a caring decision, not just a finance one
- ▪Invest in your people: Starbucks’ tuition support and what it bought in loyalty
- ▪Management by Walking Around, done on purpose and on a schedule
- ▪Spot filtered data before it becomes a blind spot
- ▪Run the Business Health Assessment: anonymous surveys that surface honest insight
For employees & co-workers
Make the team worth showing up for
- ▪Morning micro-greetings: the thirty-second habit that changes a floor
- ▪Five-minute praise posts that name the work, not just the person
- ▪Shoulder-tap rescues: noticing the co-worker who is underwater and stepping in
- ▪Say what they did and why it mattered, without it being awkward
- ▪Build the trust that makes people escalate problems early instead of hiding them
Formats & lengths
Two ways to bring it in
Delivered across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Every session is tailored to the organization before it is delivered.
Keynote address
Main stage, story driven
A dynamic session for conferences, all-hands meetings, and leadership summits.
Interactive breakout
Working session, hands on
Teams practice the recognition habits and leave with the mechanism in hand.
Track record
Thirty years in corporate training
Long before Serving.LOVE, Hank was teaching project management, leadership, and process improvement inside Fortune 1000 companies, universities, government agencies, and school districts. Sessions have been delivered to Thomson Media, D.R. Horton, the U.S. Department of Energy, Motorola, Bell Canada, Bell Mexico, BJ Services, General Electric, and CSi.
250+
25,000+
30
40+
Selected clients
What people say
Two decades of the same review
Watch before you book
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Free PDF
Pennies for Praise — keynote abstract
The one-page speaker abstract: learning objectives, testimonials, and references. The sheet to hand your program committee.
Tell us about your organization
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Before you write
The book behind the workshop
Serving.LOVE Finding JOY includes a chapter on how co-workers can improve their work environment and joy by showing care to each other, and a chapter on how business leaders can build a caring corporate culture that strengthens the business.