Manager, Employee Engagement

Founded in 1926, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation is a private, not-for-profit educational, historic, and cultural institution that owns and operates one of the largest and best-known museum complexes in the world. Our mission is “that the future may learn from the past” through preserving and restoring 18th-century Williamsburg, Virginia’s colonial capital. We engage, inform, and inspire people to learn about this historic capital, the events that occurred here, and the diverse peoples who helped shape a new nation.

Today, Colonial Williamsburg is the largest living history museum in the U.S. The Historic Area is the 301-acre restored colonial capital with 89 original buildings and 525 buildings reconstructed to how they appeared in the 18th century through extensive archaeological, architectural, and documentary research. The Historic Area is staffed by highly trained, historically dressed interpreters and expert tradespeople who bring the 18th century to life. The Foundation also owns and operates two world-class museums, the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, The Bob and Marion Wilson Teacher Institute, and a renowned research library, the John D Rockefeller Jr Library. Additionally, Colonial Williamsburg is home to five world-class accommodations and many on-site restaurants and taverns that blend historically inspired dining with modern tastes. Each year over five million people visit Williamsburg and another 20 million engage with us digitally.

About the Role

With the Vice President, HR, Organizational Culture, help lead Colonial Williamsburg's enterprise-wide employee appreciation, recognition, and engagement strategies. The Senior Manager creates meaningful and consistent ways to acknowledge employees for the quality of their service delivery, their contributions, significant achievements, years of service, and retirement. The recognition framework operates at distinct local and global levels. Local recognition focuses on the quality of service delivery as demonstrated through Colonial Williamsburg's common purpose (mission), service standards, and service behaviors. Global recognition consists of enterprise-wide milestone programs recognizing tenure or years of service, as well as retirement recognition. The position partners across the organization to make recognition visible and accessible to employees in different roles, schedules, locations, and operations. The Senior Manager also collaborates with the Senior Manager, Learning and Development to help provide and guide orientation programming for new employees and manages employee resource group programs as part of the organization's broader employee engagement efforts.

Responsibilities

• Recognition Strategy and Architecture
  • Develop and oversee a comprehensive employee recognition and appreciation strategy that provides meaningful recognition throughout the employee experience.
  • Maintain a clear recognition framework that distinguishes local recognition for outstanding service delivery from global recognition for enterprise-wide milestones and retirement.
  • Ensure local programs are grounded in Colonial Williamsburg's common purpose (mission), service standards, and service behaviors.
  • Ensure global programs are consistently available to full-time, part-time, and casual employees and appropriately extended to volunteers.
• Enterprise-Wide Recognition Programs
  • Lead major organization-wide recognition programs, awards, ceremonies, and celebrations.
  • Establish clear standards, processes, and criteria that preserve the distinction between local service recognition, global milestone and retirement recognition, and other formal enterprise-wide awards and honors.
  • Ensure enterprise-wide programs are administered consistently and reflect the significance of the recognition being provided.
• Local Recognition
  • Design and manage local recognition programs centered on service delivery and the quality of that service delivery, using Colonial Williamsburg's established common purpose (mission), service standards, and service behaviors as the basis for recognition.
  • Provide accessible peer-to-peer and leader-to-employee recognition opportunities for outstanding service observed in the workplace.
  • Ensure these programs supplement, rather than replace, verbal recognition from supervisors, managers, and leaders, which should be practiced daily and should be timely, specific, personal, and connected to the service behavior observed.
• Global Recognition
  • Lead enterprise-wide global recognition programs that recognize tenure or years of service through consistent milestone programs for all full-time, part-time, and casual employees.
  • Extend milestone recognition events to Colonial Williamsburg volunteers in collaboration with the Manager of Volunteers.
  • Manage enterprise-wide recognition for employees and volunteers who are retiring, ensuring that retirement recognition appropriately reflects the individual's service and relationship with Colonial Williamsburg.
• Volunteer Recognition
  • Collaborate closely with the Manager of Volunteers on all local and global recognition and appreciation efforts for the Colonial Williamsburg Volunteer Corps.
  • Ensure volunteers can participate in appropriate local recognition for outstanding service delivery and are included in global milestone and retirement recognition programs.
  • Coordinate recognition events, communications, and other practices so volunteer service is acknowledged consistently and meaningfully.
• Guest Recognition
  • Develop and maintain accessible ways for guests to recognize employees and volunteers who create exceptional experiences or demonstrate outstanding service.
  • Establish processes for collecting, validating, communicating, and celebrating guest recognition with employees, volunteers, and their leaders.
  • Use guest recognition stories to reinforce Colonial Williamsburg's common purpose (mission), service standards, and service behaviors across the organization.
• New Employee Orientation and Employee Resource Groups
  • Collaborate with the Senior Manager, Learning and Development to help develop and provide orientation programming for new employees, including content that introduces Colonial Williamsburg's common purpose (mission), culture, service standards, service behaviors, and employee experience resources.
  • Manage employee resource group programs and provide appropriate coordination, support, communications, and program oversight.
  • Work with employee resource group leaders and organizational sponsors to encourage meaningful participation and alignment with Colonial Williamsburg's employee engagement and organizational culture priorities.
• Employee Appreciation
  • Develop and coordinate employee appreciation activities throughout the year, including organization-wide initiatives and resources that divisions can use for their own appreciation efforts.
  • Create opportunities for appreciation that extend beyond formal awards and reinforce a workplace in which employees are regularly noticed and thanked for their contributions and service.
• Awards and Honors
  • Manage formal employee awards recognizing exceptional performance, service excellence, organizational values, innovation, leadership, or other accomplishments identified by the organization.
  • Oversee nomination, selection, communication, and presentation processes, and protect the distinction and credibility of Colonial Williamsburg's highest employee honors through clear eligibility and selection standards.
• Peer Recognition
  • Manage accessible peer-to-peer recognition approaches that allow employees to recognize colleagues for outstanding service delivery observed in the workplace.
  • Ground peer recognition in Colonial Williamsburg's service standards and service behaviors, make recognition easy to provide close to the time of the observed service, and encourage participation across divisions, roles, shifts, and work locations.
• Leader Recognition Expectations and Resources
  • Establish a clear expectation that supervisors, managers, and leaders provide verbal recognition to employees as a regular daily practice when they observe strong service delivery and desired service behaviors.
  • Provide practical tools and guidance that help leaders make recognition timely, personal, and specific.
  • Monitor practices across operating areas to identify where leader recognition is strong, inconsistent, or insufficient, and reinforce that formal recognition tools are intended to support rather than replace direct recognition in the workplace.
• Personalized Recognition
  • Promote recognition practices that reflect individual employee preferences whenever practical, recognizing that meaningful appreciation may differ by employee, work team, contribution, and circumstance.
  • Develop approaches (public and private) that allow recognition to be personal and authentic to the individual employee, rather than uniformly applied, while maintaining appropriate enterprise standards.
• Recognition Calendar
  • Maintain an enterprise-wide recognition and appreciation calendar that coordinates global milestone programs, retirement recognition, major awards, appreciation events, cultural observances, and other appropriate recognition opportunities.
  • Use the calendar to create an intentional rhythm of recognition across the year without allowing local recognition or daily verbal appreciation to become limited to scheduled events.
• Recognition Communications and Storytelling
  • Partner with Internal and External Communications to ensure employee and volunteer achievements, service milestones, retirements, and examples of outstanding service delivery are celebrated visibly and appropriately across relevant communication channels.
  • Capture and share stories that explain why the recognition is significant and how the contribution demonstrates Colonial Williamsburg's common purpose (mission), service standards, service behaviors, or organizational values.
• Recognition Experiences and Traditions
  • Design and coordinate memorable recognition ceremonies, appreciation events, milestone celebrations, retirement recognition, and other experiences that reflect Colonial Williamsburg's history, mission, and culture.
  • Develop meaningful traditions, presentation practices, and symbolic recognition elements that give significant service and achievements lasting institutional importance.
• Program Accessibility and Equity
  • Review recognition practices across the organization to ensure full-time, part-time, and casual employees in different roles, work environments, schedules, divisions, and locations have meaningful opportunities to be recognized.
  • In collaboration with the Manager of Volunteers, consider comparable access for volunteers where programs are applicable.
  • Identify groups that may be unintentionally overlooked and develop appropriate solutions that broaden access without reducing recognition standards.
• Recognition and Engagement Partnerships
  • Work with leaders throughout the organization to identify significant employee accomplishments, strengthen local recognition practices, and determine appropriate forms of recognition.