Center of Excellence Research and Insights Manager

The Awardco Center of Excellence (COE) helps shape best practices in recognition, engagement, and employee experience through research, practical insight, and education.

The COE Research and Insights Manager will support this work by designing and delivering high-quality research studies, helping translate findings into thought leadership content, and contributing to internal and external education efforts. This role is ideal for someone with a strong foundation in I/O psychology, employee research, and survey design who enjoys turning data into practical, usable insight.This is an individual contributor role focused on research execution, study delivery, benchmark development, and content support. 

Key Responsibilities

Research Design and Delivery

• Design, field, and manage original COE research studies focused on topics such as employee engagement, recognition, motivation, wellbeing, and workplace experience
• Support the development of surveys, questionnaires, benchmarks, and measurement frameworks that can be used across COE initiatives
• Help maintain high standards for study quality, methodology, interpretation, and reporting
• Partner with internal stakeholders to align research priorities to COE content and insight needs

Thought Leadership and Insight Development

• Translate research findings into practical thought leadership assets including reports, white papers, articles, presentations, and supporting materials
• Contribute to the development of a recognizable Awardco point of view on employee recognition and engagement
• Support external-facing research storytelling through digestible, practitioner-friendly outputs

Education and Enablement

• Help design and deliver webinars, workshops, internal learning sessions, and training materials grounded in research findings
• Turn complex organizational psychology concepts into clear, useful education for HR and EX practitioner audiences
• Support the COE in building repeatable research-based materials that can be used across events, content, and enablement efforts

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Organizational Psychology, Applied Psychology, Behavioral Science, or a related field
• 4-7 years of experience in employee research, survey design, people science, organizational research, or a related field
• Demonstrated experience designing and delivering research studies end-to-end
• Strong analytical and written communication skills, with the ability to turn findings into practical recommendations
• Experience working with survey platforms, research methods, and data storytelling
• Comfortable presenting findings to internal stakeholders and professional audiences
• Experience contributing to thought leadership, research publications, or educational content is a plus

Preferred Profile

• Strong grounding in I/O or people science principles
• Able to balance methodological rigor with business practicality
• Curious, collaborative, and comfortable working across functions
• Excited by building research that informs content, education, and market perspective

Why Awardco:

• We have a revolutionary, client-approved product.
• One of the fastest growing companies in the nation: 3x Inc. 500, 2x Deloitte Technology Fast 500, 2x Mountain West Capital Network Fast 100, 3x Fast 50 (Utah Business), and 3x UV50 Fastest Growing Companies (BusinessQ), to name just a few.
• Great Place to Work certified, ranked in Inc. Best Workplaces, one of the Best and Brightest companies to work for, and ranked on the Salt Lake Tribune's Top Workplaces.
• Backed by renowned investors, both local and national.