Glenn Elliott
3 min read
After 11 years as CEO at Reward Gateway, I’m excited to share that yesterday I moved to a new role of Founder and we appointed Doug Butler as our new CEO.
Doug joined us last year and as COO has been instrumental in our success in the past 18 months. He has shown he is an exceptional leader who loves the company, understands the power of employee engagement and will work exceptionally hard for our customers and our people.
When I started Reward Gateway I could never have imagined what we would achieve and the impact we would have. I couldn’t be prouder of where we are, where we’ve been or excited for what is what is yet to come. But it is people that move things forward and I’ve always been mindful to watch for the day when a different approach could take our business forward faster and be better for our clients and our mission.
I decided a few months ago that we’d reached that time and was confident that we’d also found the person who could lead the company on the next stage of its journey.
It’s never easy for Founders to find the right time step aside but today Reward Gateway is in a great place with an exceptional culture, successful new products and a happy, growing client base. There isn’t going to be a better time than now.
So I will no longer be RG’s leader, but I am still dedicating myself to the company’s mission and the cause of employee engagement.
As well as supporting Doug and having a continuing role in our strategy, I’ll be leading on engagement training internally, promoting our new book Build It: The Rebel Playbook for Employee Engagement, and discussing engagement strategy at conferences and seminars around the world.
Leading the team at Reward Gateway these 11 years has been the privilege of a lifetime and I have loved (nearly) every minute of it.
As I look back on these years, overall, I’m more proud of how we’ve conducted ourselves than the numbers and results.
We’ve shown that you can build a great business by treating people properly, with respect, by building a fair, honest, diverse and just culture where people can do their very best work and be recognized and rewarded as individuals.
I’m proud that half of our staff are women, half of our managers are women, 31% of our engineers are women and that we have no gender pay gap. I’m proud of our client satisfaction ratings, our employee engagement ratings and the reputation for integrity and ethics that we’ve built. I’m proud of the 359 talented and dedicated people that I’ve led until today and the hundreds of RG alumni that did great work before going on to even bigger and better things.
Thanks to everyone who’s been part of the journey so far and will be part of the next phase too.
Glenn.