Taylor Dessen and Brianna Holmes fly to Boston to accept the 2026 Bellringer/Carrie Yannier Award for Best Team Culture on behalf of Randstad Digital's Torque Community team. The Torque community grew hundreds of new members in Raleigh, Charlotte, and Phoenix, with emails hitting a 40% open rate. The award recognizes intentional culture-building through mentorship, global programming, and deep employee loyalty.
Now you know you've built a strong culture when employees are passionate enough to tattoo the company logo on their bodies. Well, tonight's winner actually did that. I love you.
Alrighty, we are at the airport. This is gonna be a little different trip, a little different trip. We are, when I say we, me and Brianna are headed to meet the Ronstadt Digital team in Boston. I think I just said that. And we are winning an award tonight. The community team, an award was submitted on our behalf for everything we're doing in the community and we won. And so we're heading up there to accept the award tonight. It's gonna be great. I'm gonna bring you along for the ride. But first, obviously cold brew.
Cheers.
Get a little work done, and then it's gonna be a great day in Boston. Let's go. All right, well, they changed the gate on me, and your boy's not gonna miss this flight again. So gotta go completely across the airport to another gate. Let's go. You know, for as much as I fly, you would think that I would get, like, going to the bathroom down correctly. I have not, so I am hurting right now. Bathroom break, head to the hotel, going to meet up with Brianna. Good afternoon, Boston! We are getting ready for tonight, 2026 Bellringer Awards, basically honoring New England businesses. We submitted basically what we've done within Torque Community.
Again, Ronstadt—
there's a big Ronstadt That office up here in Boston, the founders from Torque are up here. So we submitted and we won it. So we're gonna get dressed up here in a bit. I gotta steam my suit. Got a little wrinkly. I'm wearing a suit tonight. Not like me. Um, but, uh, yeah, so let's, let's do that and, uh, maybe take a nap.
Maybe. I don't know.
Little, little sentimental right now, um, because actually the last time I was in Boston was when, you know, we were kind of building, rebranding the Torque website. And that's been over a year and a half now at this point. It's been crazy to see the evolution of kind of where we've taken the community team and, you know, really kind of what the platform has become and really the focus of the community team. It's really cool to kind of like look back for a second and just be like, man, like we've really grown a lot. Also wearing a suit. This is not normally me, but when you go to these type events, uh, you gotta dress up a little bit. So, and also too, like fun little tidbit, little fun fact. I just got some numbers from my boss, Mark Bosma, and ran it through AI like one does. And man, our community efforts and kind of building the talent pool in North Carolina is working. I can expound on this on another video, or maybe I can talk about this more, maybe on the way home tomorrow. But long story short, We've grown our talent community in Raleigh and Charlotte by like a few hundred folks just in a month. And then kind of our new endeavor is in Phoenix. And so that's been like 200 or 300 people as well. But what's really cool is a lot of people, our numbers for active, like people actually logging in and engaging with the platform and checking their profiles and stuff has gone up as well. across all those 3 verticals or all those 3 cities. So again, really cool just to kind of see what we're doing, right? I mean, I think like, you know, I was, I was, you know, kind of reminiscing here in the hotel room and it's like year 1 was really like building the brand, right? Of, of, of Torque and OnSet Digital. And then like year 2 is really like setting the foundation. Scaling to 1.4 million emails this year with a 40% open rate. That was really cool. Just found that out recently. And then also kind of these latest numbers that literally just came in like 30 minutes ago that I crunched and just kind of growing these communities in these cities and having active engaged talent. Really, really cool. So we're doing it. We're doing the dang thing. So anyways, let's put on my suit jacket. Let's let's go win this award. How we looking, fam? How we looking, vlog? How we looking? Looking good. There you go. Little suit on. Little blue for Torque and Ronstadt. Not bad. Not bad.
Uh oh. Uh oh. Look.
Look at us.
Look at us.
Look at us rocking the blue.
I know, right?
Torque. It's like we planned it.
I know.
There it is. One nice small camera. There it is. Yeah, this is where the magic happens.
Our next professional honor is the Carrie Yannier Award for Best Team Culture. See, I named this award last year, and you'd actually think I'd maybe pick something that I could pronounce, but I— you know what, I'm at a loss. I like to challenge myself. Carry in your— okay, this award recognizes an agency, in-house team, or workplace that has demonstrated strength, growth, and a meaningful commitment to culture over the past year. Now, you know you've built a strong culture when employees are passionate enough to tattoo the company logo on their bodies. Well, tonight's winner actually did that. This team has made culture a strategic priority, investing in Communication, mentorship, learning, and shared experiences across a distributed global team. I am pleased to congratulate Randstand Digital Tour Community Team. The team that leads Randstand's digital tour community has built a culture that spans continents, time zones, and disciplines. While keeping people, learning, and collaboration at the center of the work. From mentorship and professional development to global programming, community experiences, and even yappy hours, they've demonstrated the strong culture doesn't happen by accident. It is built intentionally. Please welcome Tor co-founders Mike Morris and Dave Messenger and Canadian leads Taylor Dessen and Brianna Holmes to the stage to accept this Team Culture Award. You can take a photo with the rest of the team at the step and repeat after the show. So let's give a huge congrats to Rain Team! Go Rain Team!
All right, we are back at the hotel room. It is 10:24. Quick trip, back at the airport tomorrow morning. Tonight was awesome. It was good to hang with folks from Ronstadt. It was great to win this award. It's in my backpack right now. You know what was really cool, and I think we documented it when we got called up, but the amount of chatter in the crowd when they found out That folks had a Torque tattoo on their body was insane. So, you know, tonight's award specifically was around, focused around like team culture and just basically community vibes, basically. Shout out to the Ronstadt Digital Torque community and what we're building. Again, people are taking notice and just a great night. Great night hanging with some Ronstadt folks, talking business. Talking about the future of community and just a crazy ride we're on right now. And I'm excited to see where this goes. So again, great time in Boston. Boston, it was fun for the little bit I saw you. And back to it tomorrow. Peace. Could be a summer ahead.
