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Prachi Ahuja
Prachi Ahuja is a Practice Director at Everest Group, where she leads research in the rewards and recognition and broader employee experience and HR technology space. She has spent years tracking how organizations are rethinking the entire employee experience spectrum and where recognition fits within it.
No Stage Is Wrong, But the Goal Is Always Progress
Prachi's research with Everest Group, done in partnership with Workhuman, maps recognition maturity across four stages: ad hoc (informal, reactive praise with no structure), structured (a formal system exists but is siloed and disconnected from measurement), integrated (recognition connects to HR systems and strategic priorities), and intelligent (recognition is embedded in daily workflows, powered by analytics and AI, and predictive rather than reactive). Her core message is that most organizations sit in the early-to-mid stages, and that's fine: the goal isn't leaping to "intelligent" recognition overnight, it's using data and intentional design to keep progressing. She's built a practical diagnostic framework for organizations to audit existing recognition programs, benchmark against peers, and translate the findings into a business case that resonates with a CFO as much as a CHRO.
Topics Prachi speaks on
- The four-stage recognition maturity model, and why no stage is "wrong"
- Running a recognition program diagnostic and gap analysis
- Translating recognition data into a business case for the C-suite
- HR technology and employee experience market research
- Personalization, measurement, and AI as levers for scaling recognition
Sessions with Achieve
Prachi is a featured presenter on the Achieve Engagement webcast "Optimize & Scale Recognition with Human Intelligence" (January 22, 2026), presented in partnership with Workhuman alongside colleague Priyanka Mitra and Lynette Silva Heelan of Workhuman. In it, she walks through the full four-stage recognition maturity model and the diagnostic assessment framework organizations can use to figure out where they stand and what to fix first.
Connect
Want more on what the research actually says about scaling recognition intelligently? Learn more about the Achieve Leadership Network.