Hello, friends!
Summer is just kicking off 
, but can you believe we’re already almost half-way through 2023? This weekend’s StandOut 5.28 release contains some behind-the-scenes updates and our new Building Connection through Standout position paper. This cycle, we’d like to take this time to reflect on some of the new features and updates we’ve brought to you so far in 2023. See below for a glimpse of what we’ve been up to this year, and as always please check out our Roadmap to see what’s in store for the next few releases.
You’re invited! Please join TMBC’s Vice President of Leader Development, Amy Powell, for a one-hour webinar: Building Connection through StandOut. The second in a series of topic-based discussions, the webinar will take place Wednesday, August 23 at 10 am – 11 am PST.
We’ll discuss research by TMBC on the importance of leader and peer relationships at work, and share tools and strategies to help people build strong, meaningful connections. Register now to learn more.
All registrants will receive a recording of the webinar and post-webinar tools to use with your teams.
+Other+fun+strengths+news+for+you+this+cycle+includes:">
Other fun strengths news for you this cycle includes:- Workers are spending more time in meetings these days, whether it be in front of a camera or in the office. Amy Leschke-Kahle, TMBC’s Vice President of Performance Acceleration, shares how you can Avoid Meeting Overload and maximize your time
. - Check out the latest edition of the ADP Research Institute’s Today at Work to learn how to cultivate talent brand promoters within your organization
. - Being a great leader doesn’t have to be complicated or hard
; we’re sharing with you the Not-So-Secret Sauce To Leading In The New World Of Work.
The Year So Far: What StandOut has Brought to You!
We’ve been working hard to bring you many new features and enhancements this year, all with the goal of supporting engagement and connections across your teams. Please read on for a recap of some of the big changes brought to you by StandOut over the past six months.
Helping You Build Connections at Work
Team Activities: In January we released multiple updates to our popular Team Activities feature, and we quickly followed up in February with the release of 4 NEW Team Activities. Many of you have been leveraging these already in meetings with teammates, colleagues, and other partners to build connections, all leading to engagement. Each of the new Team Activities allow facilitators to choose from prompts to facilitate discussions with participants that tie into the key themes of StandOut: values, strengths, recognition, and what’s to come. If you haven’t tried them yet, please do! It’s a fast and fun way to engage differently with people--and anyone can participate! Check out the video below to learn more:
Conversations: Many of our clients were searching for ways to help employees feel more connected to their leaders, their teammates, and their colleagues, so in May we released our new Conversations feature to serve as a connection hub for all members of your organization. This feature houses the new-and-improved Interactive Milestone Connect experience and several Conversation Guides to lead you through meaningful interactions at work.
Giving You Better Visibility into How It’s Going
Roll-up Reporting: Those of you who have people reporting to you who also have people reporting to them have been enjoying insight into those teams below you since the April release of Roll-up Reporting. Leaders of leaders are using this data to drive engagement within their teams and organizations and giving their next-level team members the attention they deserve. See how it works in the video below.
New Usage Reports: With the addition of our new Team Activities and Conversations features, we of course added reporting to help our StandOut practitioners understand how these features are being used across their organizations. Check out the new Team Activities Usage Report and Conversations Usage Report.
Other Reporting Enhancements: We’ve made many enhancements and tweaks throughout the year to increase transparency and give you visibility into the metrics you need in an easy-to-use format. Some recent Reporting Enhancements included improvements to the user experience when applying filters and the ability to easily view audience-level data within Check-In Adoption Reporting.
Making it Easier for You to Do Your Work and Shine
StandOut Knowledge Base: The StandOut Knowledge Base moved into its new home 
in February, and we’re so glad that many of you have stopped by! If you haven’t visited yet, please come anytime to access Knowledge Base articles or contact StandOut support--we’re here to help you feel STRONG as a StandOut user!
“Discover StandOut” SCORM eLearning Content: Sharing the “Discover StandOut” trainings is easier than ever now that it’s available in a handy SCORM Wrapping. Clients are loving the ability to plug this into their own LMS to track content creation for new hire orientation and new user onboarding.
Long Term Priorities enhancements: Organizations that use Long Term Priorities are enjoying several enhancements: the character limitation has been increased and they’ve been conveniently added to the Check-In History export, enabling Leaders to more easily access them.
StandOut Team Member Certification: We’ve created a new, compact, and engaging StandOut Team Member Certification program that makes it even easier for facilitators to become certified in StandOut’s core strengths concepts.
Milestone Connect notifications: As a fast follow to our big December release of the NEW Digitized Milestone Connect, we created additional platform notifications to keep the process flowing for both Team Members and Team Leaders so that you can be sure to have these meaningful discussions.
Engagement Pulse Custom Guidance Links: We’ve provided the option for StandOut administrators who add additional questions to the Engagement Pulse to leverage custom guidance links to extra guidance created by their organization on how to interpret and act on survey results.
Let us know! Which of the new features and enhancements above have been most valuable to you and/or your organization? 
You’re not alone in sharing that you have a strong response to our choice of wording there. The good news is that this is actually by design - we’ve intentionally used those words because they’re so provocative. I’ve attached a few videos that think might be helpful for more context. 
For future reference, both of these videos are always available in the information modals (the little “i” bubbles) within various steps of the Check-In portion of the platform. 