Workplace awards get handed out so often that you might wonder how much they really mean. But I've seen the impact when there’s a gap between stated culture and lived culture—in attrition, trust, and a quiet disengagement that doesn't show up in a spreadsheet until it's already expensive.

Having spent years in the military and then at a large financial services firm before joining SafeRide four years ago, my perspective has taught me that these awards represent something special. SafeRide has earned roughly 10 national and regional workplace recognitions over the past two years, including the just-announced 2026 USA Today Top Workplaces award. These aren't participation trophies; they're based on anonymous, voluntary employee surveys, and the results reflect what our internal teams actually think.

What we’ve built at SafeRide Health didn't come from a deck or handbook. It’s based on a deliberate set of choices we've made about how to treat people, share information, and stay honest about what's working and what isn't. Here's what that looks like in practice.

1. Embrace the fact that different teams need different things.

Creating an effective hybrid workplace requires intention and careful planning, otherwise it’s just remote work with awkward meetings. At SafeRide, we've been deliberate about learning and embracing what different teams need from their work environments—and letting go of the idea that one model fits everyone.

Our operations teams run on connection. They're answering member calls, coordinating transportation routes, and managing provider networks in real time. Being in the same room, looking at the same dashboards, and navigating the same challenges from one physical location matters to how they deliver on our mission. Our remote R&D teams, on the other hand, work differently. They need intense focus, autonomy, and space to build without constant interruption. Forcing R&D into the same rhythm as member services or transportation operations would be counterproductive for everyone.

The same principle applies to how people want to be recognized and motivated. Some people want public acknowledgment. Others want you to hand them a hard problem and get out of the way. Some care most about flexibility, and others want a path: Show them what growth looks like and they'll run toward it. The leaders who retain the best people are the ones who take the time to figure out which of those categories someone is in and then adapt accordingly. It’s a concept that can be difficult to accomplish in practice, but it can pay big rewards.

2. Transparency isn't a value statement, it's a practice.

Every month, we invite all our employees to attend a hybrid All Hands meeting; it’s hosted in person at our headquarters, offered virtually, and recorded for our frontline team members actively assisting members at that time. During these meetings, our CEO and leadership team share real financials, wins, challenges, and member stories. We review launch readiness for new health plans and celebrate internal promotions.

Employees also see product demos: how we route a ride, the way a member experiences the MySafeRide app, what our Interactive Voice Response sounds like in a real call. They're encouraged to ask questions about where the market is headed and what it means for SafeRide, and leadership is equipped and available to answer those questions as soon as they’re asked.

These efforts matter: People give their best effort to a company they trust and understand. When employees know where you're going and why, they don’t wait to be told what to do; instead, they begin to act like owners. That shift, from compliance to ownership, is one of the most valuable things a leader can create. You earn it through consistency and follow-through over time.

3.  Learn from wins and misses to iterate quickly.

After every major launch or client onboarding, we do an after-action review. The intention is to not to assign blame, but to understand what happened, where our greatest opportunities are for improvement, and reach consensus on what worked. Then we build a short list of action items and key takeaways so we don't repeat the same mistakes twice.

In a lot of organizations, the unspoken rule is, ‘If it didn't go well, do better next time.’ At SafeRide, we slow down to understand what it means to do better. We ask hard questions, we write it down, we revisit it, and when the process works, we don’t make the same mistakes twice. This practice also extends beyond milestone events. If something isn't broken but could improve, we're looking at it. The default is innovation.

That orientation toward innovation and continuous improvement shapes how people feel about coming to work. Mistakes are survivable; change is encouraged.

4. Stay ahead of the curve to scale with intention.

We went from providing 1 million rides a year in 2021 to more than 1 million rides a month today. That kind of growth requires organizational transformation that scales. You can't just fly a bigger plane, faster, with the same engine. The engine usually needs an upgrade, too.

For example, in anticipation of doubling our revenue in 2023, we reorganized to place the human resources and information technology functions under one umbrella. That's still uncommon, but it reflects a trend that’s currently emerging at the forefront of AI and workflow automation: Your human workforce and your digital workflows must work effectively together, and the leaders responsible for each need to work in tandem, not siloed. When those two functions align, you eliminate an area of friction most employees feel but rarely know how to name.

More broadly, scaling fast requires a mindset shift that doesn't happen overnight. Going from a scrappy startup to an enterprise-grade operation, without losing the magic behind an award-winning culture, requires building structure without losing humanity.

At SafeRide, the data reflects what happens when you apply these principles and take workplace culture seriously. In 2025, we retained 98% of our staff, maintained an industry-leading internal mobility rate of more than 30%, and rolled into 2026 with a 95% client retention rate. Those numbers aren’t just good, they’re exceptional, reflecting a culture where people feel inspired, informed, and that their work matters.

And our purpose-driven work is the thing that truly sets us apart. SafeRide operates within the non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) space, which means we're helping underserved patients access critical care such as dialysis, chemotherapy, prenatal care, and wound care. The mission is real, and our employees feel that.

But mission alone doesn't build culture—the way you treat people every day does. At SafeRide, we’ve built a culture that really is something special, but we’re still working on it and continuously striving to improve, just like we do for our members.

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