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Our criteria: How we chose the best vendors
We take our research seriously and want to make sure we are presenting our readers with the very best solutions in a given software category. Here's how we select vendors to be in our buyer guides:
- Product: We want to have a deep understanding of a vendor's product before recommending it. This usually means getting a demo by a senior executive (their CEO, head of product, etc), and/or using the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best in class offering.
- User feedback: We do our best to understand what users say when they experience this product. User input allows us to accomplish a more thorough due diligence of products, put new vendors on our radar, and generally make sure we are presenting the right products to our readers.
- Financial metrics: We are very much finance nerds and so use a product's retention rates, growth, profitability, and scale to understand whether or not it is truly best in class.
- Best for a use case: Sometimes the best solution is the cheapest, the best tool for international companies, or the best for startups. We try to include a diversity of solutions so that our readers can find the tool that is best for what they need.
Here's more detail if you want to read further on how we research vendors.
In this guide you'll find
We've done nearly 100 demos with Rewards and Recognition software tools over the years and this article is the result of our efforts. Employee rewards and recognition programs used to be a really boring category within HR Tech, but has transformed into one of the most important components of any company's employee experience.
Why is that? Rewards platforms used to be a check the box tool that sent a gift to employees on their birthday or work anniversary. Employees would barely use these solutions, and thus they had no impact on retention or culture.
Modern employee recognition software is much different for two reasons. First, these systems now integrate with Slack, Teams, Outlook, and other tech that employees use every day, so they are easy to access. Second, rewards and recognition platforms are based around peer to peer recognition. This means employees are recognizing each other for milestones, accomplishments, or just being a great colleague.
Peer to peer recognition is more powerful than "congrats on your work anniversary" and you can see that in the data. An employee is recognized, gets a notification, logs in, and then while in the tool they also recognize a different colleague for something. This new colleague of course logs in to do the same flow, and the cycle repeats creating a viral loop.
Historically, employee rewards and recognition tools were used by 10% of your employees in a month, at most. Now, the best in class vendors have 98% of employees interacting with their solutions every single month. This means HR can make an impact on retention, values, and culture by leveraging employee rewards and recognition systems.
This article is the result of years of research (since 2018!) into the best employee rewards and recognition platforms so that HR teams can buy the right software for their organization. It includes in depth reviews on the top vendors, along with how to think about pricing, ROI, use cases, and everything else we think you need to be successful when buying employee rewards and recognition software.
We hope this guide will save you hours of research, and allow you to purchase the right rewards and recognition solution for your business!
Featured in
Top Employee Reward and Recognition Programs
We track thousands of HRTech solutions, these are the best employee reward programs per our research and expert council as of 2022
Why we love it
:
Reward Gateway is an employee engagement platform (SmartHub) that combines employee recognition, surveys, communication, discounts (instant vouchers and cashback offers), and analytics in a single solution.
- Remarkably good customer support due to their 24/7 help desk team and multiple communication channels
- Varied rewards including products from Amazon, customizable ecards, and experiences
- You can purchase modules separately if you prefer it
- No free trial
- The “Reward Gateway for Small Business” version is only available for companies in the UK and Australia
Reward Gateway
Review:
With over 1,800 customers and over 5 million users, Reward Gateway is a leader in the rewards and recognition space. Their solution is built on an engaging peer to peer recognition platform that allows colleagues to recognize one another and turn that recognition into perks and rewards.
Reward Gateway
Customers:
Samsung, Orbis, KPMG, Five Star Bank
Samsung, Orbis, KPMG, Five Star Bank, ABC Medical, American Express, Unilever, IBM, McDonald's
Reward Gateway
Stats:
- Active since 2006, 5 million employees reached so far
- Trusted by more than 1,800 companies
- NPS Score of 60
- Active since 2006, over 5 users reached so far
- Trusted by more than 2,500 companies
- NPS Score of 72
Reward Gateway
Pricing:
- You can choose to purchase solutions separately, like only the employee recognition and surveys modules, for instance, or go for the full employee engagement platform.
- If you happen to be in the United Kingdom or Australia, they also offer a “Reward Gateway for Small Business” version which is £6 per employee per month, with no lock-in contract.
- The price is not revealed publicly, which means you would get a custom quote depending on your business size and needs.
- You can choose to purchase solutions separately, like only the employee recognition and surveys modules, for instance, or go for the full employee engagement platform.
- If you happen to be in the United Kingdom or Australia, they also offer a “Reward Gateway for Small Business” version which is £6 per employee per month, with no lock-in contract.
- The price is not revealed publicly, which means you would get a custom quote depending on your business size and needs.
Best For
Companies in any industry could benefit from one or several of Reward Gateway’s employee engagement tools.
Why we love it
:
Unlike many vendors in the recognition space, Motivosity believes in an employee driven culture which manifests itself in a product focused on peer to peer recognition and engagement versus the top down nature of most incumbent players in this space.
- Employees can access this system from their phones, desktop, and apps they are in at work such as Teams/Slack
- One platform that combines rewards, recognition, employee engagement, and more
- Built in reporting with insights around potential attrition, most recognized employees, managers that need coaching, etc.
- Only has dollar (not points) based rewards. Their research shows dollars is more effective, but many companies want points.
- Doesn’t allow for as many rules regarding who can give what points to who (for example, a team member could theoretically give 100% of their rewards to a friend each month).
- Certain features aren’t as built out as in other tools - for example the 1:1s or coaching are not as robust as in point solutions focused on performance or coaching.
Motivosity
Review:
Motivosity combines four products in one. Their platform allows you to connect with employees, understand their performance drivers, and recognize them for a job well done. What’s great about Motivosity is that it isn’t just for managers to use, but employees too. The platform facilitates peer-to-peer recognition so everyone’s feedback is heard.
Motivosity
Customers:
Health Catalyst, Cotopaxi, Health Equity, Instructure, Ivanti
KPMG, Bosch, Toyota, cotopaxi, WGU
Motivosity
Stats:
- 96% of employees login on a monthly basis
- The average HR admin spends just 43 minutes/mo in the system
- Their solution is based around 3 pillars: Building Community, Employee Recognition, Manager Relationships
- 96% of employees login on a monthly basis
- The average HR admin spends just 43 minutes/mo in the system
- Their solution is based around 3 pillars: Building Community, Employee Recognition, Manager Relationships
Motivosity
Pricing:
Motivosity’s pricing works per module. “Connect” is included with every license of the other three. They do offer a free trial for each of them and the pricing is as follows:
Motivosity’s pricing works per module. “Connect” is included with every license of the other three. They do offer a free trial for each of them and the pricing is as follows:
Best For
Movitosity’s employee recognition software has customers from 10 person startups to 10,000 employee large enterprises. However, their sweet spot tends to be mid market (100-3,000 employee) companies that are looking to take their employee experience to a new level.
Why we love it
:
They simplify rewards, recognition, and incentives thanks to their Amazon Business integration which gives them access to a huge number of employee rewards.
- Amazon Business integration, huge reward catalog for a multitude of countries.
- The platform is available in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and Simplified Chinese.
- Actual pricing is not publicly available, so getting started won’t be a quick and self-service process like with other companies in the space.
- With Awardco, digital and physical gift cards are ineligible for refunds.
- Only Amazon-delivered products are available from Awardco. Goods sold by third-party vendors on Amazon are not available.
- The Awardco mobile app is only available as a Progressive Web Application, not from the App Store or Google Play, which might be less intuitive for some users.
Awardco
Review:
Organizations with over 100 employees use Awardco to retain the people they can't afford to lose. Awardco offers one of the largest reward networks on the planet with Amazon and more. They also have flexible settings that enable admins to customize programs unique to their company and culture.
Awardco
Customers:
Amazon, Ford, JPMorgan Chase, Pinterest, Cornell, Chick-fil-A, Paramount
Amazon, Ford, JPMorgan Chase, Pinterest, Cornell, Chick-fil-A, Paramount, Hertz.
Awardco
Stats:
- Fastest Growing Rewards & Recognition Platform in America according to the Inc. 5000 list
- No markups whatsoever
- 300 million+ reward options
- 96% client satisfaction
- Fastest Growing Rewards & Recognition Platform in America according to the Inc. 5000 list
- No markups whatsoever
- 300 million+ reward options
- 96% client satisfaction
- 3M+ users
Awardco
Pricing:
Awardco has a $5,000 minimum annual fee. The final pricing structure would vary according to your company size and reward needs.
Awardco has a $5,000 minimum annual fee. The final pricing structure would vary according to your company size and reward needs.
Best For
Companies with 100+ employees that want to streamline their recognition process with the power of Amazon Business.
Why we love it
:
Not only is Guusto a top-rated (and free) recognition & rewards SaaS provider, they actually donate 1 day of clean drinking water for every gift sent.
- They partnered with the One Drop Foundation to donate 1 day of clean drinking water for every gift sent.
- All gift cards are actually digital, meaning there’s no plastic waste. This also makes it a very remote-friendly product.
- Guusto is not a points program. All the gifts within the platform are real dollar value.
- Their merchant selection is very US and Canada focused. For the rest of the world, they only offer custom and Amazon rewards.
- Similarly, only USD and CAD are available as currencies
Guusto
Review:
Companies that are looking to boost retention and build a stronger culture should check out Guusto. Guusto is a simple to set up employee rewards and recognition tool that helps engage your people and inspire great performance. A key differentiator for their solution (besides easy setup) is that it is free to use. This means that all of your rewards budget is spent on your employees, not software fees. They can do this as they've spent a lot of time negotiating deals with thousands of merchants you can choose from when sending your employees recognition.
Guusto
Customers:
Harvard University, The Body Shop, Fairmont, Rexall, and more.
Harvard University, Levi’s, The Body Shop, Toronto Raptors, Fairmont, Rexall, and more.
Guusto
Stats:
- Over 60,000 merchant locations to choose from
- Over 60,000 merchant locations to choose from
Guusto
Pricing:
Guusto offer the following pricing plans:
- Individual: Free. As a single user, you only pay for rewards.
- Essential: Starts from $2.25 per member/month
- Premium: Starts from $3.50 per member/month
Subscription fees only apply to team members sending gifts, not all employees. The HR team's budget will be linked to how much per employee per year you want to spend. Also, some contract minimums may apply.
Guusto offer the following pricing plans:
- Individual: Free. As a single user, you only pay for rewards.
- Essential: Starts from $2.25 per member/month
- Premium: Starts from $3.50 per member/month
Subscription fees only apply to team members sending gifts, not all employees. The HR team's budget will be linked to how much per employee per year you want to spend. Also, some contract minimums may apply.
Best For
Good solution for small and large companies alike. Any company looking to highlight achievers and recognize employee performance could use Guusto.
Why we love it
:
Bucketlist helps HR teams to engage employees through a customizable rewards and recognition platform that easily integrates with the apps your employees already use like Slack, Teams, Outlook.
- Vast number of rewards available, some users have even mentioned that it’s hard to pick one
- The Bucketlist team has been known for adding customer suggestions to their product roadmap and delivering on them
- When it comes to pricing, they offer to match another offer if you find a better price elsewhere
- Only available in English
- Little information is available as to the particularities of their concierge service for experience rewards.
Bucketlist
Review:
Bucketlist is one of the fastest-growing rewards and recognition platforms for a couple of reasons. They have a fully customizable solution that fits any organization's workflows. They have also invested into a rewards catalog that includes everything from gift cards to learning how to fly.
They are always rolling out new features and one of our favorites is an events platform where team members can set up in person or virtual events, invite co-workers, and see who's coming. These are great team building exercises for anything from a virtual celebration to an in person get together.
Bucketlist
Customers:
RBC, Chick-fil-A, and 1-800-GOT-JUNK.
RBC, Chick-fil-A, Applebee’s, Storable, Firstbank, UT Arlington
Bucketlist
Stats:
- 31% reduction in voluntary turnover Rates
- 25% average increase in productivity
- Over 1,000 teams using it
As of 2022, Bucketlist is used by over 1,000 teams. Some of the have experienced results like:
- 31% reduction in voluntary turnover Rates
- 25% average increase in productivity
- 2.5x increase revenue
Bucketlist
Pricing:
- Free demo and free 14 day trial available.
- They try to negotiate the best price for you and offer to match another offer if you find a better price.
- If you’re not happy with the tool in 90 days, they’ll refund your money.
- The price of subscription is not revealed publicly, which means you would get a custom quote depending on your business size and needs.
- Free demo and free 14 day trial available.
- If you’re not happy with the tool in 90 days, they’ll refund your money.
- The price of subscription is not revealed publicly, which means you would get a custom quote depending on your business size and needs.
- They try to negotiate the best price for you and offer to match another offer if you find a better price.
Best For
Mid to large size companies (100 - 5,000 employees) that want higher employee engagement and lower voluntary turnover.
Why we love it
:
Bonusly is easy to use and set up, comes with a large rewards catalog, and is simply a great peer-to-peer recognition platform.
- Available in German, English, French, and Spanish
- Works worldwide
- Also includes an employee feedback system
- Their starter plan is for small businesses (50 people or fewer). More users might require an upgrade. They also offer custom discounts for non-profit and education organizations.
- The platform isn’t very customizable.
- Reward catalog is mainly oriented towards gift cards, cash, or donations.
Bonusly
Review:
Bonusly’s peer-to-peer employee recognition platform is designed to increase employee engagement and retention through employee shout outs that are tied to company values and redeemable for real-world, meaningful rewards.
They’ve focused on allowing employees to access this solution from a plethora of integrations and apps which results in 75-90% of employees using the platform each month.
Bonusly
Customers:
Hulu, InVision, SurveyMonkey, Headspace, & more
Hulu, InVision, SurveyMonkey, Headspace, ZipRecruiter, Chobani, & more
Bonusly
Stats:
- Customers from over 100 countries
- Over 16 million bonuses given
- 89% of Bonusly users participate within their first month
- 79% receive recognition at least once a month
- Customers from over 100 countries
- Used by over 2,400 companies
- Over 16 million bonuses given
- 89% of Bonusly users participate within their first month
- 79% receive recognition at least once a month
Bonusly
Pricing:
The pricing details of Bonusly are as follows:
- Core: This plan costs $2.70 per user per month when billed annually.
- Pro: This plan costs $4.50 per user per month when billed annually.
- Custom: This plan is designed for large organizations and has custom pricing.
Note: Free trials and demos are available
The pricing details of Bonusly are as follows:
- Core: This plan costs $2.70 per user per month when billed annually.
- Pro: This plan costs $4.50 per user per month when billed annually.
- Custom: This plan is designed for large organizations and has custom pricing.
Note: Free trials and demos are available
Best For
Bonusly serves companies in different verticals. As for company size, Bonusly has been used by companies between 50-5,000 employees.
Why we love it
:
Workstars provides companies with a dynamic platform for highly customizable recognition programs for their employees.
- Custom rewards like service awards, top performer awards, nominations, voting, etc
- Cost-effective when compared to similar platforms.
- Culturally-aware; while based mostly in the UK and US, the Workstars team has been known to go the extra mile to adapt to the customs, expectations, and cost of living adjustments of clients in other parts of the world.
- No HRMS integrations. To upload people data, you’d have to make do with XML or CSV files, or try to have IT set up an integration with an API.
- No free plan or free trial
Workstars
Review:
Workstars aims to boost employee engagement with their innovative employee recognition software. They are offering an excellent free-to-launch SaaS platform that can virtually address employee recognition regardless of the size of the client. They stand out by giving clients the flexibility of setting up highly-customizable reward systems.
Workstars
Customers:
- Weetabix
- Vision Express
- Acadia Healthcare
- Planned Parenthood
- Zurich
AstraZeneca, Weetabix, Vision Express, Acadia Healthcare, Planned Parenthood, Zurich
Workstars
Stats:
- 100+ platform configurations
- 95% customer retention rate
- 100+ platform configurations
- 95% customer retention rate
Workstars
Pricing:
There are no fees for setting up the system for the client. Pricing is strictly dependent on the number of users, the number of features the client wants, and whether the system is for a multinational organization. Workstars offers three subscription plans: Entry, Pro, and Global. To give you an idea, for a company with 251-500 employees, Workstars starts at £1.25 per employee per month.
There are no fees for setting up the system for the client. Pricing is strictly dependent on the number of users, the number of features the client wants, and whether the system is for a multinational organization. Workstars offers three subscription plans: Entry, Pro, and Global. To give you an idea, for a company with 251-500 employees, Workstars starts at £1.25 per employee per month.
Best For
Workstars are great for scalability. Their clients have a range of 50-10,000 employees.
Why we love it
:
As an employee experience platform, Cooleaf empowers companies to engage and motivate their staff by capturing employee sentiment using pulse surveys, performance incentives, and bringing employees together with recognition and virtual activities.
- Full platform for all things employee engagement, not just rewards and recognition.
- The Slack integration is very seamless. Challenges, posts, and recognitions can all be gathered within dedicated channels in your team’s Slack workplace, if you want to.
- Wide variety of rewards including a team store, donations, entertainment, travel experiences, merch, products, and restaurant coupons.
- For some of the workplace culture-building features, like challenges and activities, you can’t create your own, so you rely on how often Cooleaf’s team makes them available.
- We found the support center’s documentation to be somewhat limited in comparison to similar tools. Also, it seems like support is only done through an online form, no other channels are available.
Cooleaf
Review:
Cooleaf has a wide variety to pick from when it comes to rewards and recognition. You can select products, create a team store, send your people on trips, or go for the classic gift cards or coupons. Their selection of experiential activities, such as challenges, are built by experts who work with several types of industries and teams. To give you a better idea, some of the programs are focused on learning and development, health and wellness, and overall workplace culture.
Cooleaf
Customers:
Shipt, Orangetheory Fitness, SalesLoft, Toyota, Synovus Bank, Yokohama Tire, Kids2
Shipt, Orangetheory Fitness, SalesLoft, Toyota, Synovus Bank, Yokohama Tire, Kids2
Cooleaf
Stats:
- Cooleaf has a customer retention rate of 98.74%
- They have an ARR run rate of $4.5 million.
- Cooleaf has an average customer adoption rate of 90+%
- Cooleaf has a customer retention rate of 98.74%
- They have an ARR run rate of $4.5 million.
- Cooleaf has an average customer adoption rate of 90+%
- 60,000+ users served
- 3+ million recognitions done through the platform
Cooleaf
Pricing:
Cooleaf offers custom pricing via a monthly subscription model based on the number of employees included in the program. Companies using the solution have to allocate a rewards budget for employees. Of course, this budget is flexible.
Cooleaf offers custom pricing via a monthly subscription model based on the number of employees included in the program. Companies using the solution have to allocate a rewards budget for employees. Of course, this budget is flexible.
Best For
Small and mid-sized businesses with an average workforce of 250+ people. Cooleaf is also best for remote or hybrid brands looking to boost employee satisfaction.
Why we love it
:
Mo’s rewards and recognition platform packs an impressive range of vouchers that can be shared as rewards. The platform is also 12 languages and growing, making it a good fit for companies with distributed, multilingual employees.
- Mo’s UI is easy to navigate, and users seem to appreciate the varied choice of vouchers they can offer through the platform.
- The platform’s pricing is transparent and reasonable compared to similar solutions in this space,
- Mo is available in 12 languages and growing.
- Mo’s UI is easy to navigate, and users seem to appreciate the varied choice of vouchers they can offer through the platform.
- The platform’s pricing is transparent and reasonable compared to similar solutions in this space,
- Mo is available in 12 languages and growing.
- Mo currently has limited integrations (only Slack and Microsoft Teams)
- The customer support hours are limited to weekdays, 9 AM - 5 PM GMT.
- Mo currently has limited integrations (only Slack and Microsoft Teams)
- The customer support hours are limited to weekdays, 9 AM - 5 PM GMT.
Mo
Review:
Mo’s rewards and recognition platform helps companies improve employee morale and reduce churn. It features Moments and Boosts, which can be used to recognize employees for their individual achievements, celebrate group wins and more. Mo also lets you reward employees either with vouchers that they can redeem at several stores including Amazon, ASOS, and John Lewis, or with custom rewards that you can personalize to the relevant team member. Besides rewards that your managers give out, you can also empower employees to be involved in the process and choose award or recognition recipients with peer-to-peer nominations.
Mo
Customers:
Mo has over 58k users. Some of the top customers are SGN, The O2, NHS, Aspen, William Hill, and SHL.
Mo
Stats:
- SHL, a talent acquisition and management software vendor, gained a 9% increase in overall employee engagement with Mo.
- William Hill, an online gambling company headquartered in London, England, has seen a 30% increase in employee recognition across the organization since using Mo.
Mo
Pricing:
Mo has three plans. When billed annually, they are priced as follows:
- Starter: Designed for small teams that are getting started with recognition software, this plan costs $3.40 per user per month and packs the features you need to recognize achievements, celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, and more.
- Level Up: For $4.25 per user per month, this plan covers everything from Starter, plus the ability to hold award nominations and give rewards, as well as gain access to advanced reporting, deep insights, and third-party integrations.
- Custom: Made for large companies, this plan has custom pricing and provides users with access to all features on other plans, plus rewards and recognition program design, advanced security, premium support, and implementation services.
Best For:
Mo is best suited for small and medium-sized businesses looking to drive employee engagement through rewards and recognition.
Why we love it
:
WorkTango combines continuous performance management, employee recognition, rewards, and engagement surveys into one powerful platform to help you improve employee experience and by extension, company culture.
- WorkTango is available in English, Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Korean, although the latter is only available for the performance management module.
- You can add modules as you go and these will be charged on a prorated basis.
- Billing is only done annually and all plans require a minimum agreement for a 24-month subscription (see our FAQs for more and their pricing page for full details).
- Several users have complained about the rewards redeeming process being not very intuitive.
WorkTango
Review:
WorkTango’s rewards and recognition engine is a huge part of their offering. It pretty much checks all the boxes when it comes to rewards and recognition, whether it’s a company feed, a points system, a broad rewards catalog, and the option to add custom rewards. On this latter point, one feature that stands out is the ability of creating unique catalogs from their offering and tie them as incentives for the completion of a specific milestone or an internal initiative.
WorkTango
Customers:
Allianz, Hitachi, Kia Motors, Patagonia, Kaiser
WorkTango
Stats:
- 95% customer retention rate
- 600+ global customers
- 1-3% average improvement in productivity
- 10-20% higher employee retention
WorkTango
Pricing:
- You can choose to buy a growth, standard, or enterprise subscription plan for the rewards & recognition tool alone, the performance management tool, or the full platform.
- The recognition platform alone starts at $5.00 per employee per month, billed annually, if you have less than 250 employees (growth).
- The standard plan for 250-1000 employees starts at $4.25 USD per user per month.
- You can get a custom quote for more than 1000 employees.
Best For:
Although WorkTango can be used by any company size, from SMBs to Fortune 100 enterprises, their 600+ clients are predominantly mid-sized to small enterprises in knowledge worker industries, such as software & tech, FSI, healthcare, and business services.
Why we love it
:
WeGift is a smart solution for distributing gift cards at scale. They stand out for providing access to 1300+ brands, bulk discounts of up to 25% off, and the ability to reclaim unspent value on expired gift cards.
- You can sign up, create an account and play with the platform for free.
- There are no minimum or maximum amounts for a budget.
- Only gift cards available as rewards.
- Before you can access each brand and offer them to your employees for gift cards, you have to make a request and get approved by said brand.
WeGift
Review:
When sending employees a gift card, it can be tricky to know which brands they might like. That’s why WeGift gives gift card recipients the option to select a gift card to virtually any major brand they’d like. Their ecommerce-like platform lets you pick from hundreds of popular brands, create gift cards in bulk, and send them to your employees or customers in the US, UK, Europe, and beyond.
Naturally, for HR teams, this saves tons of time and money in sending rewards. Among the unique aspects to their offering is the fact that they can offer discounts of up to 25% and their way of managing unspent value— when recipients do not redeem gift cards by their expiration date, you get the money back.
WeGift
Customers:
WeGift is used to reward employees at companies like Vodafone, Sodexo, Perkbox, and Halford’s.
WeGift
Stats:
- Access to over 1300+ brands
- Up to 25% off in discounts
- Raised $12M in Series A funding in November 2020
- Available in over 30 countries
- 70+ employees
WeGift
Pricing:
WeGift has an annual fee which varies depending on your company size and budget. $12,000 per year is a typical budget.
Best For:
Organizations of varying size and industry in the UK, US, and Europe.
Why we love it
:
Kudos® have paired their employee recognition software with additional employee engagement functionality. Features like spaces and galleries and culture tools are unique to the space. They also do consulting for companies that need extra assistance.
- Unique, company culture-oriented features are present all across the platform, such as in the way they approach analytics, or on the actual Culture Accelerator module.
- Excellent relation of mobile / desktop functionality. You basically get all the bells and whistles on both versions.
- Unless you get a demo and start exploring the tool with the help of an insider, we’d say it’s somewhat hard to get a good idea of what features are like, how they work, and even what they do, just from their website alone.
- From our research, we could gather that the points system and how this works can get a bit confusing for some users.
Kudos
Review:
Kudos®’s platform is specifically designed to engage employees through peer to peer recognition, that can also include employee rewards. Recognition sent within the Kudos® platform is tied to company values and qualities, reinforcing your culture and enabling deep data insights into the health of your workplace culture. In addition to software, they offer consulting services.
Kudos
Customers:
ATCO, Bulgari, Arch Insurance, KidsPeace
Kudos
Stats:
- Up to 36% improvement in employee retention
- Used in over 23 industries in 80 countries
- Available in 11 different languages
Kudos
Pricing:
Kudos has two editions which are priced as follows:
- Plus: For $5 per user per month, Kudos Plus helps you run effective employee recognition program with features for peer-to-peer recognition, optional rewards, and a lot more. Discounts are available based on the final user count and contract term.
- Enterprise: For $7 per user per month, Kudos Enterprise gives you everything the Kudos platform has to offer, with additional functionality to run Kudos across multiple countries, operations centers, etc. Enterprise customers also get insights from Kudos’ dedicated people analytics teams, culture programming assistance, discounts based on the final user count/contract term and more.
Best For:
Clients with teams that span 250 to thousands of users in practically any country and industry. Great for those that want complete communication and feedback tools in their recognition software.
Why we love it
:
Nectar's employee recognition and rewards platform is ideal for companies who want a high engagement peer to peer solution with great analytics and rewards built in.
- Free version available
- Volume discounts available for organizations with 500+ employees
- You pay for the rewards that are claimed. Points and allowances that remain unused won’t cost you a dime.
- The priced plans are not available to start off as a self-service process. You’d have to book a demo and pay to access some of the premium features.
- The rewards selection could feel limited to some teams, especially those looking for more experiences in offer.
Nectar
Review:
Nectar's solution is built around a peer to peer recognition feed that aligns employee accomplishments with company core values. Each employee (including managers) gets a points balance each month they can allocate to colleagues that go above and beyond. Nectar is known to have an extensive reward selection - employees can then redeem rewards for Amazon products, gift cards, company swag, charities, and a whole lot more.
They also have a new wellness component, and are quickly releasing high impact integrations and features such as their organizational network analysis tool which gives HR insights into which teams recognize one another the most.
Nectar
Customers:
Heineken, Teachable, Major League Baseball, SHRM
Nectar
Stats:
Nectar
Pricing:
Nectar offers a free tier that is unlimited and designed to help companies showcase the value of recognition to senior management.
Their Standard Plan is $2.50 per employee per month ($2.75 if billed monthly) and includes key features like manager to employee recognition, Slack/Teams integration, recognition automation for birthdays/anniversaries, and analytics.
Their Plus Plan is $3.50 per employee per month ($4.25 if billed monthly) and includes key features like customer branding, SSO, HRIS integrations, wellness challenges, and on demand company swag as a reward option.
Best For:
Nectar is best for smaller companies (<1,000 employees) who value employee recognition as a means to build culture.
Why we love it
:
They’ve been quick to adopt a remote-first approach to team recognition, helping you send gifts to employees, customers, or prospects to their home, for instance.
- Curated gift collections make it easy to pick a reward
- If an employee receives a gift they don’t love, they can exchange it for something else within the catalog
- It’s up and foremost an employee gifts platform, which means you won’t get many of the features that can be usual on other employee recognition software, like tying recognition to core values, a social-media like feed, and making your own rewards.
- With Snappy, you have to set up a budget in advance, so it’s not a great fit if you’d prefer to pay for rewards once redeemed or use the platform for only a number of months.
Snappy
Review:
Snappy believes in giving gifts to engage employees, versus points or dollars which they view as impersonal. According to our research, they’ve got lots of notes from employees to prove their approach has merit. One nice part of their offering is that their team will spend time at the beginning of the implementation to make sure there are automated touch points built into your employee rewards and recognition program (birthdays, anniversaries, first day of work, etc).
Snappy
Customers:
Deloitte, Sony Music, Zynga, Uber, Zoom, Taco Bell
Snappy
Stats:
- $10 million raised in the fall of 2018
- Used by 200+ large companies around the world
- Featured in Forbes, Inc., Ladders, and Yahoo! News.
Best For:
HR, Marketing, Sales, and Support managers that want a novel way of motivating and engaging their employees.
Why we love it
:
Darwinbox's employee rewards and recognition solution allows you to create completely configurable reward programs, design your own badges and banners and customize them to resonate with your brand. They also offer reward redemption options from a marketplace of 1500+ retailers across 55+ countries.
- Darwinbox is a one-stop shop that provides various solutions to streamline every HR-related aspect of the employee lifecycle. From recruitment to payroll, engagement, performance management, rewards, and people analytics, Darwinbox helps HR teams keep up with the ever-evolving HR Tech space.
- The platform’s modules are offered over a scalable, pay-as-you-go model that makes it possible to customize and add different modules and solutions to the existing tech stack, as the organization grows.
- According to users, the Attendance and Payroll solutions of Darwinbox are well-designed, easy to use, and effective.
- While Darwinbox is designed to be a mobile-first tool, users have reported that the UI is clunky and outdated, and the application needs improvement in terms of speed.
- Darwinbox is not transparent with the pricing of their solutions.
- According to users, Darwinbox's self-serve support documentation isn’t easily accessible and the customer support team is slow to respond and resolve queries.
Darwinbox
Review:
Darwinbox's employee rewards and recognition solution allows you to customize and configure your reward programs from scratch, design badges and banners that reflect your brand and create gamified leaderboards. Rewards can either be redeemed from a marketplace of 1500+ retailers across 55+ countries or exchanged in return for paid time off, monetary bonus, or other benefits.
The platform also comes with a budget management feature to automate budget allocation geography-wise, moderate the budgets for every reward program, and create a report on the spending history.
Darwinbox
Customers:
HDFC Bank, Starbucks, WeWork, Domino’s Pizza, Tokopedia, Vedanta, and Swiggy
Darwinbox
Stats:
- Darwinbox serves 700+ enterprises and over 2 million employees in 90+ countries
- Darwinbox has been rated as the #1 HCM platform on Gartner PeerInsights
- Aarti Industries, a leading Indian chemical manufacturing company, recorded a 94% accuracy in workforce management with Darwinbox
Darwinbox
Pricing:
Darwinbox does not disclose their pricing upfront on their website. Custom pricing and a free trial are available upon request for a demo of their various products.
Best For:
Darwinbox is best suited for large-scale businesses and enterprises with 500+ employees. In fact, over 50% of their customers are organizations with 1000-5000 employees.
Why we love it
:
Blueboard is a one-stop-shop to create personalized and meaningful rewards for employees, most in the form of real-life memorable experiences.
- Blueboard is arguably one of the only experiential rewards platforms.
- Their concierge team handles everything on the side of the experience.
- The photographs and description of each experience are usually very accurate.
- Blueboard rewards never expire.
- Very North-America centered at the moment, so it might not be the most friendly for clients with a high headcount in other parts of the world.
- Not the best bet for companies with less than 100 employees.
- You have to set a budget at the start. That we know of, you can’t pay for each experience as you go.
Blueboard
Review:
Blueboard’s platform helps companies of any size create personalized employee recognition and incentive programs that celebrate and elevate their best talent. From skydiving to virtual cooking classes to family days at the zoo, Blueboard's intuitive platform makes it easy for companies and their managers to reward top-performing employees with exceptional experiences.
Once a reward is sent by a manager, recipients can choose the experience that’s most meaningful to them, and Blueboard’s high-touch Concierge service seamlessly handles all bookings, payments, and logistics. Hundreds of diverse companies use Blueboard to create impactful moments with ease.
Blueboard
Customers:
Pinterest, Ubisoft, Otis, Webcor.
Blueboard
Stats:
- 70+ countries served
- 200+ enterprise customers
- 30,000+ employees rewarded
Blueboard
Pricing:
Most of Blueboard’s pricing is made up of your total rewards budget. There are 8 reward levels, starting at $150/reward. Getting started with Blueboard could range from $19,500 to $37,500, depending on your office location(s). This budget does not expire. Exact and personalized figures are provided by the vendor.
Best For:
Companies that want their rewards and recognition program to be about meaningful experiences without organizing them themselves.
Why we love it
:
Assembly helps small and midsized companies to acknowledge employees so they can build a strong culture and reduce employee churn through peer to peer recognition.
- Explore the platform for free, no need for a credit card or demo
- Great set of features for the price point
- Make your own rewards and even set up a points system with automated incentives
- You have the option to go with a month-to-month plan or a long-term contract. For the latter, you can reach out to their team for a custom deal if it’s a larger team. However, keep in mind that the minimum agreement is 12 months.
- Coins and points do expire, so sometimes they’ll expire by the end of the month before you can use them, although you get more the next period.
- SSO is only included with some plans. For others, it can be purchased as an add-on.
Assembly
Review:
Assembly's employee recognition and rewards software enables HR teams to build stronger cultures with more engaged employees through various forms of recognition.
Specifically, employees use Assembly to recognize their co-workers for accomplishments large and small. In turn, these recognitions can be broadcasted to the rest of the company.
Notably, Assembly offers a free tier for smaller companies, or small teams within an organization that want to give this a try before implementing it at large.
Assembly
Customers:
Casper, Keck School of Medicine, Perforce
Assembly
Stats:
- Companies see >90% monthly participation from employees
- Hundreds of reward options in the US and internationally
Assembly
Pricing:
Assembly offers a free version for up to 20 employees. Paying customers are charged $2.50 - $4.00 per employee per month depending on the features you're looking for and if you choose an annual vs monthly plan.
Best For:
Why we love it
:
Gifted is completely free, easy to set up, lets people choose their gifts, and features automated & timed gifting.
Gifted
Review:
Over 4,000 companies use Gifted to power their rewards and recognition program. We always think customers vote with their dollars and so it’s worth noting they are profitable, with over 90% client retention.
Gifted
Customers:
Zenefits, Wix, Monday.com, Deviant Art, OkCupid
Gifted
Stats:
- Over 90% client retention
- No usage fees
- No minimums
Best For:
Businesses that want to show their appreciation through gifts through a free platform.
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Employee Rewards and Recognition Best Practices
Chances are, implementing an employee rewards and recognition program isn’t the only thing going on in your job. It’s easy to stumble into the various pitfalls when buying and starting one of these programs. Here are the best practices we’ve collected from talking to a few dozen HR professionals about their employee rewards initiatives.
- More Than Money: Something we found to be a tad counterintuitive is that these programs are not at all about the monetary value of the rewards given. In fact, there is very little correlation between the dollar value offered to employees and the impact of the program on retention and engagement. The simple act of recognizing an employee is the core of what drives these programs, especially when done often and from peers.
- HRIS Integration: If your vendor doesn’t integrate with your core HR solution, be very weary. When your rewards platform doesn’t talk to the HRIS in a seamless way (.csv’s don’t count!), it means a lot more manual work for you to continually update it every time a new employee goes through onboarding/offboarding. Plus, we all get busy… so sometimes this work doesn’t get done, which endangers the health of your program.
- Slack/Teams/Email: Even more important than your HRIS integration is your employee rewards and recognition company's ability to integrate with employee software. If employees have to log into another system to participate in your program, it runs a much higher chance of failure.
- Budgeting: The “best practice” is to allocate 1-3% of a person’s salary annually to non-cash rewards. Some of this budget is going to be eaten up by company-wide things like outings, kombucha on tap, etc. Spending around $100-$250 per employee per quarter on rewards is what we’ve seen as a best practice for rewards and recognition programs.
- Breakage: When budgeting your rewards spend, realize that some of the rewards will never be allocated; remember the manager who gets $1,000/mo and only allocates $500. Others will not be redeemed fully, like if an employee gets $100 in points, but only gets a gift worth $50. To circumvent this, make sure to ask your vendor of choice how much you should expect to actually pay out relative to the total rewards you’ll be offering employees.
- Make Time: HR teams are busy. Plain and simple. Most days involve some sort of fire drill. Plus, as a cost center, HR tends to be understaffed and overworked. What we’ve noticed is that even an employee rewards program that starts off strong can die over time. It’s essential to build in time on a monthly/quarterly basis to make sure your program is healthy (put a calendar invite to block off one hour per month). It’s also a best practice to build automation into your rewards program - like people getting rewards at birthdays, anniversaries, etc. This means the program will continue to work even when you’re too busy to check in.
- Manager Buy In: We’ve seen cases where managers are getting $1,000 or more to give away per month to their employees, but they are too busy to do it. Most people just need a gentle nudge. You’ll be able to see in your employee recognition dashboard who needs that nudge. The most important piece of advice here, though, is to lay out why this program is so important to managers and employees alike at the get-go. Show research on how this will impact productivity, retention, and engagement. Getting managers to see how this will allow them to accomplish their goals and become more effective leaders is key.
- Check for Hidden Fees: Some vendors offer free programs. However, you may be paying for it through markups to the products your employees get. For example, your employee gets $20 worth of rewards, and ends up with a coffee mug that retails for $5.99. If a vendor’s model seems too good to be true, make sure there aren’t hidden costs.
- Employee Engagement: Your employee recognition program should be working in concert with your employee engagement platform, or might even be the same product. In addition to your regular engagement data, you should also think about how recognizing and rewarding hard work fits into performance reviews and organizational culture. This solution should be more than just an employee gifting platform!
- Not Just Managers: Make sure your managers AND employees are able to recognize other people in the organization. Otherwise, it’s a slap in the face to employees who feel as though their opinion doesn’t matter.
- Culture Matters: Many companies look at employee rewards and recognition platforms as a way to fix issues with their culture. These programs can enhance your culture, but if you are getting daily negative Glassdoor reviews and generally are in the bottom quartile of companies in terms of culture, you may need more drastic measures before implementing this sort of program.
- Align With Values: Make sure your vendor of choice allows for employees to be recognized along your company values. For example, when someone gets a reward, they are getting it for moving the mission of your business forward, or for helping a colleague/customer in a way that aligns with what your organization stands for.
- Focused Rewards: Don’t fall into the trap of offering 30,000 different options as rewards. Stick to 200-300 that you feel good about. Too much choice can lead to employee indecision. Also, don't stress too much about which ones you include, you can always change it!
- Don’t Overthink: We’ve all been there. There’s a new project we want to run with, but we’re not sure how to get started, what to measure, etc (hopefully this page will help you with that!). So many “strategy meetings” are spent trying to solve these issues… but the best advice is to simply follow the playbook your chosen vendor lays out for you. They have all the best practices and want you to succeed in a pilot. You can spend a lot of time and effort worrying about which perks to offer, for whom, etc. Our advice? Just do it!
Best Employee Rewards and Recognition Platforms
- Motivosity:Employee recognition plus engagement and developmentRecognition plus employee engagement and development
- Bonusly:Best rewards platform for peer to peer recognitionInternational gift-cards, feedback, & many integrations
- Workstars:Great for companies that value the importance of employee recognitionFor highly flexible rewarding
- Cooleaf:Team-building via experiences, challenges, activities…Team-building via experiences, challenges, activities…
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