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With so many different employee recognition platforms available, figuring out which is the right one for you is hard. You know you want to recognize your employee's achievements regularly to keep engagement high, but you need to figure out which tool is best. In this post, I'll help you make your choice easier by sharing my insights on the best employee recognition platforms you can use to celebrate your top talent and keep them motivated.

What is an Employee Recognition Platform?

Employee recognition platforms are tools that help organizations recognize their staff through public praise, perks, and rewards programs, creating a positive workplace culture that celebrates great work and success. These tools give employees a voice and the ability to praise each other through public kudos that connect recognition with your company's core values. Some also have a rewards catalog where employees can redeem points for gift cards, company swag, charitable donations, or other unique rewards.

Employee recognition platforms ultimately make employees feel more valued, making them more likely to stay with your company longer. They use automation to simplify the process of acknowledging employee contributions and key milestones, reducing administrative burdens on your staff to manually track achievements and dates. They also make it easier to showcase your workplace culture, build camaraderie between teams, and reward good work with perks.

Detailed Overviews of the 10 Best Employee Recognition Platforms

Here are detailed descriptions of my top 10 employee recognition platforms that highlight each system’s best use case and noteworthy features. I’ve also included screenshots to give you a snapshot of their user interface too. Plus, I’ve included 20 more bonus options below if you’d like even more possibilities to consider.

Best recognition tool within a global HR solution

  • Free demo available
  • Flat rate user pricing, with a free version for businesses with up to 200 people
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Rating: 4.8/5

Deel is a comprehensive HR solution that covers virtually all aspects of your core HR functions. It offers payroll, onboarding and offboarding, workflow and document management, and other helpful tools, and enables businesses to hire and manage employees and contractors from over 150 countries. The company acts as an employer of record (EOR) so you can hire internationally without setting up a local entity.

Why I chose Deel: This platform is a comprehensive all-in-one solution, and it's well suited to businesses who want to tap into the potential of a global workforce. Its recognition capabilities lie in its Slack plugins. With the Slack integration, you can facilitate 1-on-1 meetings between managers and employees, send out company-wide announcements, and—most notably—share kudos.

Kudos are a great way to give public recognition for a job well done. Meanwhile, managers can recognize their team members individually during 1-on-1 conversations. Other helpful features that come with the Slack integration are onboarding tools for new employees, an org chart, and engagement tools like meetups and interest groups.

Deel Standout Features & Integrations:

Features include the system's capability to simplify global payroll and compliance. This includes providing contractor compliance with contracts that adhere to local laws in over 150 countries, and automatic updates when laws change. It also supports localized contracts, invoicing, and payments in over 120 currencies, including cryptocurrencies, and manages tax form collection for contractors.

Integrations include Ashby, BambooHR, Expensify, Greenhouse, Hibob, Netsuite, Okta, OneLogin, Quickbooks, SCIM, Xero, Workday, and Workable. An Open API is also available to build custom integrations.

Best employee recognition and rewards platform for hybrid teams

  • Free demo available
  • From $2.25/employee/month (billed annually)
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Rating: 4.7/5

Mo, which is short for Moments, helps you recognize the great work your coworkers do every day by posting Moments of appreciation and celebration via their mobile app or website. Businesses can post a Moment, tag your company values, and add an on-the-spot reward to incentivize top performers' positive behaviors. The platform is a popular choice for small teams and enterprise organizations alike.

Why I picked Mo: I included Mo because their platform measurably increases employee retention and engagement by boosting morale and building a connected culture that people don’t want to leave. Mo is a new kind of reward and recognition platform that makes it easy for busy managers to meaningfully recognize, engage, and connect with their teams. Often, recognition tools fail because they're focused on top-down recognition, are based only on transactional rewards, and only benefit the highest performers with generic gift cards. This leaves the majority of your people feeling invisible and under-appreciated.

Mo does things differently: they equip managers with weekly suggestions to energize and connect with their people, help teams build habits of recognition into their day-to-day rhythms, and go beyond simple rewards as a way to motivate staff. With Mo, it’s easy to design and automate your rewards and recognition program, with a huge range of rewards to choose from, including top brands like Amazon, Doordash, Uber, Starbucks, Deliveroo, and ASOS. Their rewards and recognition platform is also available across 26 countries and in 12 languages, making them a great choice for multi-national organizations.

Mo Standout Features & Integrations:

Features include Boosts, a performance-enhancing automation that prompts people to post wins, recognition, key results, and more so that over time, these consistent habits transform culture and performance. You can implement peer-to-peer rewards with full budget control, and manage awards and nominations, from Employee of the Month to Sustainability Superhero.

Mo offers an Assistant tool for leaders, which ensures that your busy people managers create a more consistent employee experience across your company, while role-modeling positive behaviors. The Assistant feature reminds leaders of upcoming employee occasions such as birthdays and work anniversaries, and if they haven't shared appreciation with a coworker in a while, it prompts them to do so.

Mo also includes tools to help employees create vibrant personal profiles where they can share working preferences, hobbies, and interests, enabling people to connect over common ground. You can pin your favorite Moments to your personal highlights reel and use them in future performance reviews.

Other features include sophisticated budget management functionalities and analytics, so you can control your spending, run reports, keep your accounting team happy, and analyze the success of your employee recognition efforts.

Integrations are available with popular communication tools like email systems, Microsoft Teams, and Slack. Their platform is also fully GDPR compliant and secure (ISO 27001 accredited).

Best for strengthening corporate culture and creating a positive work environment

  • Free demo available
  • Pricing upon request
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Rating: 4.9/5

Workvivo is an employee experience app designed to foster engagement and emotional connection between employees and your company culture, no matter where they're located.

Why I picked Workvivo: Their platform functions as a modern intranet, communications hub, and engagement and employee recognition tool, blended into a single social network experience. Their system incorporates a familiar social media-like feel that maximizes engagement and makes it easy for leadership members to communicate across the platform through multimedia messages. The system also supports employee surveys and provides engagement analytics so you can keep tabs on your team morale.

Workvivo Standout Features & Integrations:

Standout features for Workvivo include public shout-outs to recognize a job well done, tools to celebrate individual and team achievements, and peer-driven nominations for company awards. They also have a badge feature that enables organizations to further recognize employee achievements, which can be customized to mesh with your corporate culture.

By giving employees the tools to amplify their own voice, Workvivo aims to foster a deeper connection between your workforce and your company culture, goals, and values.

Integrations are available with many commonly used HR tools, including payroll software, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.

Best recognition platform for incentivizing high-performing teams

  • 60-day free trial
  • From $2.70/user/month
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Rating: 4.8/5

Bonusly is an employee recognition platform that makes it fun to celebrate your teammates for their awesomeness.

Why I picked Bonusly: Using Bonusly, you can call out your peers when they go above and beyond to complete a task and reward them with points. Employees can then convert the points into real-life rewards, such as gift cards from popular brands, or they can donate the money to a variety of charities featured on the platform. You can also create custom rewards for your team at no additional cost.

Another highlight of using this tool is that it creates a recognition culture by leveraging several types of recognition. Users can use plain text, images, GIFs, hashtags, and emojis to praise coworkers, which keeps things entertaining. The point-giving process is fun and transparent, so people know that their efforts will be acknowledged if they complete a task in good time or deliver great results. The point system is also a great way of reminding people of your organization’s core values.

Bonusly Standout Features & Integrations:

Standout features in Bonusly's software include their peer-to-peer recognition features and automated milestone celebrations. Once a recognition post has been made public, other team members can comment and chime in to share their appreciation or tag your company's core values. In addition, Bonusly's automated milestone celebrations make sure an employee's anniversary, birthday, or other important date won't slip by unnoticed, giving administrators greater peace of mind.

Integrations include BamboHR, SAP, Workday, Namely, Zenefits, ADP, Paychex, HiBob, Sage, Microsoft Teams, and Slack, among others.

Best employee recognition and rewards platform for strengthening employee retention

  • Free demo available
  • From $3/user/month

Nectar is an employee recognition platform that helps team members feel valued, connected, and engaged no matter where they work. It works well for small to medium-sized businesses with 50 to 500 employees.

Why I picked Nectar: I included Nectar because their recognition and rewards platform offers a 360-degree set of culture-building tools that enables staff at all levels (peer-to-peer, manager-to-employees, and vice versa) to send meaningful recognition shoutouts rooted in your company's core values. Their platform was designed around 6 key pillars (Connection, Recognition, Empathy, Alignment, Trust, and Elevation = CREATE) that help organizations build a solid company culture.

Nectar Standout Features & Integrations:

Features include public shoutout tools, core value hashtags, automatic milestone celebrations (e.g., birthdays and work anniversaries), and incentive points that are redeemable for rewards like gift cards, entertainment discounts, custom rewards, company-branded swag, or items your employees can choose for themselves through Amazon.com. Platform admins can also use Nectar to create custom challenges, such as health and wellness initiatives, and recognize employees internally for their participation by gifting them Nectar points.

On top of all that, Nectar includes useful analytics that help HR teams spot any trends in how individual managers are recognizing their employees, identify which core values are recognized the most, and uncover examples of employees who aren't being recognized to help them find out why.

Integrations are available with 20+ popular HR software systems, including ADP, BambooHR, Gusto, Microsoft Teams, Namely, NetSuite, Paycor, Rippling, Slack, Workday, and Zenefits. To make system access smoother for your workforce, Nectar integrates with many single sign-on (SSO) providers too, including Azure, G Suite, Okta, OneLogin, Ping Identity, VMware, and others.

Best for empowering employees to reward each other

  • Free demo available
  • From $2 to $5/user/month depending on product chosen
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Rating: 4.7/5

Motivosity is an employee recognition and engagement platform that addresses work culture through a research-backed approach to building gratitude and rapport among different teams. Using Motivosity, employees can be recognized by each other and by their superiors, with top achievements celebrated publicly in a social-media-like interface.

Why I picked Motivosity: Motivosity’s Recognize product empowers employees to celebrate each other's everyday wins publicly. Each month, employees are given a set amount of 'influence currency' (aka recognition dollars) that they can reward their colleagues with as they see fit.

Motivosity also has a ThanksMatters Card, which is a Visa card that's accepted worldwide. Each time employees are recognized by their staff or management, real dollars accumulate on their ThanksMatters Card - not points, like with most other systems. These dollars can be redeemed at any location that accepts Visa, whenever your employee chooses, giving them a lot more flexibility than with many typical rewards and recognition platforms.

Motivosity Standout Features & Integrations:

Features include a social media-like public activity feed, public achievements and celebrations, public comments, influence currency (recognition dollars), a dollar-based accrual system, customizable rewards, bonus 'sweeteners', spot bonuses, highlights & announcements, personal profiles, organizational charts, interest groups, and financial reporting tools. Their Milestone Tracker ensures that milestones like birthdays and anniversary dates are easily accessible by date so people can plan celebrations in advance too.

Integrations are available with 20+ popular software systems, including ADP Workforce Now, BambooHR, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Okta, Paylocity, Paychex, Rippling, SAP SuccessFactors, Slack, UKG Pro, Workday, Zenefits, and others.

Best for automating years-of-service awards

  • 14-day free trial
  • Pricing upon request

Bucketlist Rewards is an employee recognition platform that utilizes gamification to promote engagement within organizations. This innovative platform allows companies of any size to quickly and easily recognize their employees for a job well done. Through its intuitive interface, Bucketlist Rewards provides an easy way for employers to reward their employees with points when they go the extra mile or achieve success in the workplace. Team members can choose from over 2,576 rewards or make requests for new rewards.

Why I picked Bucketlist Rewards: Their rewards system helps motivate employees by providing them with tangible benefits, such as merchandise, discounts, vouchers, and more. Companies can also customize their own rewards programs that best fit the company culture and values. With Bucketlist Rewards, employers can show appreciation for hard work while increasing motivation among team members in a meaningful way. In addition, employees have access to an engaging leaderboard where they can compare results with one another and strive towards becoming top performers in their organization.

Rewards don't have to just be performance-based, they can celebrate events and milestones like employee events, including anniversaries, birthdays, and welcome messages. You can automate correlating rewards, such as 100 bonus points for 1-year anniversary or a $50 gift card on birthdays.

Bucketlist Rewards Standout Features & Integrations:

Features include peer-to-peer and manager recognition, automatic milestone anniversary workflows, customizable rewards & badges, company-wide announcements, weekly newsletter templates, retention tools, and unlimited support by email or phone.

Integrations include Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Gmail, and Slack.

Best for developing a recognition strategy and a culture of appreciation

  • Free demo available
  • Pricing upon request
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Rating: 4.9/5

With Cooleaf, you can shout-out your workplace heroes—both managers and peers—for everyday wins, and reward them with employee incentives they'll be excited about. You can design your own global rewards catalog to include charitable giving options, team swag, gift cards, experiences, and more. Your team members can then choose to redeem their points for rewards, or even use them to send gifts internally or externally.

Why I picked Cooleaf: Cooleaf helps companies empower and celebrate their employees through a meaningful recognition strategy. To help you get set up, their engagement experts partner with you to create meaningful experiences that will drive your team recognition. Cooleaf also helps organizations reinforce their core values and incentivize the right behaviors at the right time through ongoing communications, recognition challenges, and virtual team-building activities. Their customizable engagement calendar also makes it easy to maintain a positive, fun culture for both remote and in-person teams.

Cooleaf Standout Features & Integrations:

Features include automatic work anniversary rewards, personalized milestones, digital cards, a gifting budget, core value tags, performance measurement tools, and a large catalog of rewards to choose from. Their platform also includes tools to capture employee sentiment through pulse surveys and monitor their employee experience through powerful dashboards and analytics. Employees will also appreciate how easy it is to recognize their co-workers' achievements thanks to their popular integrations with Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Integrations are available with many other platforms including popular HRIS providers, single sign-on platforms, and learning & development systems.

Best for linking employee feedback, engagement, and performance

  • 14-day free trial
  • From $8/user/month
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Rating: 4.8/5

Leapsome is an employee development and recognition platform that helps organizations connect the dots between employee feedback, engagement, and performance. Used by companies like Spotify, Northvolt, Unity, and Workato, Leapsome enables a continuous cycle of employee recognition and personalized learning that powers the growth of your people and business.

Why I picked Leapsome: Like other platforms in this list, Leapsome goes beyond employee recognition and engagement and offers more depth to your HR team, including modern performance management features like 360-degree reviews, and goals & OKR tracking. You can customize and run leadership reviews designed around the key competencies of each role, collect meaningful feedback from across the company, and make it actionable through development frameworks and learning paths.

Leapsome Standout Features & Integrations:

Features include public or private recognition and praise, open-ended or competency-based feedback, mentorship features, feedback analytics, continuous performance feedback tools, engagement surveys, a best practice library, engagement benchmarks, and automated learning and onboarding experiences.

Their instant feedback feature captures timely feedback regarding projects, results, or initiatives, which can be easily incorporated into 1:1 meetings to make the feedback actionable. Another worthwhile feature is their praise wall which acts as a shared dashboard of all employee recognition and praise messages given and received across the company, to help boost employee morale and motivation.

Integrations are available with Active Directory, ADP, BambooHR, GSuite, HiBob, Jira, Microsoft Teams, PayFit, Personio, Rippling, Slack, and others.

Best for connecting praise with performance and goals

  • Free demo available
  • From $11/user/month
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Rating: 4.7/5

Lattice is a comprehensive people management platform with tools to manage performance and development, engagement, OKRs and goals, and compensation. Employee recognition is also facilitated through the platform, which helps you connects praise with performance and goals.

Why I picked Lattice: Yes, this software has a praise wall of sorts. But the way that recognition is exchanged in the platform goes beyond a simple kudos. You can send praise privately or publicly, and connect company values to your messages. Because praise is given within the broader platform that encompasses performance and goals management, it's easy to make recognition meaningful, specific, and relevant. The software also connects with communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams to send praise messages where employees are already chatting.

As for the rest of the platform, it's easy to set up and manage a custom performance review process for every manager to follow. Managers can also keep track of their one-on-one meetings, notes, and action items through the system. Finally, engagement surveys are sent out to employees to help you track key indicators of company culture.

Lattice Standout Features & Integrations

Features include a mobile app, individual and business goals, one-on-one check-in tools, employee engagement surveys, status updates, performance reviews, growth plans, career tracks, and reporting and analytics.

Integrations include popular human resource information systems (HRIS), including ADP, BambooHR, Namely, Personio, Rippling, Workday, and Zenefits, as well as other popular software platforms such as Gmail, Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Slack and others.

The 10 Best Employee Recognition Platforms Comparison Chart

This comparison chart summarizes basic details about each of my top employee recognition platform selections. You can view pricing details and the availability of free trials or demos side-by-side to help you find the best platform that works for your budget and business needs.

Tools Price
Deel Flat rate user pricing, with a free version for businesses with up to 200 people
Mo From $2.25/employee/month (billed annually)
Workvivo Pricing upon request
Bonusly From $2.70/user/month
Nectar From $3/user/month
Motivosity From $2 to $5/user/month depending on product chosen
Bucketlist Rewards Pricing upon request
Cooleaf Pricing upon request
Leapsome From $8/user/month
Lattice From $11/user/month
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Compare Software Specs Side by Side

Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.

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Other Options

Here are a few more worthwhile options that didn’t make the best employee recognition platforms list but are still worth taking a look at:

  1. Awardco

    Best all-in-one employee recognition platform for building culture and driving behavior

  2. Guusto

    Best recognition platform for companies with frontline workers

  3. WorkTango

    Best employee recognition platform for amplifying public praise and incentivizing key behaviors

  4. ClearCompany

    Best for measuring the impact of recognition & engagement programs over time

  5. Assembly

    Best employee recognition software for improving productivity and engagement

  6. Kudos

    Best for gamifying peer-to-peer recognition

  7. Vantage Circle

    Best for automating all types of corporate gifting

  8. Achievers

    Best for validating praise through additional peer engagement

  9. Recognize

    Best platform for hosting employee challenges to promote healthy competition

  10. Know Your Team

    Best employee recognition app for encouraging employees to provide feedback

  11. Fond

    Best for offering corporate discounts to your employees and their families

  12. Workhuman

    Best employee recognition platform for aligning your team with company core values

  13. Blueboard

    Best for rewarding staff with activity-based experiential gifts

  14. Espresa

    Best for simplifying public recognition through gamification

  15. SnackNation

    Best for rewarding employees with personalized prize boxes

  16. Empuls

    Best employee recognition platform that acts as a centralized social intranet

  17. Xoxoday Plum

    Best employee recognition platform for offering customized incentives

  18. Xoxoday Compass

    Best employee recognition platform for automating recognition across the employee lifecycle

  19. Connecteam

    Best employee recognition platform for redeemable tokens

  20. Workleap Officevibe

    Best employee recognition platform with direct links to company OKRs

Selection Criteria for Employee Recognition Platforms

Wondering how I selected the best employee recognition platforms for this list? I'm happy to share my methodology.

To get started, I scoured the web to create a long list of the most popular employee recognition platforms based on recent market data. Next, I reviewed each platform's website in fine detail and assessed each system individually based on my selection criteria below.

Here's a summary of the selection criteria I used to pull together this top 10 list:

Core Functionalities

Each time I create a new top 10 list of software, I always start out by determining a list of the core features I want to assess first. That way, I can be 100% confident that nothing important is missing from my top choices. For employee recognition software, here are the core functionalities that each software system had to meet in order to make it onto my initial long list:

  • Employee profiles that cover the basics (e.g., role, department, location, and contact info) with the ability to add custom details according to user preferences
  • Peer recognition tools that allow your staff to praise their peers frequently and openly, for all other employees to see (a great way to boost employee morale)
  • Notification features that ensure key stakeholders will see a recognized milestone as soon as it pops up in an activity feed (including @mentions)

Key Features

In addition to the core functionalities above, I also assessed the following key features to make my final selections for this list:

  • Private feedback tools: In addition to public-facing feedback that all team members can see, systems should also give managers the option to provide private feedback when appropriate too.
  • Simple reward system: The platform should enable your managers and HR professionals to reward top team members with something meaningful. This may be custom awards or badges that are displayed on their profiles for bragging rights. Or, it could be a point-based system where employees use points to select rewards from a global prize catalog or reward gateway.
  • Automation: The software should leverage automation to help your managers reward high-performing employees, and also mark key dates like birthdays and work anniversaries, so nothing slips through the cracks unnoticed.
  • Performance tracking: From an HR and management perspective, you’ll want a platform that can track multiple key performance indicators (KPIs) or objective and key results (OKRs) so you can pinpoint your top performers easily.
  • Reporting: The platform should organize your employee recognition data into well-defined metrics reports. This will help your HR team ensure your program is on track, and make it easier to present the data to management.
  • Customization and branding: In order to create a strong tie between your organization and your recognition system of choice, the ability to incorporate your company brand is key. That includes customizing elements of the platform's appearance to align with your corporate identity, logos, and fonts.
  • Social recognition: Features like leaderboards and employee nominations make recognition fun and engaging. It can also incentivize higher performance, because people will want to achieve that top employee standing.

Usability

The best employee recognition software makes giving shout-outs easy. I looked for user-friendly platforms with an intuitive interface. Some software also incentivizes recognition by creating a social-media-like environment including social feeds and real-time notifications. Additional usability features like mobile apps are definitely also a plus.

Integrations

I looked for employee recognition platforms that integrate with other HR software like performance management systems, HRIS systems, and employee feedback platforms. I also looked for integrations with communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, so employees can receive recognition in the tools they’re already using.

Pricing

Often, it all comes down to cost. That's why it's important to get a realistic understanding of your budget before you spend too much time researching employee recognition platforms.

If you're running a small business with only a handful of employees, you may be able to make do with using a freemium plan. However, paid plans will always give you a better return on your investment, if you can afford one.

Also, many of the platforms in this list do offer a free trial period so you can test it out before committing. This will give you a first-hand experience of how much the platform will satisfy your needs before you introduce it to the rest of your staff.

Employee Recognition Platforms: Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some answers to frequently asked questions you may have about employee recognition programs and platforms and how they work:

Why is employee recognition important?

In the never-ending quest to retain your top talent and keep them engaged, employee recognition is more important than ever. Celebrating employee achievements in a meaningful way makes employees feel valued at work. And employees who feel valued are more likely to stay with your company longer.

Employee recognition platforms have emerged as a strategic solution to this challenge. Using automation, they simplify the process of acknowledging employee contributions and key milestones. They also make it easier to showcase your workplace culture, build camaraderie between teams, and reward good work with perks.

 

What are the benefits of employee recognition platforms?

Employee recognition platforms offer many benefits. They’ll give your employees a voice, and create a fun digital space where your staff can interact. They’ll also help you celebrate key milestones, identify top performers, and build a positive company culture. They can even help you establish clear and comprehensive employee recognition and awards programs at your business.

These platforms also use automation workflows to ensure no milestones slip through the cracks. As the public praise starts to pile up, you can expect your employee morale to go up, while your turnover goes down. All thanks to a platform that gamifies the process of giving feedback and credit, where credit’s due.

What is an employee recognition program?

An employee recognition program is an employer-led initiative to reward employees who exceed expectations, reach personal or work-related milestones, or stand for your organization’s values.

Employee recognition programs can vary greatly in their depth. Many companies offer basic reward options and acknowledgments, such as birthday treats, or Years of Service Awards. While this does fall into the category of employee recognition, it often falls a little flat on the receiving end.

In contrast, a proper employee recognition platform, like the ones in this list, can take your employee recognition program to the next level. You can use these systems to foster more employee engagement across your workforce, while recognizing hard work publicly. You can also essentially set them to run on autopilot, so they don’t take up a lot of your time.

Are there different types of employee recognition platforms?

Yes, there are, and no two platforms are exactly the same. Some take the form of a social engagement platform where employees can post peer-to-peer feedback publicly. These systems feature activity feeds where all other employees can see peer-based shout-outs and respond to them with their own comments or emoji-based reactions.

Others are more focused on performance and productivity, often with links to company-wide goals or OKRs (objectives and key results). In these systems, 360-degree feedback is often collected privately upon request, and automatically linked to formal performance reviews to provide a full picture of each employee’s accomplishments.

The best employee recognition platforms are the ones that take a blended approach, like the ones I’ve chosen for this list. Most of these systems include a point-based system that gamifies the employee recognition process. Employees can earn reward points for reaching pre-determined goals or giving peer-to-peer feedback, which can then be redeemed for a reward of their choice. Also known as reward gateways, this type of blended software serves a dual purpose as a combined employee engagement platform and employee recognition solution merged into one.

Do employee recognition programs work?

Yes, absolutely! Employee recognition and awards programs have been shown to increase employee morale, company culture and productivity. Beyond that, recent research has shown that properly recognized employees are 63% more likely to stay in their job for the next 3-6 months than those who received no recognition at all. On the flip side, in a 2022 survey, 44% of employees cited a lack of recognition as their main reason for changing jobs or quiet quitting.

In another 2022 study, 80% of employees stated they would work harder if they were shown more appreciation, and 92% of employees would likely repeat a specific action if given proper recognition for it. Both these stats clearly show why it’s important to reward your top performers, if you want them to keep performing at the same level.

At the end of the day whether in comes in the form of money, certificates, personal or public appreciation  employee recognition programs lead to increased job satisfaction and employee engagement levels.

Are there other ways to reward and recognize employees?

There is no limit to the ways you can recognize and reward your employees, and it pays to get creative. There are simple approaches that won’t cost you anything, such as adding all your staff to your company website’s About Us page, mentioning their achievements in a company newsletter, or giving them a special shout-out in a group staff meeting.

On the other end of the spectrum, you could offer top performers financial incentives, such as profit sharing incentives, stock options, or an ownership stake in the business.

To help you get your creative juices flowing, take a look at our well-defined list of 30 creative employee recognition and appreciation ideas for more inspiration.

What are experiential rewards?

Experiential rewards are a type of incentive that provides employees with a real life experience instead of a physical or monetary reward. Sometimes called experience-based rewards, this type of reward is often highly valued by employees because they create long lasting memories and deepen emotional connections between your staff and your company. Due to this fact, offering experiential rewards can help you improve your employee morale and motivate your employees to strive for top notch performance.

Here are some examples of experiential rewards you could consider offering your employees:

  • Special event tickets
  • A weekend trip or hotel voucher
  • A spa day or wellness retreat
  • A gourmet dining experience (e.g., a cooking class or private chef tasting)
  • Outdoor adventure activities
  • Exclusive access to a company event
  • A chance to meet a celebrity or influencer (if your company has connections to one)

As you can see, any one of these items would create more positive memories than a gift card or some free company swag. Definitely some food for thought!

Other Recognition Resources

As you can probably tell, employee recognition is something we're passionate about at People Managing People. And we practice what we preach.

To help you bring the best employee recognition practices to your own workforce, here's a collection of my favorite in-house resources on this topic:

Other Software Reviews

Looking for other ways to develop a culture of recognition in your workplace? Here are some other types of software that'll point you in the right direction:

Improve Your Company’s Culture With Employee Recognition Platforms 

Your employees want to feel appreciated. And there’s no better way of thanking them for their work than offering real-life rewards. Employee recognition platforms make the recognition process easy and transparent. They bring your employee recognition program to life, and motivate your team to provide feedback, praise co-workers, and respect company values. 

Lastly, before you go, don't forget to subscribe to our weekly People Managing People newsletter. We'll keep you in the loop regarding industry trends in human resources best practices. 

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By Kim Behnke

Kim Behnke is an HR Tool Expert & Writer for People Managing People. She draws on her 9 years of human resources experience and her keen eye for systematic processes to support her analyses of the top HR tools on the market. She is passionate about maximizing efficiencies and streamlining workflows to ensure internal systems run smoothly. Kim's HR experience includes recruitment, onboarding, performance management, training and development, policy development and enforcement, and HR analytics. She also has degrees in psychology, writing, publishing, and technical communication, and recently completed a Certified Digital HR Specialist program through the Academy to Innovate HR. When away from her desk, she can usually be found outside tending to her ever-expanding garden.