The importance of rewarding your team members can’t be overstated, from its positive effect on performance to its ability to boost retention. But equally important is implementing the right employee recognition platform to deliver and manage those rewards.
Without the appropriate tools, an employee rewards program can create way too much work for your human resources department. Ordering and shipping physical gifts is a big undertaking in today’s ever-growing remote work environment (plus those gifts aren’t what employees want). Even purchasing digital gift cards directly from the retailer requires a lot of manual effort.
In order to make sure you get the best rewards solution for your employee recognition program, here are three features to look for as you evaluate your options.
READ MORE: How a Reward and Recognition Platform Fits Into Your HR Tech Stack
It’s important for your employee recognition platform to give you flexible options that fit the needs of your program. First, look for an extensive reward catalog that includes gift cards from a wide variety of top retailers and restaurants, cash-equivalent choices like prepaid cards and PayPal, multi-brand cards that offer more freedom for recipients, and even charitable e-donations for those who want to use their rewards to give back.
You’ll also want a tool that offers flexibility in the delivery methods for your digital rewards. Email is obviously the default for most employees, but you may also want the option to send gift cards by SMS or within your internal chat program. The right employee recognition platform can even let you make rewards more impactful by distributing them publicly during company events — which, according to our NAPCO Employee Incentives Report, is the method employees prefer most. For example, BHN Rewards integrates directly with Microsoft Teams, allowing managers to send rewards during live meetings or share them in public channels.
If your company employs people in other countries — as so many do these days — you’ll want to make sure your employee recognition platform can support and streamline global rewards. This means offering digital gift cards for brands in the relevant countries and/or prepaid cards like Visa and Mastercard, which can be redeemed in many locations worldwide. It’s also helpful to choose a tool that can translate the rewards into multiple languages. Even if all your employees speak English, sending them gift cards in their native language gives it a more personal touch.
BHN Rewards now allows you to translate reward emails and claim pages into 12 languages! Request a demo today to see this new feature in action.
No matter how big or small your staff is, you want to choose an employee recognition platform that can work for your entire team and continue to grow with you. Look for enterprise-ready features that help you deploy the tool across multiple teams, such as separate workspaces, custom user permission settings, and budget controls. When you’re pricing out your options, remember to ask about any per-user license costs, which can add up fast. A platform that lets you add many users for one price means you can empower managers in every department to recognize employees with rewards regularly, taking the administrative burden off your HR staff.
Need more tips on getting your employee rewards program off the ground? Get started with these six steps!
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
