Optimal Budget for Recognition & Rewards

Rewards play a big factor in employee engagement and ensuring the WorkTango platform brings value to the organization as a whole, and each individual employee. 

Allocating the correct amount of points per employee in the system ensures that both your organization and each employee benefits - creating an engaging and valuable experience that encourages continuous platform usage. By contrast, less points equates to fewer and often insignificant rewards, leading to dissatisfied users, reduced engagement and platform usage. 

The #1 piece of critical feedback we hear from employees across all organizations is the lack of points to send and redeem for rewards. 

WorkTango recommends budgeting at least $70 per employee per year for a solid program - increasing to $100-$125 per employee per year provides the optimal experience for your employees.

Did you know? On average, 20% of an organization's annual rewards budget is left unspent.  With WorkTango there's no upfront fees - you only pay for points employees redeem. Spend your budget on employees, not breakage and adjust at any time to fuel your engagement program.

Check out our article on the benefits of a points-based rewards system to see how a good employee reward system is one of the most cost-effective drivers of employee engagement and retention.

Budget Template

WorkTango has created a budget template to help you determine your company's Recognition & Rewards budget as it applies to the platform. Access the template here. 

Rewards Budget Best Practices

• Keep it simple: 1 point = 1 penny* 
• Assign no less than $17.50 per Quarter ($70 a year) per employee. 

  Why: regular refreshes of points drive higher adoption)  

• Provide more points to a manager, based upon the number of direct reports (via Custom Point Rules) 

  Why: providing more points to leadership ensures that they are involved, driving a focus on highlighting activities and improving employee morale 

• Provide additional points to Executives to recognize front-line employees and improve morale. 
• Reset points on a quarterly basis (note, earned points do not expire)  

  Why: allows for alignment with quarterly company goals, and smooths both delivery and redemption of points

Points are paid out on redemption, not assignment/award

* This applies to US Currency; international conversions may vary.  

Incentives Budget Best Practices

• Use these resources to promote behaviors that truly impact your organization’s goals.
  
• Mix the cadences of bonuses: lifetime, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly.

  Why: improves the ability to promote different behaviors across multiple objectives

• More frequent redemption cadences should have lower point values assigned (ie. go on a daily walk = 25 points; complete your quarterly review/NPS survey = 500 points)
  Why: assign more points for the more impactful behaviors/activities. In addition, this approach reduces the admin burden of approval, which can be set to either auto-approved or need admin approval.

Budgeting Best Practices for Milestones & Special Recognitions

• If recognizing birthdays*, assign a 500 point recognition. (Essentially, allowing  an employee to redeem a $5 Amazon or Starbucks gift card.)  

  Why: direct ability to redeem a recognition and celebrate one's birthday

• For big milestones and work anniversaries, you can set the point recognition based on the year of service. Typically, companies recognize the big 5, 10, 15 years, however, many companies have shifted to annual recognition and match the point denomination to their year of service. (ie. 1 year = 100 points; 2 years  = 200 points, etc.) 
• Ask your Implementation Manager about “tokens,” a second currency type typically used for service awards, employee of the month, and other fun milestones outside of birthdays and anniversaries. 

*As a reminder, employees have the option to hide their birthdays. They will still get the recognition but no one, other than admins, will know it is their birthday.