Note: Company Initiatives are only available on the Organization plan
Why alignment matters
Every company has priorities. They live in strategy decks, all-hands presentations, and leadership meetings. But for most employees, those priorities feel distant—abstract goals that don't clearly connect to the work they do every day.
That disconnect isn't about a lack of effort. It's a visibility problem. When company strategy lives in one place and individual goals live in another, people are left guessing about whether they're working on the right things. Managers can't easily see how their team's goals roll up to what the company cares about. And leaders have no clear way to measure whether the organization is actually executing against its plan.
Company Initiatives in Bonusly solve this by giving everyone—from individual contributors to executives—a shared, visible set of organizational priorities that individual goals can connect to directly.
What Company Initiatives are
A Company Initiative is a high-level organizational priority that your company wants to focus on. Think of it as the answer to "What are we trying to accomplish this quarter (or this year)?" -- made visible to everyone in the company, not just the leadership team.
Initiatives might look like the following:
Improve customer retention—a cross-functional priority that touches product, support, and success teams
Launch in a new market—a strategic bet that multiple teams are contributing to
Strengthen our engineering foundation—a technical priority that spans several quarters
Build a culture of continuous feedback—a people-focused goal that affects how every team operates
Each initiative has a status that reflects its overall health: On track, At risk, Off track, or Completed. Optional start and end dates give the initiative a timeframe, and you can align initiatives to your company values to reinforce the connection between strategy and culture.
The key difference from a static plan or a slide deck: initiatives are living, visible, and directly connected to the goals people set in Bonusly.
How it works
Setting up initiatives (admins)
Admins create and manage Company Initiatives. Here's how to get started:
Go to Growth > Initiatives in the navigation menu
Click Create initiative
Give it a clear name that your whole company will understand—not internal shorthand, but a priority anyone can read and grasp
Add an optional description, timeframe, and company value alignment
Set the initial status (most new initiatives start as On track)
You can create as many initiatives as you need. That said, fewer focused initiatives tend to work better than a long list—the goal is clarity, not comprehensiveness.
Connecting goals to initiatives
This is where initiatives become actionable. When employees or managers create or edit a goal in Bonusly, they can link it to a Company Initiative. That connection is visible to everyone—so you can see exactly which goals are supporting which company priorities.
Over time, this creates a clear picture:
For employees: "My goal to reduce support ticket response time is connected to our Improve Customer Retention initiative. I know my work matters."
For managers: "Three of my team's five goals are connected to initiatives. We're aligned."
For leaders: "Twelve goals across four teams are connected to our new market launch. We have real momentum."
Managing initiatives over time
Initiatives aren't set-and-forget. As work progresses, admins update the status to reflect reality:
On track -- things are progressing as planned
At risk -- there are concerns or blockers that could affect progress
Off track -- the initiative is behind or stalled
Completed -- the work is done
These status updates keep the whole company honest about where things stand. When an initiative shifts to At risk, it's a signal for teams to adjust. When it's marked Completed, it's a moment to celebrate.
Admins can also archive initiatives that are no longer relevant, keeping the active list focused on what matters now.
What it looks like day to day
You don't need to do anything special to benefit from Company Initiatives. Once they're set up, they show up naturally in the places where you're already working in Bonusly:
When you create or edit a goal, you'll see the option to connect it to an initiative
When you view your goals, you can see which company priority each one supports
When you look at an initiative, you can see all the goals connected to it—across teams and individuals
For managers, this means your team's alignment is visible without asking for status updates. For leaders, it means you can see whether the organization's goals are actually connected to its strategy -- not in a spreadsheet, but in real time.
FAQs
What plan do I need for Company Initiatives? Company Initiatives are available on the Organization plan. If you're on a different plan, you'll see Company Initiatives in the navigation as a preview with information about what's included and how to upgrade.
Who can create Company Initiatives? Only admins. This keeps the list of initiatives intentional and aligned with actual company strategy. Employees and managers can view initiatives and connect their goals to them.
Can I link more than one goal to the same initiative? Yes—and you should when it makes sense. Multiple goals from different people and teams can all connect to the same initiative. That's the point: seeing how distributed work rolls up to shared priorities.
What happens to goals if an initiative is archived? The goals remain. They just won't show a connection to an active initiative anymore. Archiving an initiative doesn't delete or modify any goals.
Is there a limit on how many initiatives I can create? No hard limit. But we'd recommend keeping the active list focused—three to five initiatives at a time tends to work best. Too many initiatives dilute the clarity that makes them useful.
Can employees see all Company Initiatives? Yes. Initiatives are visible company-wide by design. The whole point is shared visibility into what the company is prioritizing.