Managers are on the front lines when it comes to influencing retention and creating a positive work environment for their employees. Effectively recognizing your team can make the difference between a burned out, unmotivated team with low morale and high turnover and a highly engaged, high performing, happy one.

Employee recognition, if done correctly, is the easiest, highest-impact thing you can implement as a manager to improve your team. We’ve got all of the resources you’ll need in this article.

Benefits of Bonusly for managers

What will it mean for you as a manager to have your team on Bonusly? Here are just a few of the benefits you can expect:

Improve employee happiness and engagement
Effortlessly promote behaviors and values
Boost collaboration inside your team and with other departments on Bonusly
Distribute responsibility of recognizing employees
Gain insight and visibility on each employee and your entire team

Manager-focused tools

Monthly Giving Tracker

Bonusly’s Monthly Giving Tracker serves as an appreciation barometer to nudge managers to appreciate each of their direct reports throughout the month. The Monthly Giving Tracker gives managers an at-a-glance view of which direct reports have been recognized for the month and indicates which team members might need an appreciation refuel. Once managers have recognized each of their direct reports for the month, they’ll be celebrated too.

Managers on our Achieve plan can also track feedback using the Monthly Giving Tracker and ensure they're providing thoughtful insights to direct reports on a regular basis.

Manager Emails

Suggested Recognition

For busy people managers, consistent recognition is critical for a motivated team, but it’s easy for great work to go unnoticed. Bonusly proactively sends managers an email when one of their reports hasn’t been recognized by their manager in 30 days but has received high-quality peer praise.

This email saves you time by proactively surfacing recognition opportunities and providing two starting points, allowing you to quickly craft a personalized message. Following up on these alerts boosts morale and performance while reinforcing a culture of mutual support.

Monthly Manager Digest

Our Manager Digest gives managers a quick and personal overview of their team's engagement and gets sent directly to their inboxes every week. This email provides a weekly snapshot of bonus activity, top team hashtags, and upcoming birthdays and work anniversaries. With quicker access to their team analytics, managers can gain valuable insights to boost collaboration, recognize employee efforts, and stay connected!

Simply put: the benefit of this email is aggregating all key data for your team without you having to go look for it. We really like to see managers highlighting some of these key wins in team meetings to boost morale and productivity.

Make sure you are getting your manager digest email by checking your Bonusly notification settings!

Custom Feeds

To help you and your team stay up to date on recognition that matters most to you, we have Custom Feeds. Custom Feeds allow Bonusly users to save feeds to their homepage for specific locations, teams, or departments. Everyone has the freedom to decide which feeds they want to see and the flexibility to quickly change them at any time. With easily adjustable views, users can zoom in on relevant recognition without losing sight of the organization as a whole.

Learn more about Custom feeds in our blog!

Manager Direct Messages (Slack & MS Teams)

Managers will receive real-time direct messages (DMs) in Slack or MS Teams when there’s meaningful activity related to their direct reports, helping them act in the moment, as part of their workday. These DMs include:

A direct report receives recognition with high engagement (e.g. many reactions or comments)

A direct report receives recognition from a senior leader (e.g. C-suite or skip-level manager)

A direct report’s birthday
A new direct report joins their team
A direct report’s work anniversary
A direct report hasn’t been recognized by their manager in over 30 days but has received high quality peer recognition (AI)
A direct report hasn’t been recognized by their manager in over 30 days and received too few or low quality peer recognition

Team Dashboard

The Analytics Dashboard provides an overview of your team's recent recognition activity and trends, allowing greater visibility and insights specific to each team.

The five charts on Bonusly's Analytics Dashboard pull data from detailed Bonusly Analytics reports that you can click into to learn more. The Analytics Dashboard automatically surfaces data from the last 30 days to show what's most relevant to you and your team including:

Who’s receiving recognition and how often
How they’re connected by recognition, and,
The types of work they’re recognizing

Check out your team dashboard in your Bonusly Analytics!

Team Activity Page (Achieve Plan only)

We know managers are strapped for time and according to SHRM, most managers spend 210 hours per year preparing performance reviews for their teams. This tool streamlines that process by allowing easy export and analysis of direct report accomplishments for any chosen time period.

The Team Activity page provides a holistic view of team dynamics and performance, allowing managers to foster a more balanced and engaged team environment while saving valuable time. Managers can easily reflect on strengths and gaps through monthly recaps, uncover trends in recognition and feedback, and identify inconsistencies. A detailed table of recent feedback keeps managers updated and ready for 1:1 meetings.

Additionally, this data can be leveraged for quarterly company reviews (QBRs) to highlight key projects and achievements!