This article is best for:
- Global admins
- Connect customers
Awards help streamline the management of company-to-employee bonuses and recognition! With fixed or customizable bonus reasons and amounts, shared budgets, and budget periods, companies can increase recognition for initiatives and company events with ease!
You can use Awards to standardize and facilitate many types of recognition, including:
Referral bonuses
Wellness programs
Training incentives
Customer feedback
Adding new clients
Employee milestones: marriage, new family member, buying a house, etc.
... and more!
Setting up a new Award
First, head to the Awards, Celebrations & Incentives page. You’ll see a list of your account’s active and inactive Awards.
To create a new Award, click the "Create new" button at the top right corner of the page underneath the “Pending Approvals” notification button.
A Create an Award screen will appear with steps to create your award.
Next, fill in the provided sections in each step:
Basic Settings
Name: Name of the award
Avatar: (Optional) Add an icon of your choice
Budget: (Optional) Set the point budget for this award. You can use your total awards budget to help with book-keeping and budget planning.
- If: If no budget is set, the budget is unlimited.
- If: A budget is set, a drop-down will appear for Budget Period.Budget Period: (Optional) Set a budget for Weekly/Monthly/Quarterly/Annual spending from this award. All budgets are refreshed on a calendar schedule. For example, if you set a budget period to Annual, the refresh will occur on January 1st of the next year.
Use post template: Allows you to use a template to standardize your Award
Pro tip: You can keep track of your Budgets and Budget periods on the Awards Overview page. 📊
Have a one-time Award you want to set a budget for?
You can also set a non-recurring budget by selecting the option "Do not refresh" in the Budget Period dropdown. This option will allow Admins to create awards that do not refresh on any defined cadence. Once the award budget has been fully used the award will automatically deactivate. The award can be re-used if an Admin turns it back on.
Use the toggle button to choose if you'd like to use a bonus template. Green means that the template is on.
Awards with templates have a pre-set bonus reason and bonus amount to standardize recognition for specific amounts and events. You won’t need to customize the message each time making it quick and easy to recognize company-wide initiatives.
Awards without templates allow you to customize the message each time new recognition is given. Both the bonus reason and bonus amount can be edited by the giver of the award.
Click the "Next" button to move on to step 2.
Bonus Template
If you have the bonus template turned on, your next step is to fill out the pre-set bonus reason and amount. If you are not using a template, you can skip to the Award Givers section below.
On the "Bonus Template" screen, both the bonus amount and bonus text boxes are customizable.
Bonus amount is the number of points a user will receive when the earn the Award. Pro tip: Bonusly will automatically calculate the number of awards that can be given during your specified budget period to help with budgeting! 🎉
Bonus text is the message included in the recognition post. This will be the standard message every time this Award is used and cannot be edited by the giver. The "Award bonus preview" shows you what the recognition will look like on the home feed.
Once the award budget and content are correct, select the Next button.
Award Givers
Now you can decide who is able to give out this Award by selecting conditions for the Award Givers. Anyone at your organization can be designated to give out Awards, not just admins! 🙌
On the "Award Givers" screen, first select either Match Any or Match All of your set conditions.
Match Any: If users match any of the criteria listed, they will be able to give the award.
Match All: Users must match all conditions to give the award.
For example, a user must be in the chosen Location and Department to
give the award.
Visibility: Admin users can now setup awards to have their own visibility settings. When setting up an award, admins can select the default visibility for the award. They can also set if givers can change the visibility from the default visibility. Nothing should change about any current awards - this only affects newly created or edited awards.
Once your given parameters have been set, select Next button to move on to Award Approvers.
Award Approvers
All Awards will default to automatically approve an award, but with a quick toggle, you can set any user to approve an award. This is useful for spot bonuses, sales awards, or large one-time bonuses that require multiple levels of approval.
If you'd like to include approvers, toggle the automatic button off to grey. Then select the approvers who you'd like to review first in Level 1. When there are multiple approvers at a level, only one person has to review the request for it to be approved.
You can add additional approval levels by clicking on the grey "Add Approval Level" button. An email notification will be sent to each designated approver requesting them to review. The user who gave the award will also get a notification with the status of approval.
Once you have selected your approvers, click "Create" to activate your new award!
Your Manual Award is now available to give out to your team! Check out our article "How to give an Award" to see how easy it is to give out Manual Awards. 👀
Check out this Reviewing pending Awards article to learn how to review awards pending approval.
FAQ
Where do the points from an Award bonus come from?
Award points come directly from the company, not an individual user’s allowance balance.
How do I pay for these points?
Just like other allowance points, companies only pay for rewards when they're redeemed, never any unused points.
Questions? Send us a note to [email protected]; we'd be happy to help!
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