Recognitions Overview

Recognitions

1. What it is

Recognitions lets employees recognize each other, managers award team members, and
admins run structured nomination programs — all from one social feed. Each
recognition can carry up to three company values, an illustrated award card, and (optionally)
redeemable reward points that bank into the Company Store.

• Enablement: requires a licence. An admin enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps;
  it is not turned on automatically.
• What it is not: Recognitions does not manage the point redemption catalogue —
  that is the Company Store app. Points earned here appear in the employee’s store
  wallet, but the items they can redeem against live in a separate app.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Admin → Apps → All Apps, find Recognitions, and enable it.
2. The first time anyone opens the app, a starter recognition program
   (“Employee Recognition”, peer-to-peer) and six company values (Customer First,
   Teamwork, Integrity, Innovation, Excellence, Ownership) are seeded
   automatically. Admins can rename, delete, or add to either set — deleted
   defaults do not come back.
3. If you want employees to attach redeemable points to their recognitions, enable
   Peer Reward Points under Settings → Reward Points. This requires the
   Company Store app to also be enabled — without it, the toggle has no effect
   because there is nowhere to bank the points.
4. Grant the App Admin role to anyone who should manage programs, budgets, and
   settings without being a full business admin. Managers automatically see a
   Team tab for approvals once they have direct reports.
5. Confirm by opening the app as a non-admin employee. They should see the
   Dashboard, Feed, My Recognition, Programs, Leaderboard, and a working
   “Recognize” action.

Silent pairing to know about: the Peer Reward Points toggle does nothing on its
own — the Company Store must also be enabled and its recognition integration must
not be turned off. If both conditions aren’t met, points fields won’t appear in the
give form.

3. How it fits together

Programs and categories. A recognition program defines the type of recognition
(Peer-to-Peer, Manager, Achievement, or Milestone), whether nominations require
approval, and the point range for each category within it. Categories under a
program carry a name, color, icon, and default/min/max point values. The seeded
“Employee Recognition” program ships with four categories: Teamwork, Helpfulness,
Innovation, and Excellence.

Peer recognition posts vs. awards. A recognition post is the everyday “shout-out”
any employee gives from the feed. An award is the outcome of a nomination that was
approved through a program’s approval chain. Both appear in the same feed, but they
follow different paths: posts are immediate (unless manager approval is required),
while awards route through one or more approval levels defined on the program.

Giving allowances vs. group budgets. These are two separate funding pools and the
most common source of admin confusion:

• A giving allowance is a per-employee monthly point budget for peer recognition
  posts. It resets each month and does not carry over. Three role tiers get
  different defaults: individual contributor, manager, and leadership.
• A group budget is a company-, department-, or manager-level annual dollar pool
  that funds awards given through Manager, Achievement, or Milestone programs.
  Group budgets are hierarchical (company → department → manager) and enforce
  hard-stop spending limits.

Peer-to-Peer programs draw from the giving allowance. The other three program types
draw from group budgets. You cannot attach a group budget to a Peer-to-Peer
program.

Award cycles. A time-boxed nomination period where nominations pool
during a window, then winners are selected either by Spotlight (everyone nominated
by at least the cycle’s threshold of different people) or Committee (the cycle’s
committee members each pick from the pool, and an admin decides the winners).
A cycle nomination needs no manager approval — it waits in the pool until the cycle
is decided. Award cycles are off by default and are independent of program award
nominations, which have their own switch.

Company values. A curated list of organisational values that employees tag onto
a recognition — up to three on one, the first they pick shown first. The six seeded
defaults are a starting point — admins manage them at Admin → Company Values.

Award cards. Illustrated card art from the Asset Library that the giver selects
when composing a recognition. The app ships with system cards across 14 categories
(Everyday Thanks, Teamwork, Customer Focus, Performance & Results, Above & Beyond,
Innovation, Safety, Values & Integrity, Growth & Leadership, Wellbeing & Culture,
Fun & Personality, Milestones & Service, Celebrations & Occasions, General).
Admins add tenant-specific cards at Admin → Award Cards.

4. Running it

Reviewing pending approvals

When Require manager approval is on, or when a peer recognition carries points
at or above the approval threshold, recognitions and nominations land in a pending queue. Reviewers
(managers with direct reports, app admins, and business admins) see a banner on the
Dashboard showing the count of items awaiting their decision.

Reviewers do not have to open the app to decide. The approval email carries
Approve and Reject links (a signed link, no login required; each opens a short
confirmation page), and the item in your Inbox carries an Approve button —
usually the fastest route on a phone. Whichever one you use, the decision is the
same: deciding in the Inbox runs the identical approval path as the web queue,
respects multi-level approval chains, and keeps the nomination’s requested value.
Turning something down needs a reason for the person who sent it, so rejecting is
done from the app or the email’s Reject form, never from a bare Inbox button.

1. Open Team → Pending Approvals.
2. Review the recognition content and point amount.
3. Approve or reject. Approved posts become visible; rejected posts are hidden and
   the giver’s points are refunded.

Managing programs

1. Go to Admin → Manage Programs.
2. Create a new program, choosing a type (Peer-to-Peer, Manager, Achievement, or
   Milestone) and the number of approval levels (1–3, each one step up the nominee’s
   reporting chain).
3. Add categories with point ranges under the program.
4. Activate the program when ready — employees see it in the Programs tab.

Running an award cycle

1. Enable Award Cycles under Settings → Cycles & Automation.
2. Go to Admin → Manage Award Cycles (or the Manage award cycles button on
   that settings card) and create a cycle (cycles are filed under a built-in “Award
   cycles” program). Give it a name, instructions, the criteria nominators read,
   an optional category, the nomination window (opens/closes dates), the points
   each winner receives (0 means recognition only), the selection mode (Spotlight
   with its distinct-nominator threshold, or Committee with its members), whether to
   favor first-timers, and whether it repeats weekly, monthly or quarterly.
3. When the window closes the cycle shows Awaiting decision. For Spotlight,
   review the nominees who met the threshold; for Committee, the members’ picks
   are shown beside each nominee.
4. Decide winners — this creates their awards, credits the cycle’s points and
   notifies the winners. The cycle then shows Winners announced and its results
   page lists them.

Nominating in an award cycle

When Award Cycles are on, everyone sees an Award Cycles tab in the app. It lists
the cycles open now (each marked Open, with Nominate), an Opening soon list
with each cycle’s opening date, and Recent winners with See results.

1. On an Open cycle, choose Nominate.
2. Pick the colleague and say what they did — the cycle’s criteria are shown above
   the form.
3. Submit. The nomination joins the cycle’s pool; nobody approves it on its own,
   and the winners are chosen when the cycle closes.

You can’t nominate yourself, and you can nominate each colleague once per cycle.
If your organization limits who may give recognition, the same limit applies to
cycle nominations. Committee members find a cycle waiting for their decision under
Needs your review on that tab and choose Review nominees; a member who is up
for the award does not judge it (unless they are a business admin).

Managing kiosk devices

For frontline locations where employees don’t have individual logins, a shared
device can run a recognition kiosk.

1. Go to Admin → Kiosk Devices (requires Manager or above).
2. Create a session for a location, setting an alphanumeric passcode.
3. On the shared device, navigate to the kiosk URL and enter the passcode.
4. Employees identify themselves by employee ID and PIN, recognise a colleague, and
   the screen resets automatically.

Using the Recognition Wall

The Recognition Wall is a chrome-less, auto-refreshing display for a lobby TV or
large screen. It is authenticated by a signed display token, not a user login.

1. Go to Admin → Recognition Wall (opens in a new tab).
2. Generate a display token under Settings → Tools & Data if one doesn’t exist.

Viewing analytics

Admins and app admins find Analytics as the first item of the Admin menu: recognition activity, insights,
and an at-risk view that flags employees or teams with low recognition activity.

5. Settings

All settings are under the app sidebar’s Settings dropdown. Settings are
grouped into six sections.

General

Setting	Default	What it changes
Peer-to-peer recognition	On	When off, only manager/admin award flows are available
Anonymous recognition	Off	When on, employees can hide their name on a recognition
Enable award nominations	On	Shows the Programs tab and lets people nominate peers for program awards
Require manager approval	Off	When on, every peer recognition and every award nomination is routed to the recipient’s manager before it posts — not just nominations
Enable reactions	On	Toggles emoji reactions on the feed
Enable comments	On	Toggles comment threads on recognitions
Shared moments	On	One company-wide switch, also on the Contests and Training settings pages and the Portals catalog: people can share their own recognitions, awards, work anniversaries and year in recognition outside the company as a card and a link showing their name, what they earned and the company — never the message, who gave it, or points. Off closes every shared page at once; Review shared pages lists the open ones so an admin can stop any.

Reward Points

Setting	Default	What it changes
Enable peer reward points	Off	Turns on per-employee monthly giving allowances (requires Company Store)
Monthly Giving Allowance — Individual Contributor	1,000 points	Points each IC can give per month
Monthly Giving Allowance — Manager	2,000 points	Points each manager can give per month
Monthly Giving Allowance — Leadership	5,000 points	Points each leadership member can give per month
Hold Peer Gifts for Approval At/Above	500 points	Peer gifts at or above this threshold require reviewer approval before settling
Min Days Between Points Gifts to Same Person	7 days	Minimum gap before giving points to the same person again
Leadership group	None	A group (Admin › Groups) whose members resolve to the leadership tier for allowance sizing — when not set, Admin/Owner role is used

Cycles & Automation

Setting	Default	What it changes
Enable award cycles	Off	Enables time-boxed award cycles with winner selection — adds the Award Cycles tab for everyone and Manage Award Cycles for admins

Notifications

Setting	Default	What it changes
Recognition digest & year in review	Off	One switch for two mailings: the weekly summary of recognition activity, and each employee’s annual Recognition Wrapped recap every January

AI Agent

Setting	Default	What it changes
Enable AI Agent	On	Lets the Ask AI assistant give recognition, submit nominations, and approve or reject nominations on behalf of the user (held peer recognitions are decided on Pending Approvals or from the approval email)

Tools & Data

This section provides admin actions rather than persistent settings: generating
the Recognition Wall display token, loading or removing sample data, resetting
all store-point balances, running a CSV bulk import, and importing a program
configuration.

6. More help

• Recognitions FAQ — specific setup and
  operating questions, including giving allowances, boosts, anti-gaming controls,
  kiosk mode, and troubleshooting.
• Company Store Overview — where
  earned reward points are redeemed.
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Recognitions from these articles.