How RentSpree uses Bonusly to run culture programs every employee can join

When Tannum Sullivan, People Experience & Culture Sr. Manager, set out to host RentSpree’s upcoming company-wide virtual game night, she ran into a classic remote-culture puzzle: how to reward a winning team spread across different cities and time zones.

She decided on a high-energy, Jeopardy-style trivia showdown using Claude to help generate custom categories and manage the game logic. 

But the real challenge was the prize. Standard physical rewards—like a local dinner, trophy, or gift basket—fall flat when teammates on the winning team live in three different states or countries and work from home.

To bring mixed, cross-functional teams together, the prize needed to be universally accessible, instantly shareable, and fun enough to drive competition before the first question was even asked.

So the winners got Bonusly points (or "Sprees," in RentSpree speak), which everyone redeems in their own currency through a localized reward marketplace.

It's a small moment, but it captures how RentSpree, an AI-forward prop tech company working to make renting easier for landlords, agents and tenants, uses Bonusly: as the glue for a team that's physically divided and determined not to act like it.

Making "audacious" visible

RentSpree recently adopted a new guiding principle: be audacious, learn loudly. To RentSpree, that means swinging big, but responsibly.

To keep it front and center, the team built it into Bonusly. Teammates are encouraged to celebrate audaciousness when they see it. Every recognition includes one of the company’s guiding principles, so real-world examples of those values show up in the feed every day. And each month at all-hands, leadership names an “audacious swing of the month,” with the winner getting 1,000 Sprees.

Public recognition like this sends a message to everyone watching, not just the person receiving it. Tannum and her team designed it that way on purpose. 

Without a tool like Bonusly, it’s hard for teams to know what success looks like. 

“But when we celebrate that success publicly,” Tannum said, “that becomes the definition of it. That’s the bar, and everyone can see and internalize it.”

One culture, two continents

Seattle, Bangkok and the remote crew each have their own rhythm, and part of Tannum’s job is making them feel like one team. “While there’s this one united RentSpree culture, there’s just physically different cultures within that,” she said.

Her answer is to give everyone the same place to celebrate. "While we're physically divided, we're a very united front, and Bonusly helps make that easier."

Bonusly’s become the team’s shared language. Recognition crosses time zones every day, and an integrated Slack channel shows everyone who's helping whom. 

Engagement programs people show up for

Tannum is responsible for RentSpree's overall employee engagement and experience efforts. In previous roles, that meant tracking celebrations and spot bonuses in a Google Sheet and updating shoutouts by hand after every all-hands.

Now these programs mostly run themselves. With Bonusly, Tannum said she's able to support the entire employee experience. New hires get 50 Sprees in their first Slack message, which sets off a wave of welcomes from teammates. Anniversary awards grow in amount alongside tenure.

Then, there's the digital duck race. RentSpree uses Bonusly to reward employees who refer candidates. Every qualified referral to an open role earns a duck in a referral raffle. The duck race runs during all-hands, and the winning duck takes 2,000 Sprees. 

Tannum said she launches all sorts of engagement programs like these with Bonusly. 

"It opens the door to how creative we can get with our incentives and our culture programs."

Built for an AI-driven culture

At RentSpree, AI isn't limited to engineers or the data team — and that includes recognition. When Bonusly launched Bizy, its AI assistant, Tannum put it to work.

After a recent hectic week, she worried about forgetting someone who'd helped her with a project. 

"I try to send out recognition weekly, and Bizy can see everything," she said. "I felt very relieved today knowing that Bizy was around to help me think of everyone I may have missed."

Bizy also helped Tannum pull and make sense of RentSpree's culture data. Her team sees 95% participation against a peer average of 82%, with people being recognized 7.7 times a month on average. 

"Bizy whips out everything I need in such a short amount of time," Tannum said.

She treats those numbers as a pulse check on overall engagement and morale. "For me, participation in Bonusly directly equals engagement," she said. 

And because it updates constantly, it fills a gap the annual survey can't. 

“Bonusly is a daily measurement of engagement versus a survey, which is often one point in time."

Every program, one unified culture

Asked what would happen if Bonusly disappeared, Tannum doesn't hesitate: "I would freak out."

Every program, from the audacious swing to the duck race, would slide back into spreadsheets, with rewards juggled across currencies by hand.

That's the real job of those pool tournament Sprees. Whether it's a contest in Seattle, a big swing in Bangkok or a rubber duck crossing the finish line at the all-hands, every celebration pays out the same way, wherever the winner sits. 

"Being able to recognize folks across the world, in a different time zone, different currency, it just really creates that level playing field," she said.

"If you have a very dispersed team, Bonusly is a no-brainer."

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