2019 in review: Bonusly users celebrated teamwork, leadership, and much more

Ah, 2019. A truly remarkable year in teamwork.

In the United States, for instance, a record number of women were sworn in to Congress, researchers at the National Science Foundation captured the first-ever picture of a black hole, and Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando, and Andrew Wyatt won an Oscar for best original song (which is, incidentally, what I listened to on loop while writing this post).

At Bonusly, we redesigned our blog and published 59 posts, doubling our previous record of 30 posts in a year. 👊💥 We released Claimable Awards so that Bonusly admins can streamline recognition for if-then tasks, launched the interactive Analytics Dashboard and personalized Profile pages to help Bonusly users visualize the dynamics of recognition at their organizations, and built out new admin roles and permissions to improve account security. 

But I digress.

Read on to discover what Bonusly users did in 2019: how they recognized remarkable teamwork, celebrated epiphany moments, connected with colleagues outside their departments and offices, and so much more!

Bonusly users gave 3,991,741 bonuses in 2019, 45% more bonuses than they gave in 2018. Seventy-nine percent of Bonusly users received recognition at least once a month, which is pretty cool when you consider that 71% of highly-engaged employees work in organizations where employees get recognized at least once a month.

Because Bonusly users can recognize their peers, direct reports, and managers on the platform, employee recognition isn't a strictly top-down process. In 2019, Bonusly users gave 89% of all bonuses to their peers and 11% to their managers and direct reports. Fifty percent of all bonuses were intradepartmental, which means that 50% of all bonuses were interdepartmental. (An even split!) Bonusly users also added on to 17% of all bonuses, further amplifying the impact of highly-visible, 360-degree employee recognition. 

Bonusly admins saved countless hours (and at least 50,000 greeting cards from the landfill) with Bonusly's automated Birthday and Work Anniversary Bots, which prompted Bonusly users to celebrate 24,211 work anniversaries and 26,378 birthdays. 🎈🎂 

Our customer base expanded from 114 to 122 countries in 2019 as we partnered with new customers around the world. Sixty-three percent of Bonusly customers use the platform to connect teams in multiple office locations and 27% use it to connect teams in multiple countries.

Bonusly customers with multiple locations tell us that the platform helps them reinforce their company values and strengthen their company cultures in large part because Bonusly users can add core value hashtags to every bonus they give.

In 2019, teamwork, leadership, and problem solving were the three company values that Bonusly users exhibited most often. I told you it was a remarkable year in teamwork!

One thing Bonusly users often mention in their Capterra and G2 reviews is how much they love adding GIFs and emoji to bonuses. Honestly, it's one of our team's favorite features, too!

In 2019, Bonusly users added nearly one million GIFs to bonuses, more than doubling 2018's figure. 😲 They also added 391,322 emoji to bonuses, which begs the question: if a picture's worth 1,000 words, how many words is an emoji worth?

Just as GIFs and emoji make Bonusly fun, our chat tool integrations make it easy. Sixty-four percent of Bonusly customers integrate Bonusly with their chat tools, which is really impactful: Bonusly customers with chat tool integrations have 36% higher participation rates. Thirty-six! 😲

Nearly half (48%) of Bonusly users access Bonusly via Slack and almost 23% use Microsoft Teams and Hangouts Chat. 

Of course, an employee recognition solution is only effective if people use it. We've written about how rewards can increase engagement with your recognition program. Because rewards don't have to be costly to be meaningful, and because people want to exercise voice and choice when it comes to employee rewards (that is, to be able to choose from brands they like), we do our best to add new brands to our international digital Reward Catalog every quarter.

In 2019, we added 36 brands to our default catalog and Bonusly users redeemed their earnings for gift cards from 345 different brands. Amazon was Bonusly users' favorite reward brand in 2019, as it was in 2018, and Allowance Boosts, which Bonusly users can select in order to give their coworkers more recognition, were their second favorite, jumping ahead two spots from last year. 😍

Bonusly users continued to demonstrate incredible generosity in 2019, donating $91,797 of their Bonusly earnings to nonprofits. The World Wildlife Fund, ACLU, charity:water, Canine Companions for Independence (a Bonusly customer!), and the American Red Cross were the five most popular nonprofits in our Reward Catalog in 2019. To find out how much Bonusly users have donated since we started keeping track, visit our Donations page.

Whew! Thanks for reviewing 2019 with me!

Check out the full PDF report and if you want to share any of these stats, on social, be sure to include the hashtag #AYearInBonusly. 🙏

Wait, are you not a Bonusly user yet? Join thousands of people around the world who are recognizing their colleagues—and getting rewarded for it!—by trying Bonusly free for two weeks. If you'd like us to show you around, request a demo: