How to Simplify and Streamline HR Processes with Bonusly

HR teams need a reboot. A majority of HR leaders feel overwhelmed by heavy workloads and stressful roles, and most report feeling burned out.

The easiest and quickest way to relieve and empower HR teams is through technology.

For decades, technological advancements have transformed how people work, and automation is shaping the way toward higher efficiencies and productivity, with happier people teams to boot.

Today, most HR tasks are manual. But we know that People departments benefit tremendously from simplified processes. When People teams leverage tools and systems to streamline major activities, it reduces the need for manual tasks and allows them to focus on more strategic and effective strategies—like investing in their people.

How to simplify HR processes with Bonusly

Top-performing People teams use Bonusly to streamline and automate critical processes, including employee recognition and rewards, internal communication, and performance management. Let’s go into these in detail: 

Recognition and rewards

Manual recognition programs are timely and expensive for HR teams—not to mention less meaningful for your employees. 

Bonusly's leading recognition and rewards solution makes it easy and intuitive for your team to give recognition and claim rewards. Employees at your organization login to Bonusly, type up a shout-out to their teammate, and add redeemable points to the post. That recognition is pulled into a public feed for everyone to see and contribute to. The receiver can use those points to instantly redeem a gift card, order company swag, or donate to their favorite charity. 

Because it’s easy, it’s more effective. Want a clearer picture?

Emi is a product designer at a company that uses Bonusly. She recently finalized a suite of new product features that customers have been asking for and are projected to have a six-figure impact. After she submits the designs, she shares the good news on Slack. The emoji reactions flood in, and Bonusly recognition is a fast follow. Her notifications buzz with shoutouts—first from her manager, and then from key collaborators and teammates. Even the CEO delivers her praise. 

Emi uses the points from the recognition she received to buy a new blender she’d been eyeing for months. 

Meanwhile, Daniel, the Head of HR, appreciates how Bonusly democratizes recognition and rewards while freeing up time to spend on additional employee engagement initiatives, like company-wide career progression plans and stay interviews.

Bonusly takes the onus off of HR teams to build and champion a culture of recognition alone. Every employee becomes a key driver of that recognition culture, enabling HR teams to spend less time in spreadsheets and more time devoted to critical projects. 

Plus, Bonusly’s simplified rewards solution lets employees redeem rewards instantly, minimizing the administration time needed to turn recognition into memorable perks. Admins report spending only 1.5 hours a month managing Bonusly. 

Employee milestones

Automating employee milestone celebrations enables HR teams to stay on top of key moments. People teams use Bonusly to welcome new hires on their start date, celebrate employee birthdays, and recognize work anniversaries. Employee information from your HRIS automatically syncs with Bonusly in real-time and awards are highlighted in the public feed, so milestones are never missed.

But automated doesn’t mean impersonal. The delivery of the employee milestone is automated, but the recognition it prompts is personalized.

Imagine you’re an HR team of one at a company with 50 employees. You’re managing payroll, benefits, employee engagement—the list is never-ending. And then you’re told you have to manually recognize and reward every employee on their first day, birthday, and work anniversary? 

At the very least, you’re going to miss a handful of employee milestones. At most, you’re underperforming, burned out, and on the brink of leaving.

Bonusly ensures you never miss a milestone and rids you of the burden of a date-filled spreadsheet. You can confidently show up to work every day knowing your workforce will be recognized for important moments so you can focus on what matters most: building relationships.

Employee announcements and incentives

Another way to simplify your process is by centralizing critical employee communications and adding incentives when you have important or mandatory calls to action. 

Bonusly Announcements do just that, streamlining the distribution of important messages to save time and increase engagement.

Admins can easily draft, schedule, and send announcements that appear prominently on the Bonusly homepage. Because employees look forward to Bonusly notifications, this ensures your message won't get lost in the clutter of emails and other communication channels. Whether it’s a new job posting alert or a reminder to review company-wide OKRs, the announcements feature is flexible and customizable.

What’s more: employees can claim incentives related to an announcement as well, turning a simple update into a collective call to action that drives engagement, compliance, or adoption. For example, if you want employees to complete security training on time, you can incentivize them with a pre-set amount of redeemable points if they submit by your deadline. 

The value of sending announcements in Bonusly is that your employees are already on the platform, giving and receiving recognition, preparing for 1:1s, and redeeming gift cards. By sending an important reminder in Bonusly, you streamline where and how notifications are posted.

Performance recaps

Beyond automating manual and tedious tasks looms a counterproductive practice that most HR teams despise: traditional performance management. 

Luckily, Bonusly helps with that, too. 

Bonusly’s Performance Recaps synthesize relevant recognition and 360-degree feedback into distinct trends that summarize employee contributions, identify skills and strengths, and playback progress toward goals. 

This feature empowers managers to play a more active role in performance management and help change the entire process. Let’s explain.

Traditional performance management relies on outdated, once-a-year reviews that feel more like a box-ticking exercise than meaningful feedback. These rigid processes fail to capture real-time performance and create unwanted stress. For HR teams, it’s a time-wasting cycle that doesn’t build strong relationships or drive results.

Employee performance should be an ongoing, dynamic process—one that empowers employees to improve, grow, and feel more connected to their work and the company’s success. Bonusly’s recaps organize real-time recognition and feedback into meaningful trends, unlocking opportunities for regular and thoughtful growth conversations between managers and their teams.

The result? A workforce that is constantly improving with an HR team no longer indebted to an arduous and archaic performance practice.

The takeaway

Embracing technology to simplify time-consuming tasks isn't just a productivity boost—it’s a game-changer for HR leaders. Streamlining manual processes creates more space to focus on what truly matters: your employees.

Bonusly users save countless hours and transform culture-building from a scattered effort into a cohesive, company-wide initiative. The future of HR lies in balancing efficiency with human connection; with Bonusly, you can do both. 

Build a high-performing company culture while getting your time back with Bonusly. Get started today.