How to Give Meaningful Employee Rewards with Bonusly

Celebrating achievements and recognizing hard work is essential in any thriving organization. Employees want to work for a company that fosters a sense of belonging, motivates them to excel, and helps them understand how their contributions impact business outcomes.

And while employee rewards play a powerful role in marking big wins and important milestones, they’re just one piece of a more dynamic puzzle. After all, rewards are a byproduct of frequent and meaningful recognition.

At Bonusly, the best recognition platforms extend beyond the rewards themselves, fostering connections, motivation, and the drive to do remarkable work every day. In this post, we’ll explore how Bonusly’s rewards feature compliments our recognition-first approach.

For starters, with Bonusly rewards, you can:

• Reward wins, celebrate important milestones, and amplify core values in action—from anywhere.
• Incentivize programs that improve productivity and performance with instant reward delivery.
• Save countless hours with automated gifting thanks to simplified processes and easily orchestrated integrations.
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The way we work has changed. But even more than that, what we as a workforce want out of work has transformed, too. 

If your approach to employee recognition centers on 30-year service awards or cheap tchotchkes, it might be time to rethink your approach. There's a better way to provide employee rewards—and that way is with Bonusly.

Unwrapped: the Bonusly reward experience

Bonusly's approach to rewards is founded on the following principles:

1. Rewards matter most when they're tied to timely, meaningful recognition. 
2. Rewards are impactful when they're personalized, and in today's digital world, that means letting employees choose.

Let’s first discuss how Bonusly users receive points through recognition. 

How Bonusly points work

In Bonusly, two types of point balances impact rewards.

1. Giveable points are allocated points employees use to give recognition across your company. Companies can choose whether points are available to all employees (to drive peer-to-peer recognition) or managers and leaders (to execute a top-down recognition approach). Each user has a monthly giveable allowance balance that automatically refreshes on the first of each month. At the end of the month, any unused points expire. 

2. Redeemable points are points received via recognition from teammates, leaders, or the organization at large (through milestones and incentives). These are what’s redeemed for rewards in the Bonusly reward catalog. Redeemable balances don’t expire, allowing users to save up indefinitely.

The Bonusly reward catalog

Once a user has received points, they can head to the Bonusly reward catalog to redeem them.

Bonusly’s global rewards catalog offers thousands of rewards across 200+ countries, guaranteeing there is something meaningful for everyone. The Bonusly catalog specifically includes:

1. Digital gift cards: Choose from over 1,200 gift card options, from popular vendors like Amazon and Starbucks to local grocery stores, airlines, and your favorite apparel brand.

2. Cash-out options: Employees can cash out their Bonusly rewards on PayPal, Visa gift cards, and prepaid Mastercards. 

3. Swag: Branded company swag that’s hassle-free? Say no more. Bonusly’s AXOMO integration enables employees to easily order the gear they want. Best of all, fulfillment is automated.

4. Donations: Bonusly offers over 50 donation options to support causes you care about. Bonusly users have donated millions of dollars to charity, like hurricane relief funds and public health campaigns. Best yet, companies can add their own charities to our catalog to support specific initiatives that are important to the employees and communities you serve. 

5. Custom rewards: Speaking of custom charities, organizations can create exclusive rewards (think: virtual lunch with your CEO or an app subscription to improve your health) to create an employee experience that aligns with your broader company culture.

6. Points boost: If employees run out of their monthly giveable points, but have more pieces of recognition they want to give, they can use their own earned points to redeem a “Points Boost.” This is one of our beloved and most popular rewards.

Budgeting for employee rewards

Bonusly customers enjoy a flat subscription fee, but every organization’s total rewards spend will vary based on a few factors, like the number of employees you have.

If you don’t know where to start, we recommend you check out our Rewards Spend Calculator to help you gauge how much you should spend on rewards per employee. 

For more, here are some best practices to help companies determine their employee rewards budget:  

• For peer-to-peer recognition programs, we recommend spending between $5-20 per employee per month, or $60-240 per employee per year. At companies with between 500 to 5,000 employees, it often makes sense for managers or leadership teams to get significantly more budget to ensure they can recognize their entire teams.
• For welcoming new employees, we recommend spending at least $5 per employee.
• For celebrating birthdays at work, we also recommend spending at least $5 per employee to cover the cost of a cup of coffee or a yummy treat.
• For work anniversaries, we recommend tiered amounts based on tenure, beginning with $50 for one-year anniversaries and scaling from there.

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The takeaway

Meaningful employee rewards play a key role in your employee engagement strategy. Employees want to show up and do great work, and getting rewarded with a gift they actually want can positively impact their experience and help strengthen their connection to the company.

But the real gift that keeps on giving? An effective recognition program that motivates teams, empowers managers, and simplifies HR processes, all while featuring rewards employees genuinely value. 

At Bonusly, we’re committed to creating a recognition experience that does more than acknowledge and reward achievements—it brings people together, celebrates shared success, and builds a workplace culture where everyone feels empowered to perform. In the end, employee rewards should be the finishing touch to an effective recognition strategy where everyone wins. 

--> Ready to see for yourself? Schedule a demo with a Bonusly product expert today.