Hurrah, you’ve decided to use Bonusly to build a recognition-rich culture on your team! Now what?
A well-planned Bonusly launch will go a long way towards securing early adoption and the longterm success of your new employee recognition program. This is a great time to demonstrate to your employees that you care about them, you know that the work they do every day is important, and you want them to feel appreciated.
Clearly explaining the why and how of your employee recognition program will inspire high participation across your whole team. Your launch should showcase your goals for Bonusly, help everyone learn how to use it, and get them excited about getting started.
So, where do you start? How do you create a fun and successful Bonusly launch for your team? These are our best practices, many of which are inspired by customers like you:
- Establish the foundation for a great Bonusly launch
- Communicate what Bonusly is all about
- Get creative and have fun with your launch
Of course, as you go through the planning and rollout, don’t forget we’re here to help! In addition to all the resources we mention below, our legendary Customer Success team is ready to provide guidance and answer your questions! We’ve helped many companies with their Bonusly launches, and our goal is to make sure that yours is a success.
Establish the foundation for a great Bonusly launch
You might also consider connecting broader company initiatives and priorities to Bonusly, whether that’s through the Company Value Hashtags you set up, the Awards you offer, or the custom rewards you add to your Reward Catalog.
Some of our customers have merged these types of programs into Bonusly for their launch:
- Years of service awards
- Wellness programs
- Referral bonuses
- Swag stores
Always consider how the components of your launch and the way you talk about Bonusly reflect your company culture and personality. If you’re stuck, we offer several tips for customizations throughout this post.
Communicate what Bonusly is all about
Help your team understand the role Bonusly will play in your organization and why you’ve selected this program over others. Emphasize that you want them to feel valued, that Bonusly is a program for recognizing and rewarding employees, and how the peer-to-peer aspects of Bonusly recognition empower everyone to get involved.
As part of your Bonusly launch, communicate that your company is prioritizing recognition of great work and help your team understand what types of work merit recognition. You can show everyone what recognition in Bonusly might look like by sharing a few examples, including recognition for things that are important in your culture.
You can also share compelling stats from our 2022 annual report to help them understand how Bonusly has helped other organizations. For example, the most popular rewards in 2022 were Amazon, Allowance Boosts, PayPal, Starbucks, and Visa. That should give people something to look forward to!
Don’t forget to include your Company Value Hashtags in the recognition examples to remind your employees that your company advocates for intentional culture and actionable values. This will demonstrate how your values will stay front and center in Bonusly as they’re linked to daily behaviors.
Customize our communication resources
While every team will do their launch slightly differently, we recommend including the following components in your launch:
1. All-hands presentation
The most powerful way to announce Bonusly to your team is with an all-hands presentation that everyone (or most everyone) is able to attend. With an in-person or video conference presentation, you can express your enthusiasm about Bonusly and its importance to the company.
Here are things you should consider including in your presentation:
- The history of recognition programs at the company
- Why they picked Bonusly
- Best practices and recognition guidelines, including guidance on what kinds of things to
- Different ways that managers would be using Bonusly
- Different ways that the company would use Bonusly to recognize milestones like work anniversaries, birthdays, new homes, marriages, and new children
- How to use various features of Bonusly, including the Slack integration and reward redemptions
Adjusting the voice and tone of the all-hands presentation is also a great way to tailor your Bonusly launch to suit your culture.
2. Written communications
Written communication is a great way to tell various company stakeholders about Bonusly before your company-wide launch and give employees something to reference after your all-hands presentation. Think about the places that your employees usually go to find information about various programs — such as employee handbooks, Wikis, Slack channels, etc. — and be sure to announce Bonusly in those locations.
Customers often use our email templates to share information about Bonusly with their employees. Customers have also created their own posters and flyers to announce the launch around the office.
3. Pre-launch training
There are a few groups of people who should be familiar with Bonusly before launch. Before you launch Bonusly, identify and train your Bonusly admins, who will manage the logistics of the program, so that they can answer employees’ questions and facilitate a smooth launch.
It’s also a good idea to familiarize your company’s people managers with Bonusly so that they can act as early adopters of the program and model participation for their teams. Their active participation in the first few days after launch will help normalize Bonusly across your company. You may also want to identify recognition champions, or unofficial leaders in your organization, who can model good recognition practices on the platform. Design the training for managers and champions in order to get their buy-in and to make sure they understand best practices of inclusive and timely recognition.
By training these smaller groups, you can get exposure to what might be common questions and get a handle on company-specific concerns that are likely to come up during your official Bonusly launch.
Don’t forget to make these trainings engaging and customized to your culture, as well!
Pro tip: Your admins, people managers, and Bonusly champions play an important role in the success of your launch. Encourage them to engage with Bonusly as soon as you launch, and have them model best practices by giving thoughtful, timely, frequent recognition to their direct reports, superiors, and other teams.
4. Post-launch training
In most cases, your all-hands presentation will cover all the topics needed to help your employees start using Bonusly — it’s not rocket science! 😜 If your employees are interested in more guidance, consider offering a post-launch training to show them how and why to use Bonusly and any of the integrations you’ve set up.
In addition to covering tactical tips for using Bonusly, this training is a great time to teach Bonusly best practices. Helping your whole team understand that recognition should be timely, frequent, values-oriented, personalized and inclusive will support a recognition-rich culture. Some of our customers have also used a handful of examples of potential meaningful bonuses to illustrate some of Bonusly’s features.
You can also use this time to answer questions that employees have about Bonusly once they’ve had some time to explore the platform after the all-hands announcement.
A multi-component launch will help you reach all your employees. Different communication methods resonate better with different people, so think about the best way to reach each group of your team. The best way to talk to your team about Bonusly might not be included on this list — don’t be afraid to get creative!
In addition to these foundational items, additional activities unique to your organization will bring Bonusly to life for your team.
Get creative and have fun with your launch
To customize your Bonusly launch so it suits your company culture and helps you meet your recognition goals, consider what aspects of your company culture could fuel participation and make your launch fun for your team. Ask your managers and champions for their ideas, or get inspiration from some of the things our customers have done:
Give out prizes to the first people who participate in Bonusly
The fastest way to get people to accept their invitation to Bonusly is to provide a fun incentive. The automated Welcome Award is a great start, but consider whether you want to sweeten the deal, as well.
At Chobani, team members have strong brand loyalty and take a lot of pride in wearing Chobani branded gear both at and outside of work. When Chobani launched Bonusly, they designed and gave out exclusive swag to the first people who logged into Bonusly and those that gave the first bonuses. For them, this was a perfect way to bring their culture into Bonusly for the launch.
Set up an Early Adopter Award in Bonusly
Receiving more recognition in Bonusly gives people a great initial feeling towards the platform, and we’ve found that receiving recognition is one of the best motivators for employees to start giving recognition. So another way to incentivize early adoption of Bonusly is to give awards through Bonusly itself.
Our customer RocketDocs set up an Early Adopter award to recognize people for recognizing their colleagues with Bonusly. This is a great way to show people how the recognition program benefits them.
Give upcoming quarterly or annual bonuses via Bonusly
One of our customers launched Bonusly right before the holidays, when they knew everyone was looking forward to receiving their holiday bonuses. To encourage people to log into Bonusly as early as possible, the company gave their holiday bonuses on the platform. It was a great way to transition their existing programs into the new recognition system and get people excited to use Bonusly.
Throw a party
What’s more fun than a party? Bonusly customer Blast Analytics & Marketing made their launch extra fun by throwing a party for the team on launch day. Their custom currency in Bonusly is 🌮, so they had a Taco Tuesday party to announce Bonusly.
Set up your Digital Signage
Don’t worry about Bonusly going out of sight, out of mind! With Digital Signage, you can display recent recognition posts on screens in prominent locations in your office: on the way to the kitchen, next to KPI dashboards, in the break room — wherever your team will see them.
By setting your Digital Signage up for your Bonusly launch, you can boost the visibility of those initial posts and motivate everyone to get involved.
Announce Bonusly externally
Show your team that this is an important initiative for your company by announcing it publicly on social media or your blog. If you use your social channels to share your company culture and employer brand, your Bonusly launch is also a perfect way to show how much you care about your employees and how you’re committed to a recognition-rich culture
Ready, set, go!
With all of these creative ideas for customizing your launch, you’re sure to make it your own and delight your employees. But as you go through the planning and rollout, don’t forget our Customer Success department is here to help you set, reach, and exceed your goals!
Don’t hesitate to reach out via this page or the chat bubble in Bonusly.
Congrats! You're about to join the ranks of over 3,250+ organizations worldwide that use Bonusly to celebrate great work.
