It's crucial that the experience of employees receiving an award is a happy one, without barriers to engagement. To make their journey as seamless as can be, we need to remove any extra or unnecessary steps that can become blockers, such as the requirement to manually claim their award after receiving it. If employees don’t claim their award, then the purpose of that recognition moment is lost, as they don’t get to enjoy the reward they have been sent for their contribution.

We are therefore making some big improvements to the way employees can redeem their award.

Summary of changes to the award claim process:

1/ Award codes and manual claim actions are being removed. Instead, all awards sent to employees will be claimed automatically, with their award funds added to their account balance as soon as the award is sent.

2/ No unclaimed funds will be in the system, and it will no longer be possible to set awards to expire.

3/ Award cancellations will will only be allowed in exceptional circumstances (e.g. awards sent by mistake)

4/ Award emails, onsite notifications and award pages will have a unified look and feel regardless of whether the award is sent via InstantAwards™, AwardNominator™, AwardFilePlus™ or Scheduled Recognition.

Screenshots of onsite alerts for all products are available in the article listing all recognition alerts.

Screenshots of notification emails for all products are available in the article listing all recognition system emails.

The changes employees will see are as follows:

Instant balance updates - awards can be spent as soon as they are sent
Onsite alerts for all employees who receive an award, including those not registered at the time of the award being sent
Onsite alerts sent to employees with unclaimed awards on the day of these changes going live, to tell them the balance is now in their account available to spend
Clearer user journey - no more calls-to-action to claim awards or enter codes

Receiving and claiming an award

Our new automated claim process will ensure that, as soon as an employee receives an award, the award is immediately available for them to spend: they do not have to receive a code or look out for a "claim" call-to-action in order to see the award added to their balance.

For all employees receiving an award via InstantAwards™, AwardNominator™, AwardFilePlus™ and Scheduled Recognition, the process will be as follows:

The employee will receive onsite alerts when they are sent an award. Employees not registered on the platform at the time of sending the award will receive a notification upon their first login.
An award notification email will also be sent to the recipient (i.e. to registered users with an email address logged in Reward Manager, and to unregistered users where the sender has entered an email address for them). These emails will no longer include award codes.
Award points will be added to employee’s balance as soon as they are sent, and available to spend straight away.

For InstantAwards™:

Senders can still choose to download awards in PDF format. The PDF will no longer include an award code.

For AwardNominator™ and AwardFilePlus™ programs:

Onsite alerts will be generated once award batches have been dispatched.
No onsite alerts will be generated while batches are queued (awaiting invoice or manual dispatch). This allows clients using the Postal or None communication methods to still control the timing of onsite alerts while removing the need to share award codes with employees.
The standard copy text for the Postal communication method will no longer include an award code. Award letters that have been generated before the day of these changes going live will still include award codes, however, employees will no longer need this code to claim the award; it’ll be claimed automatically for them when the new changes go live.

Unclaimed awards & award cancellations

Our view is that as soon as an employee is given a monetary award, that cash is theirs, as recognition for their great work and contribution to the business. They should be able to spend it when and how they like, even once they are no longer employed by the client.

We want to give employees as much time as possible to view and use the points they have earned, and we want to give clients a longer window to contact and engage those users so that they can benefit from the recognition they have received.

We have therefore made the following changes:

All awards sent through the system will be marked as Claimed, and added to the recipients' award balances as soon as they are sent (InstantAwards™ and Scheduled Recognition) or dispatched (AwardNominator™ and AwardFilePlus™).
We will allow leavers to spend their awards for two years after their status is changed to Revoked in Reward Manager. They will be able to log in to the website for sixty days, and after that they will be able to contact Employee Support for assistance.
In the exceptional cases where refunds of funds given to employees (but not spent) are requested, we would only be able to refund any remaining funds after the two year period has passed. Please note this is not being offered to new clients.
There will no longer be any Unclaimed awards that can be cancelled and refunded to the client's R&R budget on request.
As we will consider all awards to belong to employees as soon as they are sent, the R93 report for Unclaimed Awards is no longer accessible to clients.
Unregistered users with unclaimed awards will receive one onsite alert for each award automatically claimed for them on the go-live date. They will see these alerts the first time they log in after that date.
Registered users will receive one single onsite alert for all unclaimed awards added to their balance on migration day (see first screenshot below). The onsite alert will lead to the page in the second screenshot below, showing an information banner that will be visible for one week after the first visualization.
After the go-live date, any awards that were unclaimed before this date will be marked as “Claimed” in the client’s SmartInsights reports.

Clients will still be able to request award cancellations in exceptional circumstances (e.g. awards sent by mistake). As cancelled awards will be taken straight from employee balances, we recommend that clients request cancellations as soon as they become aware of an error, to avoid the risk of employees spending the funds before they can be cancelled.

However, the system will not allow award cancellations when they bring the recipient's balance below zero.

Award expiry dates

Clients will no longer be able to configure an award expiry time frame on their recognition programs. Expiry timeframes set up previously will no longer be valid after the new award claim process has gone live (as any unclaimed awards with expiry dates attached will be automatically added to the recipients' balances).

Unified look and feel

The award landing pages (which employees’ notification emails and onsite alerts link to) will now look similar regardless of whether the award is sent via InstantAwards™, AwardNominator™, AwardFilePlus™ and Scheduled Recognition.

Clients who have customized the copy text of award notification emails will not be able to reuse their custom content in the new process. 

Clients who use Postal communications on AwardNominator™ and AwardFilePlus™, and have customized the copy text of award notification letters will be able to reuse their custom content in the new process. The copy will need to be edited manually after migration day, to remove the reference to claiming an award code. Client Success Managers and the Client Support Team will be able to assist with this.

The new email and landing page format works best when award images are 3300 x 2100 pixels in size. The Client Design team can assist with creating new images as needed for the new emails and landing pages.

An example of the new award landing page is in the screenshot below. Comments, reactions and links to the Social Wall are dependent on the relevant Social Recognition settings being enabled.