Winter product update: One connected app experience, now smarter with AI

In our recent Winter Product Update webinar, we shared how the platform is continuing to evolve into a more connected, intelligent, and engaging destination for employees and administrators alike.

From wellbeing and recognition to AI-powered support and insights, these updates are all designed to help organisations create more seamless, rewarding experiences across their employee journey.

Below, we recap the key highlights.

A new way to engage

Employee engagement is at its best when everything works together. That’s why our platform continues to bring engagement initiatives into one custom-branded, mobile-first experience designed to support every employee touchpoint.

By connecting discounts, communications, recognition, rewards, wellbeing, our AI Assistant, and Goals & Challenges in one app, organisations can create a more intuitive experience for employees, one that makes it easier to stay informed, feel appreciated, access support, and take part in the moments that matter.

Rather than asking employees to navigate multiple tools and disconnected experiences, our platform and app creates a single destination where engagement becomes simpler, more visible, and more impactful, wherever you work from.

Mobile app enhancements

We also highlighted a series of Engage app enhancements designed to make engagement more immediate and accessible. These updates help employees stay connected in real time, whether they’re receiving important communications through expanded push notifications, engaging with recognition through "My Recognition" in the app, or responding to surveys and feedback requests on the go.

By making these interactions easier to access in the flow of everyday work, the mobile experience becomes a more powerful channel for participation. The result is a platform that not only reaches employees wherever they are, but also helps turn engagement into a more natural part of the day-to-day experience.

Goals & Challenges: Wellbeing with momentum

Workplace wellbeing continues to be a major focus, and Goals & Challenges is playing an increasingly important role in helping organisations create more active, inclusive, and motivating wellbeing experiences.

With support for healthy habits, step challenges, virtual races, and connected activity tracking, this area of the platform is designed to make participation feel both achievable and engaging. It also gives organisations the flexibility to run programs that appeal to different interests, fitness levels, and motivations, helping wellbeing feel more inclusive across the workforce.

Looking ahead, the functionality is set to expand even further, with upcoming enhancements including team challenges, group fundraisers, daily workouts, push notifications, savings challenges, rewards and recognition, richer social experiences, and deeper gamification. Together, these additions will help organisations build even more engaging and community-driven wellbeing initiatives.

For our clients, we've enabled this feature free of charge on all their platforms until the end of January 2027, ​just in time for 'Steptember' or any other wellness challenges you've been planning. ​

AI Recognition Coach: Making recognition easier to give

Recognition has the greatest impact when it feels timely, personal, and easy to give. That’s exactly where the AI Recognition Coach comes in.

Designed to remove “blank page” friction, the AI Recognition Coach helps employees find the right words, build confidence, and overcome common barriers to giving recognition, including language barriers and uncertainty around what to say. It’s a practical way to encourage more frequent and meaningful appreciation across the organisation, especially for employees who may be new to recognition or less confident in written communication.

Just as importantly, the feature has been built with strong safeguards in place. Policy guardrails help prevent misuse, while privacy protections include strict tenant isolation, personally identifiable information redaction, and compliance with GDPR and SOC2 standards. Harmful content detection is also applied through Amazon Bedrock guardrails.

The result is an experience that makes recognition easier, while still ensuring employees remain in control of the final message they send.

Recognition Leaderboards: Friendly competition, stronger participation

We also showcased Recognition Leaderboards as a new way to bring greater visibility and momentum to recognition programs.

By introducing a friendly competitive element, leaderboards encourage employees to send more recognition and help spotlight those who are actively contributing to a culture of appreciation. It’s a simple but effective way to increase participation, create energy around recognition, and identify internal champions who are helping reinforce positive behaviours across the organisation.

For organisations looking to strengthen culture through peer-to-peer appreciation, this adds a new layer of motivation and visibility to the recognition experience.

AI Assistant: Instant support when employees need it

Another exciting development is the new AI Assistant, designed to help employees quickly find information, understand policies and procedures, and surface the benefits and resources most relevant to them.

Whether an employee needs support understanding a workplace policy, locating a useful resource, or navigating available benefits, the AI Assistant is designed to provide fast, intuitive help in the moment. By reducing the effort required to find answers, it can improve the employee experience while also easing the burden on internal support teams.

As with other AI-powered capabilities, the focus is not just on speed, but also on trust, ensuring support is delivered in a way that feels useful, secure, and aligned to the organisation’s environment.

Insights Hub: A clearer view of engagement

To help administrators make smarter, faster decisions, we also introduced the Insights Hub, a more unified home for reports, dashboards, surveys, and AI-assisted analysis.

The goal of the Insights Hub is to bring engagement data together in a way that’s easier to access, easier to understand, and more actionable. Rather than relying on separate tools or fragmented reporting experiences, administrators can view program performance, survey insights, and engagement trends in one place.

This creates a stronger foundation for decision making, helping teams connect employee feedback with platform usage and identify what’s working, where participation is growing, and where there may be opportunities to improve.

Insights Bot: Ask better questions, get faster answers

Within the Insights Hub, Insights Bot introduces a powerful new way for administrators to interact with program data.

Instead of needing deep analytics expertise, admins can ask questions in plain language and receive instant answers about program performance, benchmarking, and improvement opportunities. The feature is designed to help teams save time, access smarter insights, and make faster decisions without the complexity typically associated with analytics tools.

This conversational approach to reporting has the potential to make data more accessible across a wider group of stakeholders, turning insight into something more immediate, practical, and actionable.

Sandbox environments: Safe testing with zero risk

For organisations planning significant changes, the new Sandbox environment offers a safer way to test before going live.

Sandbox environments provide a dedicated, isolated space where clients can test, configure, and validate changes to their program with zero risk to live environments or member data. That includes realistic end-to-end testing, controlled access, and a private space to rehearse major updates.

This is particularly valuable for change scenarios such as an email domain rebrand, where organisations may need to update employee email addresses company-wide. In that case, the Sandbox can be used to rehearse login, communications, and identity verification processes without impacting the live population.

Clients can access up to three sandbox environments at one time, with each environment lasting for two months before automatically expiring to keep things clean and manageable. Importantly, each sandbox is fully isolated from production, ensuring live data is never at risk.

New discount offers

We’re also continuing to expand the value available through our discounts platform, with a growing mix of well-known brands, everyday savings, and more flexible gift card options being added to the platform.

One of the standout updates is the arrival of Bunnings Warehouse, one of the most requested retailers in the discounts space, now available with a 2% discount. Alongside Bunnings, the latest offer rollout also highlights a wide range of new brands across retail, lifestyle, education, health, entertainment, and specialty categories, including MARCS, Complete Home Filtration, TWL, Paula’s Choice Skincare, David Lawrence, Muscle Nation, Zamels, Diesel, Coursera, Appliances Online, Fig & Bloom, Australian Unity, WhiteWater World, and Mattel, among others.

Our update also showcased expanded One4all gift card options, giving employees more flexibility in how they access savings across curated retail categories. These include:

• The Ultimate Gift for Shopping

   

• The Ultimate Gift for Her

   

• The Ultimate Gift for Eats

   

• The Ultimate Gift for Baby & Mum

These category-based gift cards broaden the appeal of the discounts experience by making it easier for employees to choose offers that are relevant to their interests, lifestyle, and stage of life.

Together, these additions strengthen the platform’s ability to deliver practical, everyday value to employees, whether they’re shopping for themselves, buying gifts, planning family purchases, or simply looking to save with brands they already know and trust.

Looking ahead

This winter product update reflects a clear direction for Reward Gateway | Edenred: more connected experiences, more intelligent support, and more opportunities to drive meaningful engagement at every stage of the employee journey.

From AI-powered recognition and employee support to richer wellbeing experiences, smarter insights, safer testing environments, and expanded discounts, these updates are all about helping organisations create a workplace experience that feels more seamless, more engaging, and more effective.