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Automate your employee recognition workflows with scheduled recognition

Automate employee recognition for birthdays, anniversaries & more. Personalise awards & boost morale with scheduled recognition.

In today’s fast-paced business world, recognising employee achievements shouldn’t be a tedious task.

We believe in the power of recognition and reward – and we’ve got years of data to back us up. The bottom line is that employee recognition boosts morale and productivity, improves connection and retention and bolsters organisational culture. Employees who feel adequately recognised and appreciated for their efforts are overall happier, more motivated and more likely to stay.

Gartner’s recent research found that “79% of HR leaders agree that technology’s main role is to free up staff capacity for strategic work.” Scheduled recognition is a solution that automates the experience of acknowledging key milestones that matter to both your employees and your business.

Why choose scheduled recognition?

First of all, what does it mean to “schedule” recognition? We’re so glad you’ve asked.

Scheduled recognition is an automation feature – one we offer in our Employee Recognition program – that allows both HR and managers to pre-arrange recognition moments for the predictable occasions that matter, such as birthdays, anniversaries and major holidays. Automation allows organisations to define connection moments throughout the year – and ensure that nobody gets left out.

How else can scheduled recognition elevate your recognition initiatives? Let’s chat about the incredible advantages it brings to the table:

  • Replacing existing manual and admin-heavy recognition initiatives
  • Centralising recognition efforts under one brand and one platform
  • Creating consistency and unity to deliver an exciting employee journey

What can you automate?

Not all recognition can be automated – and that’s a good thing! If you’ve been reading our content for any time at all, you know that we believe in personalised, descriptive recognition awarded as close to the triggering event as possible. A strong organisational recognition strategy includes both personalised and automated recognition moments.

When an employee performs a desired behaviour, achieves a big win or flourishes in a presentation, hand-written recognition is best. After all, these are not predictable events and deserve more than a general kudos. But some events are unpredictable and routine, and these are the moments ripe for automation.

For example:

Welcome messages

Want to make a new employee’s first day memorable? Schedule a welcome award to be sent on Day One or a designated date after they start, like their first complete week or month.

Birthdays

Never miss another birthday! Simply upload your employees’ birth dates and let the system automatically send an award straight to them on their special day.

Work anniversaries

Celebrate loyalty! Automatically deliver awards on employees’ work anniversaries, recognising their contributions and dedication without lifting a finger.

Custom events

Keep things fresh! Schedule custom events – whether it’s a holiday celebration for Juneteenth or any one-off event – and repeat them yearly or host as one-off events!

The power of personalisation

Include casual recognition moments in your program to enable broad peer-to-peer recognition practices that improve interpersonal connections.Day-to-day recognition, or all those random moments that pop up to delight us, is your prime avenue for personalisation. All of these moments should be clear and descriptive to eliminate ambiguity and encourage more instances of the behaviours you want to see.

But you can personalise your scheduled recognition, too! Our clients rave about the ability to tailor every recognition event, including:

  • Custom images for each award event
  • Unique messages that resonate
  • Flexible award values – choose non-monetary recognition, monetary recognition, or provide a catalogue of items to choose from
  • Control over whether awards get shared on the social wall or remain private

 

How to automate employee recognition

Automation can help make recognition more consistent, timely and inclusive, ensuring great work never goes unnoticed. By choosing a recognition system that integrate with everyday tools such as Microsoft Teams, or Slack, organisations can automatically trigger recognition moments for key milestones like work anniversaries, birthdays, onboarding achievements, training completions or project successes.

The key is to use automation to support, not replace, human appreciation. Automated reminders can prompt managers and colleagues to recognise achievements in the moment, while scheduled recognition campaigns can ensure every employee is celebrated fairly. When combined with personalised messages and peer-to-peer recognition, automation reduces administrative effort while helping to build a culture of continuous appreciation at scale.

Focus on automating the triggers and reminders, but keep the recognition itself personal and meaningful. A genuine message from a manager or colleague will always have the greatest impact. Our AI Recognition Coach helps to create engaging, meaningful and personalised recognition messages, with just a short and simple prompt.