How a consolidated recognition platform gives admins their time back

Recognition admins have an important job. They are responsible for building programs that help employees feel seen, reinforce the behaviors that matter most, and bring an organization's culture to life.

But too often, the people who should be focused on recognition strategy are spending their time administering the process.

They are managing spreadsheets. Tracking down approvals. Updating employee data. Ordering and distributing rewards. Answering budget questions. Pulling reports. Managing nominations. And trying to connect recognition programs that have developed across different teams, regions, and systems.

Over the last two years at Awardco, I have partnered with organizations as they design and evolve their recognition strategies, and this challenge comes up again and again. Recognition teams have big ambitions for their programs, but administrative work can make it difficult to find the time to focus on them.

That is why I believe a recognition platform should do more than create a great employee experience.

Recognition admins should spend their time improving the strategy, not administering the process.

So how can the Awardco platform give that time back? 

1. Automate the routine

Start with the work that happens over and over again.

Birthdays. Service awards. Onboarding touchpoints. Employee eligibility. Recurring communications.

Individually, these tasks may not seem significant. But when you multiply them across thousands of employees, multiple programs, and an entire year, the administrative effort adds up quickly.

Before Awardco, recognition at Lockton relied heavily on emails and spreadsheets, with plaques and gifts physically delivered to employees. Their Assistant Vice President spent hours each month managing an inbox and delivering awards to employees' desks. Despite the effort involved, important milestones could still be missed.

Today, Lockton runs more than 30 programs, 18 of which are automated. Birthday and service award recognition is powered by their HRIS integration, and onboarding messages from leadership are delivered on schedule. The result is more than 30 hours of administrative time saved each month.

ClickUp saw a similar opportunity. Their People Operations Specialist, Deanna Tindell, shared that employees now receive timely recognition on the day of their anniversary, along with a gift, without the team having to manually manage the process. That change alone saves at least 10 hours each month.

What I love about this example is what happened next. ClickUp did not simply save 10 hours. They reinvested that time into their strategy, improving service awards and introducing birthday and onboarding programs.

That is the opportunity. Automate what does not require your team's expertise so they have more time for the work that does.

2. Simplify program management

As recognition strategies grow, so does the complexity behind them.

You may have peer to peer recognition, manager programs, service awards, nominations, incentives, onboarding, and local programs all operating at the same time. Each can come with its own budgets, approvals, eligibility rules, permissions, communications, and processes.

Without the right infrastructure, admins can quickly become the connector holding all of those pieces together.

McCormick & Company experienced this at a global scale. Before partnering with Awardco, across its workforce of 14,000 employees, more than 100 recognition programs had developed around the world. Programs varied by region, required significant administration, and some recognition cycles took as long as 24 hours to complete.

By bringing those programs into one platform, which McCormick calls Bravo, the organization created a consistent global framework while maintaining the flexibility for local customization.

I think that distinction is important: flexibility does not have to mean fragmentation.

With a more consolidated approach, McCormick now saves more than 1,200 administrative hours each year while still running over 100 programs all over the world.

Lockton applies the same principle to nominations. Their annual State of the Companies awards accept nominations throughout the year directly within the platform. Rather than managing submissions across emails, files, and spreadsheets, the process lives in one place.

The goal is not necessarily to have fewer recognition programs. It is to make those programs easier to manage as your strategy grows.

3. Streamline reward management

Rewards can create some of the most meaningful recognition moments for employees. They can also create a significant amount of work behind the scenes.

Someone has to manage reward options, purchasing, inventory, distribution, global delivery, tax implications, payroll reporting, and reconciliation.

Much of that work is invisible to employees, but HR, Finance, and Payroll teams know exactly how much time it can require. And if you have ever been the person responsible for the swag closet, you know exactly what I mean. Boxes of merchandise purchased in bulk, gift cards tracked in spreadsheets, rewards stored and distributed by hand. It all adds up.

The right rewards model can take much of that administrative burden off your team while giving employees more choice.

Lockton, for example, replaced gift cards with AwardCodes, trackable, physical, customizable recognition cards with QR codes for point redemption, giving employees more choice in how they use their rewards. And simplifying administration for their HR team by keeping budgets and tracking directly in the platform.

They also saw an important benefit on the compliance side. Their AVP of Talent & Engagement described Awardco not only as a recognition tool, but as a risk mitigation solution because tax and payroll teams can accurately track and report gifting. Processes that previously required significant manual effort during IRS audits can now be supported by automated gifting designations and reporting.

When we talk about improving the recognition experience, we naturally focus on the employee. But we should also think about how easy that experience is for admins to deliver.

4. Accelerate insights

This may be the most important opportunity because it is where administrative time begins to turn into strategic time.

I believe measurement becomes most useful when it moves beyond simply reporting activity. The goal is to understand what is happening across your program, who is participating, who may be missing, and where you have an opportunity to improve.

When reporting is manual, getting to those answers can become a project of its own. Teams spend time pulling data, combining spreadsheets, building reports, and preparing information for leaders.

When those insights are readily available, teams can spend more time deciding what to do about them.

ClickUp, for example, identified through its reporting that recognition activity tended to spike at the end of each month. Instead of simply reporting the trend, the team acted on it. They introduced automated mid month reminders to encourage more consistent recognition throughout the month. Greater budget visibility also helped them make decisions about expanding budgets and adding cost centers.

McCormick now has dashboards that provide visibility into recognition volume, company values, participation across regions, engagement, and retention. That gives leaders a more complete picture of how recognition is showing up across the organization.

That is the shift I want recognition teams to make.

Move from "What happened?" to "What are we learning, and what should we do next?"

The real return is not just hours

The time savings alone are meaningful. After moving onto the Awardco platform:

But I would argue that hours saved are only the starting point.

The bigger question is: What could your team do with that time?

• Could you redesign a service award program that has not evolved in years?
• Could you help managers understand what great recognition looks like?
• Could you better understand why certain employee populations are receiving less recognition?
• Could you build a stronger strategy for reaching frontline employees?
• Could you spend more time analyzing your data, listening to employees, testing new approaches, and telling a stronger story to leadership?

Those are the activities that move a recognition strategy forward.

Final Thoughts

Technology should not take the human element out of recognition. It should give people more time to focus on it.

There will always be administration involved in running a recognition program. But the more we can automate the routine, simplify program management, streamline rewards, and accelerate insights, the more capacity recognition teams have to focus on the work that requires their expertise.

When we give them that time back, the opportunity is not simply to run recognition more efficiently. It is to build a better recognition strategy.

A message from Awardco

Awardco is built to give admins their time back. From 10 to 100,000 employees, see how Awardco helps you:

• Automate milestones, service awards, and recurring communications
• Manage budgets, approvals, and nominations in one place
• Deliver localized rewards globally, with tax and payroll tracking built in
• Gather recognition data and act on detailed analytics

Get a demo to see Awardco in action.