At RCGNZ Summit 2025, Awardco unveiled the next generation of its platform built to listen more deeply, connect more meaningfully, and celebrate more powerfully.

What began as a simple recognition platform has begun its natural evolution into an ecosystem that helps organizations build culture, incentivize performance, and power engagement. This year’s announcements—led by Awardco Engage™, comms and communities, and a new native mobile app—mark a new era of innovation for our customers and the millions of employees they support every day.

Awardco Engage: turning feedback into action

Employee feedback is powerful, but only if it leads to meaningful change. Awardco Engage is designed to do exactly that.

Awardco Engage is an all-in-one employee listening and insights platform built directly within the Awardco platform. It empowers every voice, captures meaningful feedback, and turns insights into measurable improvement. Organizations can launch surveys, uncover sentiment, and activate change, all within the same system that powers recognition and rewards.

With real-time dashboards, heatmaps, and benchmarking tools created from standardized questions, Awardco Engage helps HR leaders identify strengths and challenges across teams while connecting recognition and engagement data to measure impact. This new turnkey solution is built for speed and adoption, and ready to grow alongside your organization.

“Recognition has always been the foundation of employee engagement,” said Steve Sonnenberg, Co-Founder and CEO of Awardco. “With Awardco Engage, we’re connecting every part of the employee experience—listening, feedback, recognition, and action—into one seamless ecosystem. This is a major milestone for our customers and their employees as we turn employee engagement from passive data gathering to a true system of insights and action.”

The future of Awardco Engage includes action planning and leadership dashboards powered by machine learning, designed to help leaders close the loop between what employees say and what organizations do. This transforms sentiment into strategy, helping every organization move from a reactive culture to proactive, measurable improvement.

Awardco in the palm of your hand: a new native mobile experience

Connection shouldn’t stop when work leaves the desk. At RCGNZ Summit 2025 Awardco introduced a new native mobile app for iOS and Android, built alongside our best-in-class progressive web app.

The mobile app brings recognition, rewards, and engagement tools to every employee, wherever work happens. Whether in the office, on the floor, or in the field, employees can now recognize peers, redeem rewards, and engage with their culture in real time—all from the palm of their hand.

This new experience ensures every employee stays connected and celebrated, no matter where they are. We believe that belonging shouldn’t depend on location or time zone or whether or not employees are at a desk—it should travel with you.

Comms and communities: belonging begins with connection

In a world where dispersed workforces are the norm, communication becomes culture. Comms and communities transforms Awardco into a central hub for connection, communication, and belonging.

With tools to share company updates, celebrate achievements, and build digital communities, this new offering brings together employees across all demographics. Admins can schedule announcements, target messages by group or location, and surface important updates right on the homepage—creating a true digital headquarters for recognition and engagement.

And coming soon, these new capabilities will include multimedia communication, rich analytics, Slack and Teams integrations, and dedicated group hubs for teams, departments, and Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). Comms and communities go beyond simple communication tools to help organizations bring people together.

New program types: celebrating every moment that matters

Recognition has never been one-size-fits-all, and we’ve known that from day one. In 2026, Awardco will expand on existing features for how organizations celebrate success with a suite of new program types designed to make recognition more personal, inclusive, and human. 

Building on existing recognition program capabilities, the new recognition program types will simplify the organization and creation of recognition programs, unifying recognition strategy across all initiatives. 

• Nominations: End-to-end automation for formal award programs—no more spreadsheets or manual submissions.
  
  
• Incentives: Align recognition with behaviors that matter—from safety and learning to wellness and performance.
  
  
• Gamification and Challenges: Recognition-fueled competition that makes work a winning experience.
  
  
• Moments: A new way to celebrate life’s biggest milestones—from new hires and weddings to retirements and personal achievements.
  
  

Each of these innovations helps organizations celebrate the full spectrum of what makes employees remarkable.

Awardco + Workday: a partnership that powers what’s next 

This year also marked the announcement of Awardco’s Workday-certified native integration, connecting recognition and HRIS management into a single, seamless ecosystem.

Through this partnership, organizations can automatically sync employee data between Workday and Awardco, reducing administrative work while creating a more connected employee experience. Together, Awardco and Workday are redefining how organizations celebrate people, streamline HR processes, and strengthen culture at scale.

The future of engagement: One platform. Every moment.

The innovations unveiled at RCGNZ Summit 2025 represent a groundbreaking vision for the future: one platform that connects listening, recognition, and action. One ecosystem that helps employees feel seen, supported, and inspired. One place for every moment that matters.

At Awardco, we believe employee engagement isn’t simply a survey or a shoutout. Rather it’s every opportunity to listen, celebrate, and connect. And as we look ahead to 2026, we’re just getting started.