Awardcovs.O.C. Tanner
The verdict
While O.C. Tanner was founded on service award catalogs and high markups (averaging 88% or more in many cases), Awardco disrupted O.C. Tanner’s business model in 2015 with zero-markup partners like Amazon, in-country fulfillment, and configurable technology that empowers organizations to build programs that transform culture. While O.C. Tanner has sought to modernize its platform by replicating Awardco’s roadmap and reducing fees in some areas, Hundreds of O.C. Tanner customers continue to move from O.C. Tanner to Awardco for superior technology and transparent pricing practices.
#1 Overall and Highest-Rated Employee Recognition Platform by Customers on G2
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O.C. Tanner at a glance
O.C. Tanner is a legacy pioneer in the recognition industry, utilizing nearly a century of history to offer high-touch consulting, custom award manufacturing, and thought leadership. Their primary offering, Culture Cloud, offers an array of tools to facilitate global enterprise recognition, focusing heavily on traditional service awards, milestone yearbooks, and top-down appreciation.
O.C. Tanner appeals to buyers seeking a traditional, consultant-led partnership leveraging classic recognition practices. They have recently attempted to modernize their pricing with a "SaaS-based model", though this does not address high overhead costs and reallocates as opposed to eliminating overall customer cost. Key features include:
- Extensive managed consulting services and research led by the O.C. Tanner Institute
- Custom award manufacturing supported by an in-house global warehouse and physical fulfillment network
- "Culture Cloud" platform offering standard service milestones, peer-to-peer recognition feed and eCards, and "Say Thanks" external recognition programs
- AI features like "Recognition Coach" help them tell a more modernized recognition story.
For organizations heavily invested in traditional custom awards and willing to pay a luxury premium for managed consulting services, O.C. Tanner remains a familiar choice. However, modern HR teams increasingly find the platform inflexible, the implementation cycles excessively slow, and the underlying pricing structure highly burdensome compared to modern, agile alternatives that offer more advanced solutions.
What sets Awardco apart?
Unlike O.C. Tanner, which masks still-dated technology behind high-touch consulting and shifting fee structures, Awardco offers unprecedented flexibility, transparent zero-markup pricing, and deep native integrations and workflows that drive greater platform engagement with less administrative cost. Awardco eliminates the need to submit tickets for basic program changes, empowering admins with robust self-service controls.
When Awardco’s advanced technology is combined with its consulting services and Center of Excellence, large enterprises are able to have the best of both worlds: a partner that can maximize employee adoption and program success through the latest technology innovation while offering dedicated consulting and end-to-end change management support. This partnership approach is a major reason why hundreds of O.C. Tanner customers have switched over to Awardco in the past three years.
By replacing highly curated, high-margin catalogs with the world's largest reward network, Awardco ensures budgets maximize actual employee value while driving greater employee behavior adoption.
With a 26,000-person workforce spanning 160 countries, and more than 80% working in customer-facing, deskless roles, Hertz® uses Awardco® to build a high-performance culture where appreciation is timely, personal, visible, and aligned with the company’s values.
Key differences: Awardco vs. O.C. Tanner
Strategic Pricing Models: Zero Markup vs. Margin Obfuscation
Awardco fundamentally changed the economics of employee recognition by introducing a true zero-markup model. By charging a straightforward, highly competitive software licensing fee, Awardco ensures that every single dollar allocated to employee rewards retains its exact market value. This absolute transparency allows organizations to dramatically optimize their budgets, ensuring that high-value physical goods, digital rewards, and travel experiences are delivered without hidden skimming. Administrators can confidently calculate exact ROI without worrying about unpredictable fulfillment surcharges or premium brand markups destroying their budgets.
O.C. Tanner has historically operated on a legacy model that extracts large profits through markups, averaging 88% premium across their curated catalog. Realizing that modern enterprise buyers actively dislike this model, O.C. Tanner has recently pivoted to what they term a "SaaS-based model." However, this is largely an exercise in margin misdirection. Rather than eliminating their large logistical overhead costs, O.C. Tanner simply shifts these margins into exorbitant subscription license fees and hidden costs on high-ticket items. Existing clients evaluating this new model quickly discover that the total cost of ownership remains oppressively high, engineered strictly to protect the vendor rather than empower the employee.
Platform Architecture: Agility vs. Administrative Dependency
Awardco is purpose-built for the modern, fast-paced enterprise. Its technological architecture prioritizes high configurability and self-service, empowering HR administrators to launch new initiatives, adjust budgets, and create hyper-localized programs for diverse teams without waiting on external support. Whether designing a complex wellness initiative, a highly customized safety incentive program, or a global peer-to-peer structure, Awardco’s robust backend allows teams to execute strategy instantly. This extreme agility saves countless administrative hours and allows global organizations to pivot their culture strategies in real time based on immediate data.
Conversely, O.C. Tanner heavily relies on a "managed services approach" that functions as a sophisticated mask for technical inflexibility. Because their legacy platform is highly complex and difficult to manipulate natively, clients are forced into severe administrative dependencies. Making changes to programs, updating user permissions, or launching new campaigns often requires submitting tickets and waiting for O.C. Tanner consultants to execute the changes. This traditional business model is optimized for long-term lock-in rather than organizational agility, leaving modern HR teams deeply frustrated by rigid onboarding timelines and incredibly slow deployment cycles.
Reward Networks: Global Choice vs. Curated Limitations
Awardco leverages the world’s largest reward network through its exclusive integration with Amazon Business, alongside comprehensive options for travel, hotels, digital gift cards, charitable donations, and custom company swag. This vast, digital-first ecosystem ensures that a distributed, diverse workforce can always find a reward that is personally meaningful, regardless of their location across 163+ countries. Furthermore, Awardco’s underlying technology allows organizations to seamlessly blend monetary and non-monetary recognition, driving intrinsic motivation and achieving unparalleled platform adoption rates across both deskless and corporate workers.
O.C. Tanner maintains complete control over a highly curated, native catalog supported by an expensive global network of physical warehouses. While they market this as a benefit, it severely restricts employee choice and creates significant logistical friction. End-users frequently encounter a lack of modern, digital-first reward experiences, and verified G2 reviews consistently highlight intense frustration over "limited options" and unusable gift cards compared to open-market networks. By locking clients into this rigidly controlled ecosystem, O.C. Tanner prioritizes their own fulfillment logistics over the personalized preferences of the modern employee.
Real Business Impact: Measurable ROI vs. Legacy Inertia
Awardco’s platform is demonstrated to drive quantifiable business outcomes for enterprise organizations transitioning from legacy platforms like O.C. Tanner. By combining transparent budgets with unprecedented platform adoption, clients routinely see massive shifts in cultural metrics. For example, after ripping out their legacy system for Awardco, Children’s Nebraska implemented the custom "Sunshine" platform. They saw recognition scores jump an incredible 11.4 points above the industry average, directly correlating with a massive 20% average drop in attrition risk. Awardco clients don't just buy software; they acquire a measurable strategic lever that improves retention, boosts morale, and saves hundreds of thousands of dollars.
O.C. Tanner possesses an impressive portfolio of long-standing clients, but much of this loyalty is based on legacy inertia and executive relationships rather than current product superiority. While their thought leadership and institute research are highly publicized, translating that research into actual, agile product innovation has been slow. As competitors innovate faster, O.C. Tanner is frequently forced to offer massive retention rebates and financial apologies to prevent enterprise clients from leaving. For the hundreds of O.C. Tanner clients exploring moves onto modern platforms like Awardco, the limitations of O.C. Tanner’s approach has become apparent in high markup and program costs with slow delivery of innovation or program fixes.
The Strategic Choice is Clear
If you’re looking for a customizable recognition platform that can serve your current needs and scale with your business, adapt to your organization’s workflows, and truly reflect your culture, brand, and organizational objectives, Awardco is the smart, strategic choice that will take your recognition and rewards programs from launchpad to lightspeed.
Contact us today for a demo and see how Awardco can elevate your recognition strategy, build a rewarding employee journey across every team culture, and partner with you for your ultimate success.
The strategic choice is clear
If you’re looking for a customizable recognition platform that can scale with your business, adapt to your organization’s workflows, and truly reflect your culture, brand, and organizational objectives, Awardco is the smart, strategic choice.
Contact us today for a demo and see how Awardco can elevate your recognition strategy.