Employee Birthdays & holidays

Celebrate festive occasions with style

Automate celebrations, personalize rewards, and ensure no special occasion goes unnoticed—regardless of where your employees are.

 

Return on recognition

Why celebrate birthdays and holidays at work?

Recognition doesn’t always have to be tied to performance. Celebrating birthdays and holidays offers an easy, reoccurring, and impactful way to show employees they matter. These personal moments deepen engagement and help create a culture of care that resonates far beyond the workplace.

Performance
Stock market trading screen with financial graphs on laptop
69
%
of employees say they would work harder if they felt more appreciated.
69
%
of employees say they would work harder if they felt more appreciated.

It's simple, really: appreciation increases feelings of self-worth and personal value, which helps employees want to put in the effort. And it can be as simple as a "Hey, great work today."

 
Retention
Factory workers in safety gear discussing project during industrial meeting
31
%
lower turnover in companies with strong recognition programs.
31
%
lower turnover in companies with strong recognition programs.

Appreciation leads to greater loyalty. Why? Because when people feel seen and appreciated through recognition, they feel a stronger connection to their workplace. It's simple psychology.

 
Satisfaction
Smiling senior professional in blue blazer during office meeting
81
%
of employees believe personalized recognition improves their workplace satisfaction.
81
%
of employees believe personalized recognition improves their workplace satisfaction.

General appreciation is great, but personalized is even better, and it doesn't have to be overwhelming. Automation tools, integrations, and more make it easier than ever.

 

end-to-end flexibility

Never miss a chance to celebrate

Whether it’s birthdays, national holidays, regional celebrations, or company-centric events, make these meaningful moments unforgettable.

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Automated Recurring Events

Automate birthday and holiday rewards with customizable gifts, messages, or points based on the holiday, tenure, region, or other metadata.

Custom Catalogs

Build custom catalogs from millions of global gift options, so every birthday and holiday feels personal.

Custom Reward Point Amounts

Create flexible reward structures with customizable points to match your culture—perfect for both small wins and big celebrations.

Localization for Regional Traditions

Celebrate globally with localized holidays, cultural events, and recognition tailored to your diverse workforce.

 

Employee Birthdays

Meaningful birthday recognitions

Skip the generic card—and the hassle. Make every employee birthday celebration feel personal:

  • Celebrate peers in a dedicated birthday feed with custom messages
  • Share birthday shoutouts to Slack or monitors for (optional) company-wide visibility
  • Send points or curated gifts employees will actually love
  • Utilize user profiles to give thoughtful, interest-based gifts

testimonials

What customers are saying

Lockton
 
 
Prior to Awardco, the recognition process was manual and time-consuming. Everything was done through emails and spreadsheets, with physical delivery of plaques and gifts. Important milestones were sometimes missed, despite our best intentions.
Smiling young woman with long blonde hair wearing a red blazer and black top against a black background.
Mallory Pence
Marketing Manager
Sorenson Communications
 
 
As an evolving company, I like to ask myself if we're better than we were a year ago—and with employee recognition and employee engagement, the answer is absolutely.
Dan Higbee
Senior Director of HR
Ultradent Products
 
 
We're present in pretty much every continent in the world, and there's no limitation to our recognition system. We see recognitions from Brazil to the US, from Japan to China, from South Africa to France, and everyone is engaged.
Favio Paiva
Workday Specialist
WebPT
 
 
I cannot tell you what a relief it was to be able to integrate metadata from our HRIS system so that birthdays and service awards were automatically recognized and sent to our WebPTers. This was a huge, huge accomplishment for our employee engagement.
Britney Burns
Employee Experience Program Manager
Dubai Airports
 
 
We did our first cycling project on the runway. It was a crazy and challenging idea, but the team did an amazing job—and receiving a High Flyer for it felt incredible.
Smiling man with dark hair and beard wearing a black shirt against a gray background.
Barkin Ozdemir
Content Development Manager, Brand & Communications, Dubai Airports
PMG
 
 
Recognition truly is a cornerstone of PMG’s culture because it fuels engagement, strengthens relationships, and reinforces the behaviors that drive our success. It allows you to immediately recognize big and small wins where that impact is immediately felt.
Smiling woman with light brown hair wearing gold hoop earrings and a blue and white striped shirt.
Mary O’Brien
Head of Programmatic
Lockton
 
 
Since implementing Awardco, we’ve saved at least 30 hours a month that used to be spent manually tracking, purchasing, and mailing gifts. Now it’s all automated—and more empowering for our associates.
Smiling woman with dark wavy hair wearing large earrings and a lavender blouse against a black background.
Selia Wood
AVP, Talent & Engagement
Crumbl
 
 
The product that we're putting out is a lot of fun, but it is not easy to do what we do every single week. People are working really, really hard, and if they feel like just another cog in the machine, that can get disheartening really quickly. Taking that extra time to show appreciation for above-and-beyond effort is really important and reinforces good relationships.
Smiling woman with long dark hair in black top against a pink textured background.
Alejandra Caceres
Senior Vice President of Marketing
Southern Oregon Head Start
 
 
If we retain a teacher, that’s 20 students we get to serve. Going from 45% turnover to 8% means we’ve kept 85–90 more staff. That’s an incredible impact on both our children and our budget.
Smiling woman with long black hair wearing a black and white striped turtleneck sweater against a plain light background.
Amber Lease
Human Resource Director
PMG
 
 
Awardco checked all the boxes for us, from onboarding all the way up to senior leadership.
Smiling middle-aged woman with brown hair wearing a red cardigan, black top, and multicolored beaded necklace against a white background.
Pam Buyers
Head of Culture
America First Credit Union
 
 
After COVID hit we had over 1800 employees go remote. Our HQ campus became a ghost town. We couldn't do the high touch thing anymore, but still wanted to engage our workforce. Because of the nature of remote work, we didn't even know which employees were where, and there was no way we could use our old system of bi-annual distribution. We had gotten so much positive feedback with our service anniversary program that we reached out to Awardco to see if they could do something to help us with our bonus program.
Smiling woman with dark hair and bold winged eyeliner lying on a black textured surface.
Jodi Gonzales
HR Manager
Dubai Airports
 
 
The implementation was effortless. The Awardco team was incredibly supportive and proactive throughout the journey, offering guidance and expertise that led to a smooth and successful launch of our High Flyer program.
Maha Salem
Senior Manager, Rewards & Recognition, Dubai Airports
 
 
Our partnership with Awardco's sales, implementation, and support teams has been the brightest point. They come to every situation with a solution and innovation mindset.
Anonymous
Director of Human Resources
Hertz
 
 
Everybody wants to come to work every day and feel as though they're making a meaningful contribution to the business. So, when you finally get to hear that what you've been working so hard on has made an impact, it's incredibly rewarding.
Chris Berg
Executive Vice President, Fleet Management
Utah Valley University
 
 
[Awardco] pulls everybody together… you get to see what everyone’s doing, even across different campuses.
Smiling middle-aged woman with blonde and brown wavy hair wearing silver hoop earrings and a cream turtleneck sweater against a green background.
Brenda Betteridge
Business Development Manager

Thought Leadership & Resources

Employee celebration resources

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Can organizations restrict birthday or holiday points to a specific catalog?
 

Where supported, organizations can restrict an award to a selected catalog or reward category. For example, onboarding or holiday points may be limited to company swag, while a birthday award may be available across a broader marketplace.

Catalog restrictions can help align the reward with the purpose of the program, the employee population, the company store, or the available budget. The restriction may apply to a specific award, point balance, employee group, or campaign.

The available catalog controls and employee visibility depend on the enabled product and setup. Organizations should confirm whether a catalog can be limited by country, population, category, provider, or event.

What types of birthday and holiday rewards can employees receive?
 

Depending on the configured marketplace and program, employees may receive or choose from:

  • Reward points to spend in an available marketplace
  • Gift cards or digital reward options
  • Company merchandise or a branded swag catalog
  • Curated holiday or seasonal reward collections
  • Travel, experiences, or local activities
  • Charitable donations or a campaign-specific giving option
  • Nonmonetary recognition, messages, or other configured experiences

The available catalog, country coverage, supplier inventory, currency, fulfillment, and point value can vary. Organizations should describe representative categories rather than guarantee a specific brand, item, event, price, or delivery date.

Can organizations choose which employees receive birthday or holiday rewards?
 

Organizations can configure eligibility around approved employee and organizational data. Rules may include location, country, department, employee type, employment status, hire date, or other supported metadata.

This allows a company to run one global program, separate programs by region, or different birthday and holiday experiences for selected populations. A seasonal program may also use different reward values, catalogs, or dates for different locations.

The available filters and rule behavior depend on the connected data source and enabled configuration. Organizations should define how new hires, employees on leave, transfers, terminations, rehired employees, and corrected data are handled.

Can birthday and holiday rewards be personalized?
 

Organizations can typically configure the message, branding, sender, reward value, catalog, visibility, notification, and other elements of the employee experience.

A birthday program might send a personal message with points or a selected gift. A holiday program might offer a broad marketplace, a seasonal catalog, company-branded merchandise, a local gift option, or a campaign-specific reward.

Personalization options vary by program. Organizations should confirm which fields, messages, branding elements, delivery channels, and recognition experiences can be customized before publishing detailed product claims.

Can Awardco automate birthday and holiday recognition?
 

Yes, where the applicable programs and employee data are enabled, organizations can automate birthday recognition and schedule recurring holiday rewards or campaigns.

Birthday automation may use an approved employee birth-date field to identify eligible employees. Holiday programs can be scheduled around a specific date, season, campaign period, or company calendar and may distribute points or another reward to a defined population.

Automation can reduce manual administration, but organizations should validate the source data, trigger timing, employee eligibility, campaign start date, and exception process before launch.

Celebrate any special day

Make birthdays and holidays stand-out events that employees will love.