Planning for a Successful Year With Your Employee Recognition Program

🗺️ Build a Recognition Roadmap for the Year

Strong recognition programs do not happen by accident. Creating a simple monthly or quarterly engagement plan helps keep recognition consistent and meaningful all year long.

Consider planning around:

• Monthly or quarterly engagement themes such as teamwork, innovation, safety, customer focus, or wellbeing
• Key business cycles like busy seasons, operational peaks, or performance reviews
• Company moments, including anniversaries, milestones, or major initiatives
• Seasonal moments, holidays, and national celebration days that naturally create opportunities to recognize and celebrate employees

Planning ahead allows you to align badges, messaging, and internal communications early, making it easier for leaders and employees to participate throughout the year.

Helpful resources:

• Quarterly Recognition Calendar
• How to Build a Culture Committee That Strengthens Recognition and Engagement

🎯 Align Recognition With 2026 Goals and Initiatives

Recognition has the greatest impact when it reinforces what matters most to the organization today. As goals and initiatives take shape this year, recognition can help drive awareness, adoption, and accountability.

Ways to align recognition to current priorities include:

• Creating goal or initiative-specific badges tied to business objectives
• Encouraging managers to recognize progress, not just outcomes
• Reinforcing company priorities through the language used in recognition messages

Helpful resources:

• How to Create a Badge Strategy for a Successful Recognition Program

🚀 Use Challenges to Drive Action and Engagement

Challenges turn intentions into action by clearly connecting effort, progress, and reward. They are especially effective for kickstarting initiatives early in the year and maintaining momentum over time.

Common uses for Challenges include:

• Encouraging completion of training or certifications
• Driving adoption of new tools, systems, or processes
• Supporting wellness, safety, or engagement initiatives

Helpful resources:

• Challenges setup and configuration guide
• Workplace Challenge Playbooks: Boost Engagement, Wellness, and Team Connection

🔗 Increase Visibility With Integrations

Recognition works best when it fits naturally into employees’ daily workflows. Integrations help make recognition easy, timely, and highly visible.

By integrating with tools like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, or Slack, organizations can:

• Enable in-the-moment recognition without leaving daily work tools
• Increase visibility through shared channels and feeds
• Reinforce recognition as a habit rather than an extra task

Helpful resources:

• Integration setup guides Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Slack, and more

📺 Amplify Recognition Across Your Organization With Kiosk Mode

For organizations with shared spaces or frontline teams, visibility is key. Kiosk Mode helps ensure recognition reaches everyone, regardless of role or location.

Kiosk Mode can be used to:

• Display live recognition on screens in breakrooms, lobbies, or common areas
• Highlight campaign-specific badges or current initiatives
• Create shared moments of celebration across teams

Helpful resources:

• Displaying Recognitions in Kiosk Mode

📊 Review, Adjust, and Celebrate Throughout the Year

A successful recognition program evolves. Set time each quarter to review participation, engagement trends, and badge usage to understand what is working.

Use these insights to:

• Refresh campaigns or introduce new badges
• Share success stories with leaders and teams
• Celebrate milestones and participation growth

Helpful resources:

• Improving Engagement within Recognize

🌟 Make Recognition a Strategic Advantage in 2026

Recognition should be more than a moment. When planned intentionally, it becomes a powerful way to reinforce goals, recognize effort, and strengthen culture throughout 2026.

By building a recognition roadmap, aligning recognition to active initiatives, leveraging Challenges, and increasing visibility through Integrations and Kiosk Mode, your organization can create meaningful engagement that lasts all year.