1. Integrating an employee recognition platform with other workplace apps, such as HRMS, intranets, collaboration tools, and social media, maximizes accessibility, automates data updates, and increases participation.
2. Integration with systems like HRMS ensures seamless data updates. It reduces administrative tasks, while integration with CRM, LMS, and project management tools enables real-time, automated recognition based on performance metrics.
3. Using collaboration platforms (e.g., Microsoft Teams, Slack) allows recognition to be visible in the tools employees already use, enhancing user experience and engagement.
4. Social media integration enhances visibility and motivation by sharing achievements externally, fostering a sense of pride and recognition among employees.
The right recognition tool can help your organization build a highly motivated and dedicated workforce. However, a stand-alone recognition platform might not be enough to deliver the full benefits of your recognition program. Integrating your employee recognition platform with other apps and systems in your workplace has become critical.
An organization can maximize the benefits of its employee recognition platform by integrating it with other applications, platforms, and systems used at the workplace.
Let’s explore as to why this is critical to the success of the employee recognition program:
1. Eases Employees Access
2. Automates Employee Data Update
3. Enables Gamification and Instant Recognition
4. Creates Social Visibility
Integrating the employee recognition platform with other systems, such as HRMS, Intranet, Microsoft Teams, Office365, and Google Workspace, enables employees to access it easily.
Employees can easily access the recognition platform through a Single Sign-On link without entering a user ID and password again from these systems.
This makes it convenient for employees and managers to access the recognition system and thus drives usage and participation.
Most importantly, integration with the HRMS or HRIS with the employee recognition system can ensure that data of new employees, exited employees, and changes in the existing employee data can be automatically updated,
This eliminates the manual effort of updating the employee data in the platform and hence reduces the administrative overheads of running the program.
Also, it prevents potential misses or errors due to delayed or incorrect manual data upload.
Integrating the employee recognition platform with other work systems such as CRM, learning management system (LMS), or attendance systems enables data from those systems to be shared in real-time.
Events on other work systems such as a good customer rating on the CRM system, completion of a module on LMS, or good attendance record in the attendance system can automatically trigger rewards and recognition in the employee recognition platform through the integration.
Therefore, automated awards triggered from other systems based on employee performance can help gamify work and the workplace.
However, instead of a supervisor monitoring the employee’s performance and manually nominating them for rewards or recognition, this rule-based integration with other systems can make the process automatic and real-time.
Integrating the employee recognition platform with internal and external platforms such as collaboration, communication tools, and social media can help increase the program’s visibility.
Sharing the rewards and recognition received by the employees with their co-workers on internal platforms such as Microsoft Teams or Slack.
Or with friends and connections on external social media platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn gives them additional social visibility, pride, and fulfillment.
One of the largest consumer and industry pigment manufacturers uses the HiFives platform to run its employee rewards and recognition program for its entire global workforce. The program covers peer-to-peer recognition, spot awards, and celebration of employee birthdays and work anniversaries.
Employees can sign into the platform from SuccessFactors, the company’s HRMS, through a single sign-on process. They can nominate, recognize, and redeem their rewards through the platform. Employee data also gets synced with the HRMS regularly.
Integrating the employee recognition platform with other apps is one of the most effective ways to make recognition a part of the business workflow of the organization.
Hence, the recognition platform should integrate with these apps or systems.
1. HR Management Systems
2. Intranet
3. Collaboration Platforms
4. Other Workplace Systems
5. Social Media
A human resources management system (HRMS) is the bedrock of any organization’s HR systems.
The HRMS is typically the record system for most employee data and has several employee-facing applications such as leave, attendance, payroll, and claims management.
Integration of the employee recognition platform with the HRMS allows easy employee access to the platform through a Single Sign-On.
Additionally, it enables automated updates of the employee data from the HRMS.
Hence, integration with popular HRMS platforms such as SuccessFactors, Workday, Zing HR, and PeopleStrong is a must-have feature for any recognition platform.
The Intranet is one of the most vital employee-facing platforms in any organization. It is the one-stop shop for all employee applications, announcements, and HR Policy information.
Typically, software such as Microsoft SharePoint, SAP Jam Collaboration, Friday, Jostle, Igloo, etc. power these intranets.
Integration of the Intranet with the employee recognition platform enables employees to easily navigate to the platform through a Single Sign-On.
Moreover, it can also enable rewards and recognition feeds from the platform to be automatically displayed on the Intranet.
Moreover, organizations use collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, Yammer, and Workplace for internal communication and coordination.
Employees spend 70-80% of their system time on these collaboration tools.
Hence, the integration of these tools with the employee recognition platform ensures that employees can recognize or get recognized without leaving the tool.
The recognition feeds can be displayed automatically in the tool through integration.
This can help drive the user experience and the usage of the recognition platform.
Additionally, integration with other systems in the workplace can help integrate the recognition program into the overall work process.
It can also drive gamification of work and real-time recognition.
Here are a few examples of such systems and use cases for integration:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System – capture and integrate customer feedback and reviews to trigger automated rewards and recognition
Project Management System – track project-related activities such as on-time or before-time completion of tasks or projects
Learning Management System (LMS) – completion of various learning modules and assessment
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System – enables sales and other performance data to be tracked and linked to rewards and recognition in real-time
Performance Management System (PMS) – enables recognition data to be integrated with the performance assessment process
Social media visibility is crucial in driving motivation for most people today.
Sharing on their social media profiles gives them more sense of achievement and pride.
Hence, integration with social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook is a must-have feature for any employee recognition platform.
It also saves the additional administrative effort of reposting these announcements on social media.
A leading AI-powered HR-Tech company uses the HiFives platform to run its employee rewards and recognition program for its workforce. The program covers peer-to-peer recognition, spot awards, and celebration of employee milestones.
Managers and other employees can nominate co-workers from Slack using the HiFives Slack Bot. The awards are posted directly on Slack, where other employees can like or comment on them. Employees can experience the entire recognition process on Slack, the most commonly used platform in the organization.
Organizations must integrate their employee recognition platforms with other apps to leverage the full benefits of the recognition programs and boost the performance and engagement of the workforce.
Lead author: Sagar Chaudhuri, the Co-Founder and CEO of HiFives. He is an HR Tech Evangelist with over 25 years of corporate and entrepreneurship experience. In the past, Sagar has worked in leadership roles with companies such as Genpact, Infosys, and ICICI Bank. He has an engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from IIM Lucknow. Connect on LinkedIn
To stay updated on the latest HiFives blogs, follow us on Twitter (@MyHiFives)