Recognize Nominations – Recognize

Our Nominations feature provides companies with a straight-forward above & beyond program option with a secret voting system to discover top employees. Some classic examples for an above and beyond program are an employee of the month program or employee of the quarter program.

With Recognize Nominations, staff still initiate the Recognition by selecting a Badge and choosing a recipient, but only the Company Admins will see the submissions. Because Nominations Badges are a means to vote for a winner, they do not have the option for adding any points. Company admins will decide on a winner based on accumulated votes by staff over the nomination period. Then, the winner can either be awarded with a certificate, gift, or with a separate Badge made for awarding winners.

Around 76% of companies have a nomination (e.g. Above & Beyond) program, according to WorldatWork.

How to enable Nominations

Click 'Menu' in the top right-hand corner of your screen
Select 'Company Admin' from the drop-down menu
Once in the Company Admin portal, click 'Settings' from the left side menu
Scroll to the Nominations section in the settings
Toggle 'Allow Nominations' to ON to allow the Nomination option for your Nomination Badges

NOTE: Once enabled in the Settings, refresh the browser to make sure the company admin is updated.
Toggle 'Message is required' ON/OFF depending on whether you'd like your staff to include why they are nominating an employee
Toggle 'Allow quick nominations' ON/OFF

NOTE: Quick Nominations are where managers and company admins can rapidly nominate employees based on recognitions. No reason is required. If you create quick nomination badges, managers and admins can nominate staff based on recognitions in the Recognitions pane in the company admin or the manager portal. See our article on How to Use Quick Nominations for details.
If desired, set a global limit for how many times a user may be awarded as the winner of a nomination badge

NOTE: Global limits set in the Company Admin settings will override any Badge-level limits in place. If you don't want to limit these badges, you'll want to leave this blank.
Now that you've selected your settings, you can click Custom Badges in the left side menu. This is where you can customize your badges both for social recognition and nomination.

Now you can create or find a badge that will be the nomination badge. See this article for more instructions on setting up Nomination badges.

Nomination badge examples

Companies often use Recognize's Nominations for employee of the month or employee of the quarter. To take it one step farther, you can name the Nomination badges in alignment with company values or initiatives. Here are a few examples:

Speaking Out
Innovator of the Quarter
Top Team Pollinator
Best Halloween Costume

How it works

Nominations use a lot of the same components of social recognitions in terms of setting up badges, but they differ from social recognitions in a few distinct ways.

Users never see nominations in the stream or in user profiles.

NOTE: You will only ever see this if an admin has changed a badge from a social badge to a nomination badge after the badge has already been used for social recognition.
Only admins can see Nominations once they are submitted. No one is notified when a nomination occurs.

NOTE: We do not notify anyone because the system is set up for admins to be able to monitor the Nominations during the voting period. See our help article for more details on where to find this.
Once admins choose an award winner for the campaign period, the company can choose how to award the winner.

NOTE: You will need to create a separate winner's badge if you want to award the winner via social recognition.

Ideas for Awarding a Nomination Winner

Some companies award staff by having the CEO send a CEO-role badge to the winners. A more traditional route is to give a physical award or certificate and have an executive-level leader present it to the winner. Awarding employees during a monthly or quarterly gathering can also be special, depending on how the employee prefers to be recognized. In cases of an employee of the quarter or year, you could also consider hosting an event such as a luncheon or gala to honor these top performers.

When you have selected a winner of your nominations program, that winner will not be automatically sent a badge or points. If you wish to award a winner in this way, a separate badge with points must be created and sent manually. We recommend giving only admins and/or managers access to this badge to ensure that it is only sent to winners of your nominations program. To find out how to create badges, see our how-to article: "How To Create a Custom Badge".

Voting period

Above & beyond programs often involve a time period for nominations to be open, and for admins to choose a winner. Let your staff know ahead of time when nominations will open for certain programs, and remind them again about the deadline during the last week of the campaign as a best practice. See our FAQ Article for a communication template with instructions.

Exporting data

You can export Nomination data by going to the Nominations tab in the Company Admin portal.

Click 'Menu' in the top right-hand corner of your screen
Click 'Company Admin' from the drop-down menu
Select 'Nominations' from the left side menu
Filter for nomination period, if needed, above the table
Filter by badge, if needed, in the top right-hand corner of the screen
View details for nominations during a certain period for a program by clicking on the 'View' link within the table for that line item
Click 'All votes' in the top right corner to view details or export all nominations regardless of badge or time period