Employee recognition with praise badges

How it works

1. On the Praise tab of Celebrations, pick a colleague, choose a badge and write a message of up to 500 characters.
2. It appears on the company wall as a praise post, and the colleague is notified with a bell.
3. Nobody can praise themselves, and a double click within a minute does not send the same praise twice.
4. Recent praise lists what was given lately, and each employee's self-service strip shows the praise they received.
5. The monthly leaderboard shows the ten most praised people as a chart or a table, plus how often each badge was given.
6. HR adds badges with a name, icon and colour, and archives old ones without losing earlier praise.

What you can set

• Ready badges: Team player, Customer first, Above and beyond, Problem solver, Mentor.
• Your own badges: name, icon and colour, with archive and restore.
• Message: 1 to 500 characters.
• Receiver: any active colleague; no self-praise.
• Leaderboard: monthly, top 10 people, counts by badge.
• Managers can also give praise to anyone in their team from My Team.

Why peer praise works

In many Indian workplaces, recognition means a line in the appraisal and a gift at Diwali. Day-to-day good work goes unmentioned, and the people who help others most are often invisible to management. Praise from colleagues fills this gap. It is specific, because the giver saw the work. It is public, because it goes on the wall. And over a month the leaderboard shows patterns HR would otherwise miss, such as one quiet person whom three departments keep thanking.

Worked example: a month in a Noida support team

In October, a 70-person customer support team in Noida gives praise 64 times. Ritika tops the leaderboard with nine, six of them Customer first, after she handled a difficult outage call. Sameer gets five Mentor badges from new joiners he helped through their first weeks. The by-badge table shows Team player used most often. The team lead mentions the top names at the monthly meeting, and HR adds a new badge, Night shift hero, for the support staff who cover 10 pm to 6 am.

Keeping praise meaningful

Praise loses its value when it becomes routine or forced. The aim is honest thanks for specific work, so keep the rules light, avoid targets of any kind and let the leaderboard inform conversations with managers rather than decide ratings, increments or bonuses.

• Ask people to say what the person did, not just thank you.
• Keep the badge list short, and archive badges nobody uses.
• Do not set praise quotas for managers.
• Use the leaderboard to notice people, not to rank them in appraisals.

Frequently asked questions