5 Important Features Your Employee Incentive Platform Should Have

As most employers now know these days, their workers aren’t just after the paycheck anymore. Many businesses and organizations are now offering a wide range of incentives not just to encourage their employees to stay, but also to motivate workers to give their best. However, as a business grows, managing these rewards can become challenging.

That’s where employee incentive platforms come in. A smart, intuitive software offers a way for employers to develop impactful incentives programs. Moreover, it also allows workers to check available incentives, file a request digitally for rewards they’ve earned, keep track of what they’ve redeemed, and much more. But with many competing platforms available, which one should you get for your company?

To help you out, here are five important features your chosen employee incentive platform should have:

1. Expansive Rewards Catalog

There’s no use in getting an employee incentive platform if it can only show one or two rewards at a time. Hence, make sure to get one that can accommodate multiple rewards at the same time. After all, offering only a few rewards at a time may just disappoint employees who can’t find anything they like.

2. Security

Of course, in this day of hackers and data breaches, security is of utmost importance. That’s why it’s important to get a platform that has various security features in place. One such feature is location-based trends, which can help detect fraud; it will raise an alarm when someone is trying to redeem rewards outside of the employee’s regular locations.

3. Analytics and Reporting

Being able to gain insights from your current rewards program can help you make your incentives system more effective. For example, by capturing data on the most redeemed rewards, your HR team will know what to offer again and which ones to stop providing. For example, night-shift employees may regularly redeem coupons for free coffee, while those working mid-shift hours may not need those as much. Hence, your HR team can reallocate the perks to those who may need or appreciate them more.

4. Social and Gamification Features

Chatrooms, forums, leader boards—these all fall under the umbrella of social and gamification features, and they can improve the experience of using your employee incentive platform. Through these features, employees can share their knowledge, let others know about how good the rewards are, and foster camaraderie. These features can even inspire a spirit of friendly competition among your employees. If the rewards alone are not enough to motivate your employees to do better, then maybe the thirst for recognition or even the fear of falling behind their peers might work.

5. Mobile-First

This feature is a must for companies with employees who are working off-site, particularly those who are constantly on the road like sales agents. By allowing them to access the platform easily on mobile, they won’t need to wait until they get back to the office to redeem their rewards. They can simply open a website or tap an app on their smartphone to access the platform.

As you can see, these five features really are essential for a smoothly running employee incentive platform. So, before you sign a contract with any vendor, conduct due diligence first to avoid getting locked into a platform that you and your employees are going to have a hard time deploying and using.