Awards and Core Values

Q. How can organizations standardize award levels and train employees to recognize effectively using Xoxoday?
Xoxoday provides robust tools to standardize recognition practices across the organization. Admins can define predefined award levels with budget controls and automated duplicate detection to ensure fairness and consistency.

The platform’s AI-powered Personal Recognition Assistant offers timely prompts and suggestions, guiding employees to recognize peers appropriately. Additionally, Xoxoday delivers hands-on training for program champions and change agents, ensuring effective platform adoption, alignment with company values, and a strong culture of peer-to-peer recognition.
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​Q. How often do you review and refresh the award collection?
The Xoxoday R&R tool ensures that the rewards marketplace remains dynamic and relevant. Our catalog is reviewed continuously by dedicated business development teams, with new options added every week. Most catalog items are digitally integrated via APIs, ensuring a seamless experience for users.
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​Q. What options are available for awards?
Xoxoday offers a wide range of awards across 20+ categories to suit diverse employee preferences:

These options provide a seamless redemption experience, ensuring employees can choose rewards that are meaningful and relevant, wherever they are. Contact your account manager for a complete catalog and country-specific options.

​Q. How are awards commensurate and calibrated with the achievements, behaviors, and outcomes being recognized?
Xoxoday allows organizations to align awards with their goals, core values, and performance targets. This is achieved through:

This approach ensures that every recognition is meaningful, fair, and tied to organizational priorities.
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​Q. Does Xoxoday include an award advisor to guide employees on appropriate award levels? Is it customizable and selectively enabled?
Yes. Xoxoday offers an intelligent Award Advisor powered by AI and heuristic algorithms. It guides employees and managers in selecting award levels that match the impact and significance of each recognition moment, ensuring consistent and meaningful recognition.

The advisor is fully customizable to align with your organization’s recognition framework, including award types, levels, and criteria. Admins can also selectively enable it for specific teams, departments, or recognition programs.
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​Q. Can employees get cash awards or points rewards for patent filings?
Yes, program administrators can set up awards and criteria for rewarding employees who file for patents. These awards can be incorporated with a workflow where the employees can claim their rewards by uploading relevant documentation and a validation mechanism which will allow the reviewer to verify the uploaded documents to approve the awards.
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​Q. Is there provision to create multiple award categories such as above & beyond, new joiners, spot awards, client awards, or panel-based awards on Xoxoday's R&R platform?
Yes. Platforms support creating and configuring multiple award categories to match your organizational goals. You can set up awards for various scenarios including spot awards, milestone achievements, team contributions, or panel-based recognitions. These categories are fully customizable, allowing alignment with company values and objectives.
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​Q. Is there provision to create multiple e-certificate formats for different award types?
Yes. Multiple customizable e-certificate templates can be created and linked to different awards. These certificates can be branded, personalized, and automated for delivery along with the award announcement.
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​Q. How are awards calibrated to match achievements, behaviors, and outcomes?
Awards are designed to reflect desired behaviors, outcomes, and organizational values. Admins can:

This approach lets organizations tailor recognition programs to their culture while maintaining consistency and fairness.
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​Q. Does Xoxoday provide an award advisor to guide employees on appropriate award levels? Can it be customized or selectively enabled?
Yes. Xoxoday offers award guidance via both human consultation and its AI assistant, Em, which acts as a personal recognition coach. Em suggests award types and values by analyzing context, including the nature of the accomplishment, past recognitions, and equity considerations.

These recommendations are fully customizable—organizations can define award levels, criteria, and prompt types. Admins can also selectively enable the feature for specific departments, locations, or recognition programs, ensuring flexibility and alignment with company policy.
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​Q. How does Xoxoday support team or group nominations? Are award levels the same for each recipient, and how does it work for multinational teams?
The Xoxoday R&R tool makes team and group nominations easy through a streamlined workflow. A nominator can select multiple team members for a single award and assign either equal or role-based recognition values.

Admins have the flexibility to configure whether the award value is split equally among recipients or customized for each individual based on their contribution. For multinational teams, the platform automatically converts reward points to local currencies and provides access to region-specific reward catalogs. It also accounts for cost-of-living differences and local tax regulations, ensuring fair, compliant, and consistent recognition across locations worldwide.
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​Q. What types of award options are available? Are physical certificates, plaques, or branded deliverables offered? What are the cost differences between these options?
The Xoxoday R&R solution offers a wide range of award options to suit different recognition programs. Organizations can choose from physical certificates, plaques, trophies, or branded mementos, which are ideal for milestones such as service anniversaries, outstanding achievements, or special events.

In addition, there are digital options, including symbolic badges, automated congratulatory messages, and recognition posts on the social intranet feed. Employees also receive redeemable points with digital awards, creating a meaningful experience without physical costs.

Digital awards are typically included at no additional cost. Physical awards, such as certificates, plaques, or trophies, vary in price depending on factors like material (acrylic, crystal, wood), size, framing, and design. Xoxoday works closely with program stakeholders to review available options, provide physical samples for approval, and ensure that the chosen awards align with the company’s budget and recognition objectives.
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​Q. Can the value of awards be customized?
Yes. The Xoxoday employee recognition platform allows full customization of award values at each milestone level in your recognition or service award program. Organizations can set budgets based on historical program data, create new budgets, or define values using a cost-of-living index to ensure fairness across countries or regions. The platform’s flexibility helps align award values with your company’s specific program goals and budget guidelines.
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​Q. Are there any fees or markups built into award levels?
No, the Xoxoday employee engagement solution maintains full transparency in pricing. There are no hidden markups built into award levels or service award offerings. Awards are provided at procurement cost (scale pricing) plus a clearly specified transaction fee — typically 6% — applied at the time of award redemption. A detailed pricing document is provided during the program setup to ensure stakeholders have complete visibility into the fee structure.
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​Q. Does the tool allow registered users to pay bills by redeeming award points?
Yes, the Xoxoday R&R tool allows users to redeem their reward points for a wide variety of utilities, including bill payments, mobile recharges, and other digital financial services — depending on country-specific catalogs. These redemptions are powered by an expansive global rewards marketplace that includes not just gift cards and merchandise, but also experiences, prepaid cards, and utility payments.
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​Q. Does Xoxoday support auto-generation of award citations based on themes?
Yes, Xoxoday’s employee recognition platform includes an AI-powered feature that can auto-generate award citations, acting like a “recognition coach” to help create meaningful, personalized messages.

The AI generates citations by taking into account several factors:

This approach ensures that every recognition feels genuine, consistent, and reflective of both the achievement being celebrated and the recipient’s contribution.

​Q. Does Xoxoday’s employee recognition platform support the creation, modification, or removal of custom award categories?
Absolutely. Admins can create and configure multiple types of awards — such as spot, peer-to-peer, nomination-based, and jury awards — with customized names, messages, point values, and approval workflows. These can be aligned with your core values, business goals, or recognition programs, offering complete flexibility to evolve as your organizational needs change.

Q: Does the program admin have access to features like bulk award upload, delegation, award cancellation, and setting expiry for pending approvals?
Yes, the Xoxoday R&R tool offers extensive admin capabilities that support flexibility, scalability, and compliance. Administrators can:

• Mass Upload Awards: Submit nominations or awards in bulk via CSV import or integrate with HRIS for auto-triggered uploads.

• Delegate Admin Rights: Assign access to HRBPs, team leads, or executive assistants to manage awards, budgets, or approvals on behalf of others.

• Cancel Awards: Allow authorized roles to revoke pending or approved awards with optional reasons and audit trails for governance.

• Set Expiry for Pending Approvals: Define expiration windows for award approval requests, automatically cleaning up stale nominations.

• Role-Based Permissions: Define roles (super admin, regional admin, manager, user) with tailored access and functionality at every level.

These tools help streamline large-scale programs without sacrificing control or auditability.

Q: Does the platform prompt for a business justification when issuing a reward?
Yes. The platform can be configured to require a business justification whenever supervisors or nominators issue a reward. This ensures accountability, policy alignment, and helps capture the reason behind the recognition for reporting and audit purposes.

Q: Is there an LP (learning points) or badge drop-down available while rewarding?
Yes. The system provides a drop-down menu to select badges—often tied to core values or specific achievements—during the reward process. This ensures clarity and alignment with desired behaviors and accomplishments.

Q: Can the Xoxoday R&R tool enforce a mandatory comment or message from supervisors during the reward-giving process?
Yes. Supervisors are prompted to write a message or comment when recognizing employees. This makes recognition more meaningful and contextual, reinforces the reason for the reward, and enhances the impact for recipients.

Q: Does the Xoxoday R&R tool send a certificate to the employee via email along with the badge?
Yes. The platform automatically sends a customized reward certificate via email along with the digital badge. The certificate includes company branding and award details, creating a tangible, shareable token of appreciation.

Q: Can rewards and appreciation badges be categorized into specific metrics such as Job, Behavior, Extra-Curriculars, and Education?
Yes. Rewards and badges can be categorized into custom metrics like Job, Behavior, Extra-Curriculars, and Education. Users select the relevant metric during recognition, which ensures alignment with organizational values, recognition equity, and enables meaningful trend analysis.

Q: Can a value statement be shown as a dropdown for each badge or award?
Yes. Admins can define value statements for each badge or award, which appear as a dropdown during the nomination or recognition process, helping align recognitions with core organizational values.

Q: Can reward points be configured to never expire?
Yes, reward point expiration policies are fully configurable in the Xoxoday R&R tool. Admins can choose to disable expiration, allowing points to remain valid indefinitely until redeemed.

Q: What features does Xoxoday offer? Are there extra costs?

Xoxoday provides a full suite of engagement and recognition tools:

Cost: Optional features like surveys, 1:1 conversations, and advanced feedback modules come at a nominal additional cost.

Q: How does the use of subcontractors fits with your delivery model and how do you ensure a seamless client experience?
Empuls partners with various vendors to process awards, including gift card providers, merchandise suppliers, and experience providers. These partners ensure a wide range of reward options and seamless fulfilment processes. Our API integrations ensure that your employees have a seamless fulfilment experience.

Q: Can reviewers approve or reject nominations with comments, and is automatic approval available after a specific period?

Yes. Reviewers can approve or reject nominations with comments to justify their decision, ensuring transparency and accountability.

Q: How flexible is the nomination process in terms of forms, additional inputs, and approvals?
The nomination process is highly configurable to meet varied organizational needs. Administrators can design nomination forms that capture essential details while enabling fields for additional context, feedback from peers or managers, and attachments such as documents or images.

Workflows can be customized so that nominations are routed for approvals based on the type of award or recognition being sought, ensuring alignment with internal policies and governance. The platform supports automated nudges and notifications at every step to keep stakeholders informed and engaged. All configurations are easily manageable through intuitive admin controls without the need for complex technical interventions.
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​Q: Does the nomination tool allow for nominees to know in real-time that they have been nominated? Does this also allow for customized messaging?

Q: Does the system have smart functionality to remember past nominees to prevent duplicates?

Yes. Xoxoday’s platform prevents duplicate nominations through smart tracking.

Q: Does the employee experience differ if some members of the team/group are in different countries?
No, the Xoxoday employee engagement solution provides a consistent user interface and experience across countries. While language and currency adjust automatically based on location, the platform ensures a uniform experience in terms of features, processes, and engagement tools.
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​Q: How do you make the award nomination process simple and equitable?

The Xoxoday employee recognition platform makes the award nomination process simple, fair, and transparent by combining an intuitive user experience with strong governance features.

The process follows three clear steps:

Additional fairness and inclusivity features:

Q: Can we create multiple nomination forms for various award categories?
Yes. Platforms allow administrators to build multiple nomination forms tailored to each award type. These forms can include specific fields, validation rules, and instructions, ensuring that the right information is captured for each award nomination.
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​Q: Can criteria be defined for who can file nominations and determine reward eligibility for different categories?
Yes. The Xoxoday employee recognition platform allows you to define precise criteria for who can file nominations and for reward eligibility across categories. You can configure access rules and nomination rights based on employee role, department, location, or tenure.

Similarly, you can set eligibility criteria for different reward categories to ensure fairness, transparency, and alignment with your recognition and rewards program policies.
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​Q: Do you support nomination photos? What formats are supported?
Yes, the Xoxoday R&R tool supports uploading nomination photos to enhance the recognition experience. Employees or managers can upload images while nominating peers for awards. Supported image formats include JPEG and PNG, ensuring compatibility with most devices and applications.

These images can be reviewed alongside the nomination details within the platform and showcased as part of recognition stories on the Wall of Fame or social recognition feed, depending on your configuration.​

Q. Can budgets be allocated to teams, groups, or departments?
Yes. Xoxoday’s employee recognition platform supports hierarchical budget allocation. Platform Admins can create organizational-level budgets and allocate them to business units, departments, or teams. These budgets can then be managed by respective managers or BU heads, ensuring decentralized control with complete visibility via the "My Budgets" dashboard.
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​Q. Can clients track reward budget usage by hierarchy, department, or location?
Yes, Xoxoday’s R&R tool includes robust budget tracking and reporting. Clients can monitor spend by cost center, business unit, department, or location. Dashboards provide real-time visibility, while budget and reward reports show detailed allocation and utilization patterns. Department heads can access role-based reports through delegated admin rights, enabling decentralized budget control and monitoring.
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Q. What controls are in place to ensure budgets are not exceeded within a given timeframe?
Xoxoday’s recognition platform has a robust budget management framework. Admins can set budget limits at the organization, department, manager, or employee level, aligned with company plans.

The platform provides automated alerts when thresholds are nearing, detailed dashboards to track usage, and rules to restrict award types, timelines, and spending—ensuring budgets stay under control.
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Q. Can the Xoxoday R&R software assign multiple wallets or budgets to employees based on their teams, events, or departments?
Yes, the Xoxoday R&R tool offers flexible budget management capabilities designed to support varied organizational structures. Admins can assign multiple wallets or budgets based on teams, events, or departments. Budgets can be automatically allocated using rule-based workflows, ensuring timely and accurate distribution.

Managers can transfer budgets to peers for seamless collaboration, and mass budget allocations are also supported to ensure consistency and save administrative time. Learn more about budget management here.
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​Q. Can points be retrieved if they are wrongly credited to employees?
Yes, Xoxoday’s employee recognition platform allows administrators to efficiently revoke reward points or gifts that were mistakenly credited to employees. This ensures accurate reward allocation and prevents budget discrepancies.

Through a secure and auditable workflow, admins can navigate to the relevant award or gift and initiate the revocation process. The platform maintains detailed records of all transactions, providing transparency and making it easy to trace and rectify errors.

For detailed steps, read Revoke Awards.
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​Q. Can unused points be retrieved from inactive employees?
Yes. Xoxoday’s engagement platform offers flexible options for handling unused points of exited employees. Admins can:

These options ensure efficient point management while staying aligned with organizational policies.

Q: What options are available for a certificate? Is electronic or physical available?

Our program solution offers both electronic and physical certificates for service award recipients.

Both options can be developed in collaboration with the VS branding team and program stakeholders. Certificates can be localized per VS requirements or use a standard default design. Designs can also vary by milestone year level for both electronic and physical formats.
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​Q: Can you bulk download award certificates (printable) for employees?
Yes. Administrators can generate and bulk download award certificates for employees as part of service awards, milestone celebrations, or recognition events. These certificates are customizable, printable, and can include personalized messages, company branding, and employee details to ensure a meaningful and professional presentation.
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​Q: Can you setup points to have also non-monetary, digital meaning for gamification and custom catalog purposes?
Yes. Points can be configured to represent non-monetary value within gamification frameworks, such as for leaderboards, achievements, or activity badges. These points can be redeemed against a custom catalog containing items like internal privileges, digital badges, or symbolic rewards, supporting diverse engagement and motivation strategies.
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​Q: Does the platform support sending rewarding certificates by email, automatic monthly budget allocation, and mandatory business justification for rewarding?

Yes, the platform provides:

These features streamline recognition processes, reduce manual effort, and foster meaningful appreciation.

Q: Are reward certificates emailed to employees with badges and can managers be CC’d? Do recognizers receive email acknowledgments?
Xoxoday's R&R platform supports sending employees a reward certificate via email, with their achievement badge included. This email can be configured to automatically CC their manager or relevant stakeholders as needed. Recognizers also receive an email acknowledging their nomination or recognition effort, ensuring they feel valued for promoting a culture of appreciation.
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Q: Can Xoxoday’s employee engagement solution deliver real-time notifications for nominations, approvals, and awards?
Yes, Xoxoday’s employee engagement solution offers configurable real-time notifications to ensure employees and managers stay informed at every stage of the recognition process, from nominations and approvals to final awards.
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​Q: Does Xoxoday’s employee engagement solution support email or SMS alerts across different award categories and approval stages, including exceptions?
Xoxoday’s employee engagement solution supports email and push notifications across various award categories and approval stages. SMS alerts are not supported at this time.
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​Q: Can award notification emails from Xoxoday’s R&R tool display the actual certificate instead of just an intimation?
Yes, award notifications from Xoxoday’s R&R tool provide a preview of the recognition event in the email itself, ensuring recipients immediately see and feel the impact of the recognition.
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​Q: Is it feasible to send reminders to managers who have not recognized employees within a configurable number of days?
Yes, it is entirely feasible to set up rule-based reminders for managers who have not recognized employees within a specified period. Empuls offers automated workflows that can be configured to monitor recognition activity and send timely nudges or reminders to managers based on predefined rules, such as the number of days since their last recognition action.

This functionality helps promote consistent and inclusive recognition practices, ensuring no employee's contributions go unnoticed. Additionally, the platform's AI assistant can provide intelligent insights, highlighting recognition gaps and prompting managers to take action where needed. These reminders can be customized in frequency and messaging to align with your organization’s engagement goals.
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​Q: Can we send nudges to managers or HODs for unused budgets, nominations, or specific campaigns?
Yes, the Xoxoday employee recognition platform offers AI-powered nudges and notifications tailored for managers, HODs, and other user groups. These nudges serve multiple purposes — from reminding managers about unutilized reward budgets at the start, midpoint, or end of a cycle, to triggering timely actions on pending nominations or participation in recognition campaigns. Admins can configure these nudges to be automated or manually scheduled, and they’re delivered through integrated platform channels to ensure managers act promptly on recognition opportunities.
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​Q: Will employees receive email notifications when they are rewarded?
Yes, the Xoxoday employee engagement solution automatically sends reward notifications via email to employees. These notifications include personalized messages, the type of award received, and a link to view the recognition on the platform, ensuring the moment is acknowledged in real time and doesn't go unnoticed.

Q: Can the platform send configurable notifications for nominations, rewards, and approvals?
Absolutely. Xoxoday R&R tool allows configurable, rule-based notifications to be sent automatically when an employee is nominated, approved, or rewarded. Notifications can be directed to employees, managers, jury members, or custom roles, based on your workflows. This ensures transparent and timely communication for every recognition moment.
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​Q: Does the appreciation cards come with digital appreciation messages?
Our solution comes with pre-built templates for digital cards that can be used by users to appreciate their co-workers and peers for their performance at work or to recognize those employees who champion the core values of the organization.

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​Q: Can supervisors be required to add a mandatory comment or message while rewarding employees?
Yes, the Xoxoday R&R tool allows supervisors to include mandatory comments when issuing a reward. This ensures that every recognition moment is meaningful and contextual, reinforcing the behaviors or achievements being appreciated. Admins can configure this setting to make comments compulsory, creating a richer culture of appreciation across the organization.
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​Q: Can you inform non-digital workers (no access to email) via other means like SMS text messages for new recognition awards?
Yes, the Xoxoday R&R tool supports SMS-based notifications for employees without email access. This ensures frontline and deskless workers are informed in real time about new recognitions or rewards. These SMS alerts can be configured as part of the communication settings and integrated with existing HR systems for seamless delivery.

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Q: What is the logic behind points expiry in the Xoxoday R&R tool?
Xoxoday’s employee recognition platform offers flexible configuration of reward point expiration rules. By default, reward points are set to expire after one year from the date of issuance. However, administrators can modify this duration to align with their organization’s unique reward and recognition strategy. This feature ensures better control over budget utilization, motivates timely point redemption, and reinforces the desired employee behaviors within a defined timeframe. Additionally, Xoxoday supports "bill-on-redemption" pricing, meaning costs are incurred only when points are redeemed — not when they’re issued.
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Gamification
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Does Xoxoday’s employee engagement solution offer gamification features such as quizzes, badges, leaderboards, spin-the-wheel, and engagement tracking?
Yes, Xoxoday’s employee engagement solution includes a comprehensive suite of gamification features that boost participation, encourage friendly competition, and recognize achievements in engaging ways.

Employees can earn digital badges, certificates, and non-monetary credits for completing activities like quizzes, polls, or challenges. The platform features dynamic and custom leaderboards, which can be configured for monthly, quarterly, or campaign-specific competitions, such as wellness challenges or learning milestones.

Users are incentivized via activity scores, with rankings displayed to drive healthy competition. Additionally, Xoxoday offers features like spin-the-wheel campaigns (on request), trending posts, and badges to spotlight achievers.

Admins can set rules for gamification campaigns and reward users with points, swag, or experiences. Robust engagement analytics track interaction levels, recognition frequency, and redemption data, helping HR teams monitor success and continuously refine engagement strategies.
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How does the Xoxoday employee engagement solution incorporate gamification to drive participation and motivation?
The Xoxoday employee engagement solution integrates gamification elements such as leaderboards, milestones, awards, and badges. These features are powered by a sophisticated rule engine that can be tailored to align with the unique needs of any organization. This customization ensures that recognition and engagement initiatives foster healthy competition, celebrate achievements, and reinforce positive behaviors across the workforce.
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Q: Does Xoxoday’s employee recognition platform support real-time leaderboards to showcase top recognized employees?

Yes, Xoxoday’s platform features a dynamic, real-time leaderboard that highlights the most recognized employees. It reflects every recognition activity—spot awards, peer-to-peer appreciations, or milestone celebrations. The leaderboard can be customized by time period, department, location, or award category, making it easy to spotlight top performers across different segments.

Accessible from the homepage, the leaderboard promotes transparency, healthy competition, and continuous appreciation. AI-driven analysis also identifies key soft skills such as leadership, collaboration, and creativity, giving HR deeper insights into individual and team strengths.

Q: Can Xoxoday employee engagement tool include filters to view recognition by department, team, or individual?

Yes, the leaderboard and recognition dashboards include advanced filters to view recognition by department, team, or individual. Users can drill down by timeframes or award types, enabling managers and HR to analyze engagement trends, spotlight top contributors, and ensure recognition equity across the organization.

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