8 Quarterly Rewards and Recognition Ideas to Implement in 2025
A 2023 survey by Great Place to Work revealed that employees who feel recognized are 2.2 times more likely to go above and beyond their regular duties. A genuine 'thank you' from management can boost extra effort by 69%.
That’s why leading companies like Ally Financial and Hilton have implemented structured recognition programs. Ally’s “I am an Ally” awards and Hilton’s annual recognition calendar are perfect examples of how consistent appreciation—especially through quarterly employee recognition programs—can drive motivation, loyalty, and performance.
Rewards and recognition are no longer one-time gestures—they are powerful, ongoing tools to foster behaviors aligned with company values and strategy. When structured as quarterly rewards and recognition initiatives, these programs can help build momentum, celebrate progress throughout the year, and keep employees consistently engaged.
Gone are the days when recognition was limited to an annual bonus or paycheck. In today’s dynamic workplace, building a culture of appreciation through a thoughtfully designed and timely recognition strategy is more critical—and more challenging—than ever.
What are quarterly rewards and recognition?
The rewards and recognition programs are structured frameworks designed to tackle these challenges. They systematically acknowledge employees' achievements and contributions, ensuring everyone feels motivated and engaged.
Today's organizational landscape is getting increasingly dynamic. This necessitates that the employees are consistently motivated to contribute positively to their employer companies.
Quarterly rewards and recognition aim to maintain a higher level of employee engagement and motivation throughout the year. A quarterly rewards and recognition program is comprised of two components:
Quarterly recognition: The employees’ achievements are shared within the company each quarter. Recognition is more about the emotional value and can include shout-outs on the company's intranet.
Despite being different, a report has shown that combining these two can result in a powerful tool for companies to make their employees feel acknowledged and valued.
Why are quarterly rewards and recognition important?
In quarterly rewards and recognition programs, the employees know that their efforts and achievements will be rewarded and recognized more frequently. It is a more effective way to reinforce positive behaviors that align more with the company's strategic objectives.
Thus, quarterly rewards and recognition programs help companies build a culture of appreciation and continuous improvement. The result is a company with higher employee satisfaction, improved performance, and reduced turnover. However, the benefits of quarterly rewards and recognition are more multidimensional.
Here are 7 key benefits that companies can get from a well-structured quarterly rewards and recognition program:
- Employee morale and engagement: With more frequent appreciation for their hard work, employees are more consistently motivated and committed to their roles and accountability. This significantly increases their engagement with the company.
- Productivity: Rewarding and recognizing the employees every quarter inspires them to maintain their level of effort and show desired behaviors consistently. Companies that recognize their employees' efforts are benefited with 14% higher productivity from their employees than the organizations that do not.
- Talent retention, acquisition, and reduced turnover: Companies that are known for valuing their employees more frequently will have stronger reputations and will attract top talents who look for more supportive and appreciative work environments. 53% of employees are ready to stay in their current company with more appreciation, resulting in a higher retention rate. Employees are less likely to leave a company where they feel more satisfied.
- Positive corporate culture: A company that prioritizes rewards and recognition fosters a positive work environment. When appreciation is deeply rooted in the corporate culture, it encourages openness, trust, and collaboration among employees, contributing to a healthier workplace.
- Enhanced collaboration and healthy competition: Programs that specifically reward and recognize team-based achievements, are more likely to motivate the employees to work more collaboratively with their peers. Frequent rewards and recognition can also foster healthy competition among employees. When one employee is appreciated and recognized for meeting targets and demonstrating good behaviors, peers are encouraged to demonstrate similar performance or do even better for similar rewards and recognition.
- Cost efficiency: While implementing a quarterly rewards and recognition program requires initial investments, it can result in cost savings of as much as 33% of an employee's annual salary. With higher productivity, employee retention, and lower turnover, companies can effectively reduce the costs associated with reduced performance, hiring, and training.
- Alignment with organizational goals: A rewards and recognition program can be specifically designed to appreciate and value specific behaviors that align with the company's strategic goals.
Best quarterly employee reward and recognition program ideas
Companies can reward and recognize their employees' efforts and performance in many ways. Six highly effective ways of showing your employees rewards and recognition are:
1. Peer-nominated recognition with a twist
Each quarter, run a peer-to-peer nomination campaign where employees recognize colleagues who made their work easier, supported team goals, or brought positive energy. Instead of just rewarding the top nominees, feature a “Recognition Wall” highlighting everyone who was nominated.
Empuls allows you to launch peer recognition campaigns with leaderboards, nomination forms, and real-time shout-outs. Celebrate nominees with social recognition and reward points based on the number of nominations received.
2. Gifts or vouchers
Offering tangible rewards like gifts, gift cards, and vouchers is a classic and time-tested way to show appreciation to the employees. Providing employees with personalized gift cards or vouchers to their favorite stores or restaurants can be a highly appreciated form of reward.
By offering personalized rewards through Zollars, Zappos creates a playful and engaging way to recognize and reward employees, reinforcing their commitment to maintaining a positive and motivating work environment.
3. Public and internal announcements
Companies can recognize employees' achievements within the company's internal environment through emails, newsletters, or a "wall of fame" each quarter to foster peer-to-peer recognition. They can also make public announcements and instill a sense of pride by posting on popular professional social media platforms like LinkedIn. Announcements are the most cost-effective way of recognizing employee achievements.
4. Monetary benefits
A classic yet powerful way of rewarding employees is by providing them bonuses or cash rewards. Offering financial benefits is highly effective for connecting specific achievements or milestones with rewards.
The company has pioneered the reward strategy of sharing profits with the employees as rewards. This is a highly effective strategy to directly tie employees' contributions to the company’s success, creating a sense of ownership and loyalty.
5. Team Spotlight + Reward Budget
Each quarter, select one high-performing team and put them in the spotlight. Recognize their collective achievements in a town hall or internal newsletter, and give them a shared reward budget to split among the members or spend as they choose.
Use Empuls’ analytics to track team performance and engagement. Highlight team wins on the platform’s feed and assign a group reward pool that members can individually redeem through Empuls’ rewards catalog.
6. Time
Time is one of the most valuable rewards that a company can offer its employees. Providing extra weekends off and additional paid leaves in a quarter can be a highly appreciated reward. It acknowledges employees' hard work and gives them a chance to recharge themselves.
7. Flexible work opportunities
In today’s evolving and technology-driven work culture, allowing flexible work arrangements, such as remote work or preferred work hours can be a solid demonstration of appreciation for employees' ability and support work-life balance.
8. Sponsored vacation
For the team-based rewards, offering sponsored vacation to the top-performing team is a great idea to show gratitude to the productive groups of employees. It is also a great way to inspire others to be team players.
Best practices to run a quarterly employee rewards and recognition
These 6 best practices will help you run a quarterly employee rewards and recognition program that truly drives motivation and results.
1. Set clear and measurable recognition goals
Start every quarter with defined objectives that align with your company’s broader business goals. Whether it’s improving employee engagement, boosting productivity, or fostering cross-team collaboration, clear goals will guide your recognition efforts.
Empuls helps you stay focused with customizable recognition campaigns and real-time analytics that track goal progress. With this data at your fingertips, you can ensure your recognition program contributes meaningfully to overall performance.
2. Automate your reward cycles for consistency
Quarterly recognition programs need structure and consistency to be effective. Manually running them every three months can drain resources and lead to delays or oversights.
With Empuls, you can automate reward cycles by pre-scheduling campaigns, setting reminders for nominations, and activating workflows to trigger timely appreciation. This keeps your program running like clockwork—without constant manual intervention—so every deserving employee is recognized right on time.
3. Involve everyone through peer-to-peer recognition
Recognition should never be confined to leadership. A thriving program involves everyone in the organization. Empuls makes peer-to-peer recognition seamless by offering a social feed where employees can cheer each other on, post kudos, and give value-based badges.
Encouraging peer involvement helps create a recognition-rich environment where appreciation flows freely and morale stays high. You can even gamify participation with leaderboards to keep the excitement going each quarter.
4. Offer a diverse and meaningful rewards catalog
A one-size-fits-all reward strategy doesn’t work anymore. Today’s workforce is diverse, and your reward options should reflect that. Empuls offers access to a global rewards catalog with over 1 million choices—from gift cards and curated experiences to donations, merchandise, and company-branded swag.
When employees get to choose rewards that resonate with their interests, it enhances satisfaction and encourages ongoing participation in your quarterly program.
5. Leverage data and insights to recognize fairly
To run a truly impactful recognition program, you need to ensure fairness and inclusivity. Empuls provides actionable insights into who’s being recognized, how often, and by whom.
This helps identify top contributors as well as those who may be under-recognized, ensuring no one feels left out. Managers can also use these insights to make informed decisions about quarterly award nominations, helping build a more transparent and equitable culture of recognition.
6. Celebrate wins with visibility and storytelling
Don’t just hand out rewards—turn them into celebrations that everyone can be part of. Use Empuls to publicly recognize employees on a company-wide social feed, post quarterly winner stories, and share photos or videos from award events.
Highlighting the “why” behind each recognition not only boosts visibility but also reinforces the values and behaviors you want to see more of. It turns recognition into a shared experience that energizes your culture and motivates others.
Case study
Following are the case studies to show the significance of quarterly rewards and recognitions.
A leading automotive software company built a culture of celebrating success with Empuls
Challenge: A leading automotive software company, with above 5000 employees, has been suffering critically with its existing rewards and recognition system. The system was inefficient, difficult to navigate, and considered only physical gifts to its employees. The results were a poor user experience and consistent employee dissatisfaction to the point where the employees were not interested in redeeming their gifts at all.
Even though several employees had 3000+ points in their account, they would not redeem these points for rewards, since they felt that the rewards listed for redemption were not providing value for money," recounts the Senior Executive and Corporate HR.
Transition to Empuls: The company partnered with Empuls, a comprehensive AI-powered employee engagement platform that offers a global catalog of e-vouchers and redemption in multiple currencies. Empuls provided a seamless solution:
- Extensive redemption options: Over 20,000+ reward options are available globally.
- User-friendly interface: A robust platform that enhances the overall user experience.
- Social recognition: Empuls Townhall Groups enabled visibility of recognition across the organization, promoting a culture of excellence.
Impact of Empuls on the R&R Program: The result was instantaneous. The employee survey showed a significant improvement in ESAT scores. The company also increased its quarterly rewards and recognition budget from 18,000-24,000 USD to over a whopping 53,000 USD, reflecting the management’s confidence in the Empuls platform. The platform facilitated the appreciation of small wins, building stronger peer connections and significantly increasing the number of peer-to-peer appreciations.
Conclusion
Quarterly rewards and recognition programs are more effective ways of keeping employees more consistently motivated to give high efforts to achieve specific goals and demonstrate positive behaviors throughout the entire year. By providing consistent and meaningful acknowledgment of employees' efforts each quarter, organizations can enhance performance, retain top talent, and foster a positive workplace culture.
To truly make rewards and recognition shine, you need to mix and match the right rewards and recognition and follow the best practices that fit your company's unique vibe. It's all about finding the perfect balance that resonates with your team and keeps them excited and motivated.
For companies looking to streamline and elevate their employee engagement strategies, tools like Empuls can streamline and elevate employee engagement strategies, providing comprehensive solutions for rewards, recognition, and maintaining engagement institution-wide.
FAQs
1. What are the criteria for the employee of the quarter award?
The criteria for the Employee of the Quarter award typically include performance metrics, contributions to team goals, customer feedback, and demonstration of company values.
2. How do rewards and recognition motivate employees?
Rewards and recognition motivate employees by providing tangible and intangible benefits that acknowledge their efforts and achievements. They fulfill employees' psychological needs for appreciation and accomplishment. When employees feel valued, they are more likely to be engaged, productive, and committed to their work.
3. How to announce rewards and recognition in the workplace?
Employer companies can announce rewards and recognition through multiple channels. This can include intra-company channels, such as emails, team meetings, and internal social platforms. Public announcements not only celebrate the individual but also set a standard for others. The best way to announce reward and recognition is to combine both!
4. How to communicate a reward and recognition program?
Start by clearly outlining the program’s objectives, criteria, and the types of rewards available. Use multiple communication channels such as emails, company intranet, team meetings, and posters to ensure all employees are informed. Encourage managers to discuss the program in meetings.
5. How to implement a rewards and recognition program?
Define clear objectives, choose a flexible platform, and design the program with clear criteria and rewards. Pilot the program with a small group, gather feedback, and then launch it company-wide. Ensure continuous monitoring and evaluation to adjust it based on participation and feedback.
6. How to improve reward and recognition in the workplace?
Understand employee preferences and needs through surveys and feedback. Ensure timely recognition for achievements. Offer a diverse range of rewards to cater to different motivations. Utilize technology to make recognition more visible and accessible. Finally, regularly gather feedback to refine the program.