Recognition App Overview
Build a culture of appreciation and celebrate achievements across your organization with the Recognition App—a comprehensive platform for peer-to-peer recognition, formal awards, milestone celebrations, and rewards management.
What is the Recognition App?
The Recognition App transforms how organizations acknowledge employee contributions. Whether it’s a quick “thank you” between colleagues, a group shout-out to a whole team, or a formal award nomination with monetary value, the app provides flexible tools to recognize achievements at every level — on the web, in the mobile app, and even on a shared frontline kiosk.
Core Value Proposition:
- 🎯 Drive Engagement — Employees who feel recognized are more engaged and productive
- 🤝 Build Culture — Foster a positive workplace culture through appreciation tied to company values
- 📊 Measure Impact — Track recognition patterns, spot at-risk employees, and identify engagement gaps
- 💰 Manage Rewards — Control budgets and turn recognition into real Company Store rewards
Key Concepts (How It Works)
If you only read one section, read this — it explains the model behind the screens. These are the concepts people most often get wrong.
The two record types: a Post vs. an Award
Everything in Recognition is one of two things, and they behave differently:
- Recognition Post — a social shout-out one person writes about a colleague, published to the feed. It can carry optional peer points, a company value, an image, reactions, and comments. This is the everyday “thank you.”
- Award — a formal recognition tied to a program (it always belongs to one). It has a title, an optional dollar value, and can require approval. Awards come from a Quick Award (manager gives instantly) or from an approved nomination.
A Post is casual and peer-driven; an Award is structured, program-scoped, and often budgeted. The feed shows both.
There are TWO separate point systems
This is the single most important thing to understand. Recognition has two independent pools that never mix:
- Peer Giving Allowance (Mango Kudos points) — a per-employee, monthly “points to give” allowance. Every employee gets one (when the feature is on). It resets on the 1st of each month and does not carry over. Spending it credits the recipient’s Company Store balance 1:1. This is what powers Peer-to-Peer recognition and Boosts. It’s configured under Settings → Reward Points — NOT by any recognition program.
- Program & Group Budgets — dollar-denominated pools that back Award-based programs (Manager-to-Employee, Achievement, Milestone). Managers draw from these when giving awards.
They never cross. A peer give draws only from the per-employee allowance; an award draws only from a program/group budget. Attaching a group budget to a Peer-to-Peer program does nothing — and the system actively blocks it (a Peer-to-Peer program cannot have a group budget, because it’s funded entirely by the per-employee allowance).
Program budgets vs. Group budgets (both are “budgets,” they differ)
- Program budget — a monthly, soft spending target set on a program (
monthly_budget). It’s guidance and a dashboard signal, not a hard stop. - Group budget — an annual, hard-stop pool arranged in a hierarchy (Company → Department → Manager). Draws are enforced: when a pool is exhausted, further awards from it are blocked. A Per-Manager Cap can limit how much each manager spends from a shared (Company/Department) pool. A manager’s own budget is drawn before any department or company pool.
What makes someone a “Manager” vs. “Leadership”
Each employee’s monthly giving allowance is set by their role tier:
- Individual contributor (IC) — has no direct reports.
- Manager — has at least one direct report in the org chart. A front-line team lead and a VP are the same tier as long as they have reports.
- Leadership — holds the Admin or Owner role in MangoApps (or belongs to a configured leadership group). “Leadership” is a permission, not org seniority. So a non-managerial HR or IT admin is “Leadership,” while a director with a large team but no admin role is “Manager.”
Default monthly allowances are 1,000 / 2,000 / 5,000 points for IC / Manager / Leadership (≈ $10 / $20 / $50, since 1 point = 1¢). Admins can change the amounts.
What a “Boost” is (pile-on points)
A Boost lets a coworker add points from their own monthly allowance to an existing recognition post — a one-tap “me too, this was great.” Boosts:
- come in fixed amounts (5, 10, or 25 points) to keep it a quick celebration, not a second give-points form,
- settle immediately to the recipient’s Company Store balance,
- are limited to one boost per person per post, and
- can’t be used on your own recognition (you can’t boost a post you wrote or one where you’re the recipient).
Boosting requires the Peer Giving Allowance feature to be on.
Group recognition (recognize a whole team at once)
You can recognize up to 50 people in a single flow. Behind the scenes this fans out into one post per recipient (so each person’s profile and stats are correct), all sharing a group id. The message is moderated once and applied to everyone, and cross-app broadcasts (Slack/Teams) fire once for the group, not 50 times.
Company Values
Admins define the organization’s company values (e.g., “Customer First,” “Own It”). A recognition can be tagged with the value it celebrates, which powers culture analytics (“which values are we actually recognizing?”). Tagging a value is required when you attach peer points to a post. The feed highlights a Value of the Month, and the app nudges people toward under-recognized values.
Two ways to run formal awards: ad-hoc Nominations vs. Award Cycles
Both create Awards, but they’re different models — and each has its own setting:
- Ad-hoc Nominations (Award Requests) — “nominate this person, now.” Anyone submits a nomination to a program; it routes through a 1–5 level approval chain that walks up the reporting chain (each approver’s manager is the next level). On final approval, the Award is created. Gated by Enable Award Nominations (on by default).
- Award Cycles — time-boxed programs with winner selection. Nominations open for a window, a committee reviews anonymized nominations (nominated members are recused from deciding), winners are selected, and results publish as an honor roll with certificates. Gated by Enable Award Cycles (off by default).
Quick Award vs. Nomination (automatic vs. approval)
A Quick Award is a manager (or admin) giving an award instantly — no nomination, no approval — with points credited on the spot (drawing from a group budget if configured). A Nomination is the request-and-review path above. Use Quick Awards for spot recognition; use nominations for formal, higher-value, or governed awards.
Anti-gaming governance (optional)
For the open peer surface, admins can set a monthly cap on recognitions per giver and a cooldown before recognizing the same person again (both default to off). Peer point gifts at or above a configurable threshold are held for approval, and there’s a minimum number of days between point gifts to the same person. These guards apply to manual gives (peer posts + quick awards); system-generated awards (cycles, nominations, milestones) are exempt.
Points vs. money, and who can’t bank points
Points are a spending license, not cash — 1 point = 1¢ of Company Store credit. Some worker classifications (e.g., contractors, volunteers, interns) can be recognized but should not accrue monetary store points for tax/legal reasons. Admins list those classifications; recognition still posts, but the points credit is skipped.
What a manager sees, and admin visibility
- By default the Team tab shows your direct reports only. If you manage other managers, use “All reports” to see your whole org subtree. Admins see everyone.
- Giving Roster (Settings → Giving Roster) — who can give peer points and how much each has left this month.
- Point Ledger (Settings → Point Ledger) — the history of who gave points to whom, when, and from which program, for investigation.
At a Glance
| 🔗 Integrations | 📱 Mobile Ready | 🖥️ Frontline Kiosk | 🤖 AI Agent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6+ apps | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
Perfect For:
- 🏭 Frontline & deskless teams — recognize from a shared break-room kiosk (PIN-based, no login) or the mobile app
- 👥 Managers — instant Quick Awards, a team dashboard, anniversary rosters, and nudges when a report hasn’t been recognized
- 📈 HR & People teams — participation analytics, at-risk-employee scoring, milestone fulfillment, and budget controls
How It Works
Recognition Flow
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ RECOGNITION JOURNEY │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │
│ ┌────────────┐ ┌────────────┐ ┌────────────┐ ┌────────────┐ ┌──────────┐ │
│ │ PEER │ │ QUICK │ │ NOMINATION │ │ AWARD │ │AUTOMATED │ │
│ │ POST │ │ AWARD ⚡ │ │ (approval) │ │ CYCLE │ │MILESTONE │ │
│ │ (+ points) │ │ (managers) │ │ │ │ (winners) │ │ │ │
│ └─────┬──────┘ └─────┬──────┘ └─────┬──────┘ └─────┬──────┘ └────┬─────┘ │
│ │ │ ▼ ▼ │ │
│ │ │ ┌────────────┐ ┌────────────┐ │ │
│ │ │ │ APPROVAL │ │ COMMITTEE │ │ │
│ │ │ │ CHAIN │ │ REVIEW │ │ │
│ │ │ └─────┬──────┘ └─────┬──────┘ │ │
│ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ │
│ ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ RECOGNITION POST or AWARD CREATED │ │
│ │ (with optional point value) │ │
│ └─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
│ │ │
│ ┌───────────┬───────────┼───────────┬───────────┐ │
│ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ │
│ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ │
│ │ Feed + │ │ Points → │ │ EPMS │ │ Slack / │ │ Boosts │ │
│ │ Reactions│ │ Store │ │ Reviews │ │ Teams │ │ (pile-on)│ │
│ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ │
│ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Note: Quick Awards (⚡) bypass approval entirely — points are credited instantly. Peer posts and Award Cycles/Nominations route through their own review paths.
Integration Ecosystem
┌─────────────────┐
│ RECOGNITION │
│ APP │
└────────┬────────┘
│
┌─────────────┬───────────────┼───────────────┬─────────────┐
│ │ │ │ │
▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼
┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ COMPANY │ │ EPMS │ │ GOALS & │ │ SLACK / │ │ ASK AI │
│ STORE │ │(Perf. Mgmt)│ │ TRAINING │ │ TEAMS │ │ (Agent) │
└─────┬─────┘ └─────┬─────┘ └─────┬─────┘ └─────┬─────┘ └─────┬─────┘
│ │ │ │ │
▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼
┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ Redeem │ │Recognition│ │Celebrate │ │Broadcast │ │Give/query │
│ points │ │feeds into │ │goal & │ │cards + │ │recognition│
│for rewards│ │reviews │ │cert wins │ │DM approve │ │via chat │
└───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘
Key Features
🌟 Peer Recognition (Posts)
Enable anyone to recognize anyone, instantly.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Recognition Posts | Share appreciation with a personalized message |
| Company Values | Tag the value a recognition celebrates (required when giving points) |
| Group Recognition | Recognize up to 50 people at once (one post per recipient, moderated once) |
| Peer Points | Attach points from your monthly giving allowance → recipient’s Store balance |
| Boosts | Pile-on 5/10/25 points from your own allowance to a teammate’s post ⚡ |
| Image Attachments | Add an image from the Asset Library or an award card design |
| Visibility Options | Public, Department, Team, or Private |
| Anonymous Option | Recognize without revealing the sender (when enabled) |
| Reactions & Comments | 👏 👍 🎉 ❤️ reactions plus threaded comments |
| Feed Filtering | Filter by All, Awards, Posts, My Team, or My Department |
Use Case: An employee spots a colleague staying late to help a customer. They post a quick recognition tagged #CustomerFirst with 25 points — and three teammates Boost it, adding their own points on top.
💡 Pro Tip: Tag a company value on every recognition. The Value of the Month spotlight and analytics only work when recognitions carry values — and points can’t be attached without one.
⚡ Quick Award (Manager Instant Recognition)
Let managers give instant awards without an approval workflow.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Instant Awards | Skip nomination — recognize on the spot |
| Direct Points Credit | Points credited to the recipient’s Store balance immediately |
| Budget-Aware | Draws from the manager’s group budget; shows remaining budget as you give |
| Flexible Recipients | Any employee (direct report or company-wide) |
| Points ↔ Dollars | Values convert at 1 point = 1¢ |
| Public or Private | Control visibility in the feed |
Quick Award vs. Nomination
| Aspect | Quick Award | Formal Nomination |
|---|---|---|
| Approval Required | ❌ No | ✅ Yes (multi-level chain) |
| Points Credited | Instantly | After approval |
| Who Can Give | Managers & Admins | Anyone |
| Best For | Spot recognition | Formal / higher-value awards |
| Budget | Group budget (hard-stop) | Group budget (reserved on submit) |
📝 Nominations & Approvals
A structured path for formal award nominations.
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ NOMINATION WORKFLOW │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │
│ ┌─────────┐ ┌──────────────┐ ┌─────────────┐ ┌────────────┐ │
│ │ SUBMIT │──▶│ UNDER REVIEW │──▶│ APPROVAL │──▶│ DECIDE │ │
│ │Nomination│ │ (reviewer) │ │ CHAIN 1-5 │ │ │ │
│ └─────────┘ └──────────────┘ └──────┬──────┘ └─────┬──────┘ │
│ │ │ │
│ ┌───────────────┼────────────────┼──────┐ │
│ ▼ ▼ ▼ │ │
│ ┌────────────┐ ┌────────────┐ ┌────────────┐ │ │
│ │ APPROVED │ │ REJECTED │ │ ADVANCE │ │ │
│ │(award made)│ │ (feedback) │ │ next level │ │ │
│ └──────┬─────┘ └────────────┘ └────────────┘ │ │
│ ▼ │ │
│ Feed + Notifications + Points → Store + EPMS │ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Workflow:
- Submit — Any employee nominates a colleague with justification
- Review — Assigned reviewer evaluates (nominations can also auto-route)
- Approval chain — Each level walks up the reporting chain (1–5 levels), with optional value adjustment
- Decision — Approve (creates the Award) or reject with feedback
- Bulk actions — Approve or reject many nominations at once during high-volume periods
Statuses a nomination moves through: pending → under review → approved / rejected / cancelled.
🏆 Award Cycles (Winner Selection)
Time-boxed award programs with committee-based winner selection — for “Employee of the Quarter”–style programs.
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| Open | Nominations open for a window; employees nominate peers |
| Review | A committee reviews anonymized nominations; nominated members are recused from deciding |
| Decide | Committee recommends winners |
| Results | Public honor roll + winner certificates |
Award Cycles are off by default (Enable Award Cycles). Nominees who don’t win still get a “your colleagues nominated you” thank-you.
🏅 Recognition Programs & Categories
Structure formal recognition with programs and categories.
| Program Type | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Peer-to-Peer | Informal appreciation, funded by the per-employee allowance |
| Manager-to-Employee | Formal recognition from supervisors (budget-backed) |
| Achievement-Based | Triggered by accomplishments (projects, certifications) |
| Milestone | Career milestones (anniversaries, promotions) |
Each program supports multiple categories (Innovation, Teamwork, Customer Service, Leadership, Excellence…) with customizable icons, colors, and value ranges. Programs can be imported from a JSON config and seeded with sensible default categories.
💰 Budget Management
Control recognition spending with two complementary tools.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ GROUP BUDGET HIERARCHY (annual, hard-stop) │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ ┌─────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ COMPANY POOL │ │
│ └───────────┬─────────────┘ │
│ ┌───────────────┼───────────────┐ │
│ ▼ ▼ ▼ │
│ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │
│ │Engineering│ │ Sales │ │ HR │ │
│ └─────┬─────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ │
│ │ │
│ ┌─────┴─────┐ Per-Manager Caps on shared pools │
│ ▼ ▼ Reserve → Confirm → (Refund on revoke) │
│ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ Auto active ↔ exhausted transitions │
│ │Mgr A │ │Mgr B │ │
│ └──────┘ └──────┘ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Program Budgets | Monthly, soft spending target per program (dashboard signal) |
| Group Budgets | Annual, hard-stop hierarchical pools (Company → Dept → Manager) |
| Budget all managers | Provision every manager’s budget in one action |
| Per-Manager Caps | Limit each manager’s draw from a shared pool |
| Real-Time Tracking | Reserved vs. spent vs. available, per pool and per manager |
| Utilization Alerts | Warns admins at 90% and when a pool is exhausted |
| Refunds | Revoking/expiring an award returns its money to the pool |
🎨 AI Writing & Sharing Tools
Make every recognition better and more shareable.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| AI Message Coach | Rewrites your draft into a warmer, more specific message that names a concrete contribution and its impact (won’t fabricate facts) |
| AI Translation | Translates any recognition into the reader’s language |
| Printable QR Card | Generates a certificate-style card with a scan-to-view QR code — great for printing or sharing |
| Recognition Wrapped | A personal, Spotify-Wrapped-style year in review: how much you gave and received, the values you were celebrated for, your top champions, and your busiest month |
| Award Card Art | AI-generated recognition card designs (system + tenant), attached from the Asset Library |
💡 Pro Tip: Stuck on wording? Type a rough draft and tap the AI Coach — it turns “thanks for the help” into a specific, sincere message you can send as-is.
👥 Manager Dashboard
Empower managers with team insight and instant recognition tools.
| Tool | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Quick Award ⚡ | Give instant awards with one click (budget-aware) |
| Pending Approvals | Review nominations and posts awaiting action (with count badge) |
| Team Overview | Direct reports (or the whole subtree via “All reports”) |
| Recognition Gaps | See which team members haven’t been recognized recently |
| Anniversary Roster | Upcoming work anniversaries (90-day window), with CSV export |
| Team Member Detail | Deep-dive into any member’s awards, posts, and given recognition |
Pending Approvals visibility: Admins see everything; managers see nominations where they’re the reviewer, the nominee is their direct report, or no reviewer is assigned yet.
📊 Analytics, Insights & Risk Scoring
Measure program health and act on it.
Standard Analytics:
- Awards and posts by program, category, department, and period (week/month/quarter/year)
- Top recipients and top givers; department participation comparison
- Coverage & equity (who’s never been recognized; concentration in the top 10%)
- Time analytics (busiest day/hour/month)
- Benchmark comparison vs. industry bands (participation rate, recognitions per employee)
- Retention correlation — recognized vs. non-recognized retention delta
- Export to CSV or Excel
AI-Powered Insights:
- Executive summary with key findings, trends, and recommendations
- Anomaly detection — sudden activity drops, over-concentration on one person, clusters of isolated employees
- Manager-level recommendations (team health score, who needs attention)
- Department health reports
At-Risk Employee Scoring:
The at-risk view scores employees on disengagement signals — recognition decline, network isolation, a manager-recognition gap, sentiment decline, and peer-engagement drop — and ranks them critical / high / medium / low so HR can intervene before someone disengages.
🛒 Company Store Integration
Turn recognition into tangible rewards.
How It Works:
- Employee receives points (from a peer post, boost, or award)
- Points are credited to their Company Store balance (1 point = 1¢)
- Employee redeems points for rewards
Reward Categories: Company swag, gift cards, experiences, and charitable donations. Store crediting is idempotent (no double-credit), reversible on revoke, and skipped for reward-points-excluded classifications.
🎂 Lifecycle Automation
Automatically celebrate employee milestones (runs daily).
| Event | Automation |
|---|---|
| Work Anniversaries | Configurable years (1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30…) |
| Birthdays | Optional |
| Role / Promotion Anniversaries | Optional |
| Certifications | Auto-celebrate a freshly earned certification |
Anniversary point values scale with tenure (e.g., 1yr → 100 pts, 5yr → 250, 10yr → 500, 20yr → 1,000, 25yr → 1,250, 30yr → 1,500). Sender can be the System, the employee’s Manager, or an HR Representative. For physical service-award gifts, HR marks a milestone rewarded once fulfilled. Milestones move through achieved → recognized → rewarded.
🖥️ Frontline Kiosk
Give recognition on a shared device — no personal login required.
- Passcode-connected device — an admin registers a kiosk for a location
- PIN identify — an employee identifies with their ID + PIN (rate-limited against guessing)
- Recognize — pick a colleague, write a message (10–1,000 chars, AI-moderated), submit
- Auto-reset — the screen clears after a short idle window, ready for the next person
Perfect for break rooms, warehouses, and stores where teams don’t sit at a desk.
🖼️ Recognition Wall
Public display mode for office TVs and digital signage.
- Token-based access — secure URLs for unauthenticated display
- Auto-refresh — configurable interval
- Recent highlights — latest public awards and posts
- Tap-to-applaud — logged-in viewers can 👏 right from the wall
🛡️ Content Moderation & Governance
Keep recognition professional and fair.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| AI Moderation | Screens content before posting (inappropriate words, spam, excessive caps, links) |
| Review Queue | Flagged content is held for admin review; authors see an “under review” badge |
| Manager Approval | Optional approval for all peer posts |
| Sentiment Enrichment | AI extracts sentiment/value signals from posts (feeds analytics) |
| Anti-Gaming Guards | Monthly caps, same-person cooldowns, and approval thresholds on manual gives |
| Audit Trail | Config changes (programs, categories, values, budgets) and moderation decisions are logged |
🤖 Recognition AI Agent
Recognition is wired into the Ask AI sidebar — and the agent can both answer questions and take actions.
Ask it (everyone):
- “Show my recognition” / “What’s my Wrapped recap?”
- “Who’s on the leaderboard this month?” / “What’s the value of the month?”
- “How many giving points do I have left?”
- “Who should I recognize?” (suggests shift coworkers, then reports/teammates)
- Browse programs, search awards and posts
Have it do it:
- Give recognition to one or several people, with points and an award card
- Submit a nomination to a program
- Approve, reject, or start review on a pending nomination (admins only)
The agent respects the same permissions as the UI — non-admins can’t approve nominations, and giving is gated by your peer-recognition and role settings. It also draws on this help center to explain how Recognition works.
🔔 Notifications
Recognition reaches people across every channel.
| Channel | Examples |
|---|---|
| In-app | Award received, post received, nomination status, pending approval, budget alert |
| Award received, cycle winner 🏆, weekly digest, nomination submitted/approved/rejected, pending approval, team member recognized | |
| Mobile push / SMS | High-signal events (award received, cycle winner, milestone reached, post received) |
| Slack / Teams | Recognition cards broadcast to channels + interactive Approve/Decline nomination cards in Teams DMs |
Admins can toggle categories, and reminders help close loops: a weekly digest (Mondays), a “use it or lose it” allowance reminder in the last days of the month, and an optional manager nudge when a report hasn’t been recognized in 90 days.
📈 Dashboard & Leaderboard
Personal stats: awards received/given, posts received/authored, nominations submitted, and your reward-points wallet.
Company highlights: trending recognition, top recipients this month, and recent team activity.
Leaderboard: top recipients and top givers by period (week/month/quarter/year), department rankings, and category leaders — with your own rank shown.
User Roles & Permissions
| Role | Capabilities |
|---|---|
| Employee | Give/receive recognition, boost posts, react & comment, nominate, view feed & Wrapped, redeem points |
| Manager | All of the above + team dashboard, Quick Awards ⚡, approve/reject nominations, anniversary roster |
| HR/Admin | Full config, programs/categories, budgets & group budgets, analytics & at-risk, moderation, milestone fulfillment, bulk import, award revoke |
| Committee Member | Review and recommend winners in Award Cycles |
Quick Award permissions: Employees can’t give Quick Awards (they submit nominations); Managers and Admins can. Only Admins configure Quick Award settings and can revoke an award (which refunds the budget and reverses points).
How We Compare
See how MangoApps Workforce stacks up against leading recognition platforms:
| Feature | MangoApps Workforce | Bonusly | Workhuman | Nectar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peer points allowance + values-tagged posts | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Rewards catalog / redemption | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Formal awards + multi-level nomination approval | ✅ | ⚡ | ✅ | 💰 |
| Automated milestones (anniversaries, birthdays) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Slack / Teams delivery | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Frontline kiosk (no login) | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | 💰 |
| Unified with performance, goals, training & store | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Legend: ✅ Included | ❌ Not Available | 💰 Paid Add-on | ⚡ Limited |
Competitor capabilities per each vendor’s public product pages and 2026 review listings; MangoApps rows reflect features verified in this app.
Why MangoApps Workforce?
- 🔗 Unified Platform — Recognition works seamlessly with Company Store, Performance (EPMS), Goals, Training, and Comms in one system
- 🏭 Built for the frontline — kiosk + mobile so deskless teams participate, not just knowledge workers
- 🤖 AI-Native — writing coach, translation, Wrapped, sentiment analytics, and at-risk scoring are built in, not bolted on
Getting Started
For Employees
- Open Apps → Recognition
- Tap “Give Recognition”, pick a colleague (or a whole team), and tag a company value
- Optionally add points, or Boost a teammate’s post you love
- Check My Recognition and your Wrapped recap
For Managers
- Open the Manager Dashboard
- Use Quick Award ⚡ for in-the-moment recognition (no approval needed)
- Clear Pending Approvals regularly (aim for a 48-hour turnaround)
- Watch Recognition Gaps and the Anniversary Roster so no one is missed
For Administrators
- Go to Settings and turn on the features you want (peer points, cycles, digest, agent)
- Define Company Values, create Programs and Categories
- Set up Group Budgets (and “Budget all managers”), then Provision this month’s peer points
- Review Analytics → Insights and the At-Risk view monthly; enable EPMS and Company Store integrations
Best Practices
For Giving Recognition
- ✅ Be specific about what the person did and the impact
- ✅ Always tag a company value (it powers analytics and unlocks points)
- ✅ Recognize promptly — use Boosts to amplify great posts
- ✅ Spread recognition across different team members
For Managers
- ✅ Use Quick Awards in the moment; reserve nominations for major achievements
- ✅ Act on the manager nudge — no report should go unrecognized for a quarter
- ✅ Vary award amounts by impact
For Administrators
- ✅ Review participation and coverage monthly; act on at-risk employees
- ✅ Turn on the weekly digest and allowance expiry reminders to keep the loop active
- ✅ Set group budgets and per-manager caps before rolling out awards
- ✅ Consider light anti-gaming guards (monthly cap, cooldown) on the open peer surface
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What’s the difference between a Boost and giving points?
A: Giving points happens when you create a recognition. A Boost adds points (5, 10, or 25 from your own monthly allowance) to a post that already exists — a one-tap “me too.” You can boost any teammate’s post once, but not your own.
Q: Why can’t I attach a group budget to my Peer-to-Peer program?
A: Peer-to-Peer recognition is funded entirely by each employee’s monthly Peer Giving Allowance, not a pooled budget — so the system blocks group budgets on Peer-to-Peer programs. Use group budgets for Manager, Achievement, and Milestone award programs.
Q: What’s the difference between a Nomination and an Award Cycle?
A: A Nomination is “nominate this person now,” which routes through an approval chain and creates an award on approval. An Award Cycle is a time-boxed program where nominations open for a window and a committee selects winners. Nominations are on by default; Award Cycles are off until an admin enables them.
Q: Can frontline employees who don’t have a computer participate?
A: Yes. Set up a Recognition Kiosk for a location — employees identify with a PIN on a shared device, recognize a colleague, and the screen resets. The mobile app also supports the full give/receive flow.
Q: My balance is 5,000 points — why so high?
A: Your monthly giving allowance is set by your role tier. 5,000 points is the Leadership default, which means you hold an Admin/Owner role (or a configured leadership group) — “Leadership” is a permission, not org seniority.
Q: Do contractors earn spendable points when recognized?
A: They can be recognized, but if their worker classification is on the reward-points-excluded list, the monetary points credit is skipped — the recognition still posts.
Related Resources
- How to Give Recognition — Step-by-step user guide
- Understanding Recognition Programs — Program types explained
- Recognition Settings Guide (Admin) — Configuration reference
- Budget and Reporting Guide — Budgets, group budgets, and reporting
- Managing Nominations (Manager) — Approval workflow guide
- Company Store App Overview — Where recognition points are redeemed
The Recognition App helps organizations build appreciation into their daily culture. Start recognizing today and watch engagement flourish.