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Setting up and giving awards
Setting up and giving awards

Create custom awards for your organization, specify who can give and approve awards, and give awards to boost engagement.

K
Written by Katya Bachrouche
Updated this week

Assembly’s Awards feature allows you to give special recognition to your employees in the form of an award. You can create and give custom awards tailored to your organization's culture, boosting your employee recognition and engagement.

Who can use this feature?

  • Only admins can create and manage your organization's awards

  • Admins can determine who can give and approve an award in each individual award's settings

  • Everyone in your organization is eligible to receive an award

What to expect

  • When you create and enable an award, anyone you designate as a giver will see the option to give the award

  • If your award requires approvals, the award will not be given until it has been approved

  • When an award is approved, it will create a special award post in your home feed and recognition feed, similar to a regular recognition post


Creating an award

To create an award

  1. Go to your admin page

  2. Select Recognition -> Awards

  3. If you wish to use one of the pre-existing awards provided by Assembly:

    1. Click 'edit' to adjust the settings

    2. Turn the award 'on'

  4. If you wish to create a new award

    1. Click 'Create award'

Award details - name and budget

  1. Name your award

  2. Set your total budget and refresh cycle

    1. Total budget is the total amount of points you want to allocate for the specific period of time; i.e., 100 points every week

  3. If you wish to not give points for an award, simply set the budget to 0 or leave blank

    1. This will exclude any reference to points when giving the award, as well as for recipients when viewing the award post

  4. If you wish to designate a specific amount of points per each award, or set a top limit for the maximum amount of points you can give per award, enable the 'set budget for each award' toggle

NOTE: The points do not come out of any specific user's giving allowance balance, this will come from the 'company' balance, which is unlimited. This works exactly like birthday and anniversary bot budgets, and challenges.

Set amount per award

  • If you choose to set the point amount for each award, this means that each RECIPIENT will receive the exact same amount per award

  • If you are giving an award to multiple recipients in the same post, they will each receive the same amount of points designated in this step

Maximum budget for each award

  • If you choose to set a maximum point value for each award, this means that the giver can give UP TO that amount for each recipient

    • They can give less than that amount, but they cannot give more

  • If you are giving an award to multiple recipients in the same post, they can EACH receive UP TO that maximum amount, but not more.

Post details

  1. Add an optional description for the award

    1. This will appear when a giver selects the award, to offer more details ab out the award, as well as in the award post once posted.

  2. Choose a core value to associate to your award

    1. If your organization uses core values, you will see the option to pre-set a core value for the award

    2. If you select a core value here, it will lock in the core value for the entire award, meaning when giving the award, the core value will be preselected and cannot be changed by the giver.

    3. If you do not wish to add a core value, you can leave blank

    4. If left blank, the giver can add a core value if they wish when giving the award

  3. Upload a custom image for your award

    1. This image will appear in the award post once posted

    2. By default, we will provide you a generic image for any new award you create.

    3. You can upload a new image that is more customized to your award

    4. If you do not add a custom image, it will always default to the default image provided by Assembly

Select givers

Designate who you want to be able to give the award in this step. This is only for who can give the award; if you require approvals, the award will not be given until approved.

  • If you select 'everyone', everyone in your organization can give this award

  • If you select 'admins', only admins can give this award

  • If you select 'managers', only managers can give this award

  • If you would like to designate specific people or groups to give the award, select 'custom'

Selecting custom givers

You can select any combination of:

  • Individual people

  • Departments

  • Work locations

  • Roles

Selecting or combining any of the above will designate every employee within each selected group as a giver.

  • For example, if you select 'Engineering' department and 'Barcelona, Spain' work location, this will include all employees in the engineering department as well as all employees in the Barcelona, Spain work location.

    • This will NOT specify the engineering department of the Barcelona, Spain work office.

Selecting approvers

You can select whether you want the award to go through an approval process, or whether you want it to be auto approved.

  • If set to auto-approve, once the giver gives the award, the award will be posted and the recipient(s) will receive the points

  • If selecting 'add approval levels' you can designate who you want to approve the award, and how many levels of approval you want

Configuring approval levels

NOTE: If you have approval levels configured, the recipient(s) will not receive the award or the points until all levels of approvals are completed.

  • You can select individual people and/or groups as approvers

  • You can select up to four levels of approvals

  • You must select at least 1 person or group in each level you add

    • If you wish to delete a level of approval, delete all selected people or groups within that level

  • In the first level, you can select 'manager of recipient' as an approval group

    • This means that if your direct report receives an award, you will be prompted as a manager to approve the award

  • In the second/third/fourth levels, if you select 'manager of the approver', the manager of whoever approved the award in the previous level will be notified to approve the award.

NOTE: If an award has multiple recipients within the same post, in the first level of approvals, if one manager of one recipient approves the award, it will approve it for all recipients.

Saving and turning on the award

  1. Once you have successfully completed all of the above steps, click 'Create award'

    1. By default, the award will be in the 'off' position

  2. To turn the award on, simply enable the toggle in the award dashboard

    1. This will make the award visible to all givers, and they can begin to give the award


Editing, deleting, and turning off awards

Editing an award

You can edit an award while it is turned on or off. To edit an award:

  1. Go to your admin page

  2. Select Recognition -> Awards

  3. Next to the award you wish to edit, click the '🖋️' edit button

  4. You can edit any part of the award except the following conditions:

    1. You cannot reduce the total budget of the award if there is at least 1 pending award; you must approve or deny the pending award(s) before making this change.

    2. You cannot edit the approval settings of the award if there is at least 1 pending award; you must approve or deny the pending award(s) before making this change.

  5. Once you have finished editing the award, click 'Save all changes'

  6. Any changes you make will apply to all subsequent awards when given; for any pending awards or awards already given, they will maintain the previous settings

Deleting an award

You can delete any award, whether it is turned on or off. To delete an award:

  1. Go to your admin page

  2. Select Recognition -> Awards

  3. Next to the award you wish to edit, click the '🗑️' delete button

  4. Click 'Delete award' in the confirmation modal

Once the award is deleted:

  • Any remaining pending approvals will also be deleted

  • Any awards already given will remain in the feed

Turning off an award

  1. Go to your admin page

  2. Select Recognition -> Awards

  3. Next to the award you wish to turn off, turn the toggle into the 'off' position

Once the award is turned off:

  • It will no longer be visible to any giver to give

  • Any remaining pending approvals will remain pending

  • Any awards already given will remain in the feed


Giving an award

If you are a giver of at least 1 award, you will see the option to give an award from the home page, and also the recognition page.

  1. Click 'Give award'

  2. Select the award you want to give

  3. Select the recipient(s)

  4. If the point value is not pre-set, select the number of points you want to give

    1. If there is no maximum value set for the award, you can give up to the total remaining budget of the award

    2. If there is a maximum value set for the award, you can select up to the maximum value of points for each recipient

  5. If your Assembly recognition settings are set to hide points in the post, the points will only be visible to you (the giver), the recipient(s), the approver(s), and admins.

  6. If the core value is not pre-set, select the core value you would like to add (this is optional)

  7. Add a personal message for the recipient(s) to tell them why you are giving them this award

  8. Click 'Give award' to give the award

    1. By default, the award will be given publicly for the entire company to see. If you would like to give the award privately, at the bottom of the window, click next to 'Share with' to set it to private

NOTE: If the award requires approval, clicking 'Give award' will submit the award for approval. The award will not post and the points will not be given until all approvals are complete.


Approving an award

If you are designated as an approver of an award, you will be notified via email and in your notifications page in Assembly whenever you have a pending award to approve. There are a few ways to access approvals.

Viewing pending approvals

If you are an admin:

  1. Go to your admin page

  2. Select Recognition -> Awards

  3. Go to the award you wish to view the pending approvals for

  4. In the pending approvals column, click the badge to view the pending approvals

  5. From here you will see all pending approvals

  6. If you are an approver for the award, you will see the option to approve or deny directly

  7. If you are not an approver, you will see that the approval status is pending

If you are an admin, or a non-admin approver

  1. Your left navigation menu will display an extra badge to indicate how many pending approvals you have to approve

  2. You will also see a banner on the home page telling you how many pending approvals you have

  3. Clicking 'Notifications' from the navigation or clicking the banner on the home page will take you to the activity page, where you will see all pending approvals, above your activity updates

Approving awards

  1. If the award has multiple levels of approval, if you are not the final approver, approving the award will send it to the next level for approval

    1. This will notify all approver(s) in the next level

  2. If there are multiple approvers in any level, only one approval is required

  3. If one approver in the level approves the award, it will approve it for all recipients and either move it to the next approval level, or post the award if it is the final approval

    1. This cannot be undone, however you can delete the award in the feed if the award was given by mistake or incorrectly

  4. Approving an award at the final level will post it in the feed at the time of approval

  5. When an award is approved and posted, all recipients will be notified by email and in their notifications page in Assembly

TIP: If you want to send all approvals out at the same time, on a specific time and day, we recommend making yourself (or whoever else you wish to have permission to approve) the final approver(s). This way you can control exactly when the award is posted and the recipients are notified

Denying awards

  1. If any approver denies the award at any level, it will deny the award completely; this action cannot be undone at this time

  2. You will have to give the award again if denied

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