Empuls is an employee reward and recognition platform designed solely for the Microsoft Teams environment. India-based employee engagement company, Xoxoday first came up with the idea for Empuls in 2020 as an internal solution for recognising employees without being able to meet face to face. In February of 2021, Empuls became generally available to Teams users via the Microsoft AppSource application marketplace.
A little about Xoxoday — the company began in 2012 and has raised $450,000 in funding. It has over 1000 clients globally and 2 million end-users and, according to Forrester, is among the world’s fastest-growing incentives management solutions. Xoxoday’s products include Plum, an incentive management platform; Compass, a gamification software for your vendor network; and Empuls, an employee engagement solution centred on in-the-moment recognition.
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You can use the Empuls app for Teams to send appreciation to your colleagues and team members via channel conversations, enabling social recognition. It also supports employee engagement capabilities like surveys, a points-based reward system, and feedback gathering. The idea is to bring recognition capabilities to where employees hang out the most during WFH — their collaborative hub. Empuls is available as a standalone app for Microsoft Teams. Let us now dive deep into its features in more detail.
Inside the Empuls App for Microsoft Teams
As a prerequisite, you will need an existing Empuls account — pricing starts at $2.50 per user per month ($2 if you opt for annual billing). The premium version, priced at $4.5/$3.6, includes additional capabilities like automated workflow, rewards certificates, bulk rewards, and a customisable catalogue.
You can download Empuls directly from Microsoft AppSource. Here are the features to expect:
- The Empuls chatbot (Em): As soon as you log in to your Empuls account and open the app, you will be greeted by Em, the Empuls chatbot. Em guides you through the application’s many features and helps you to begin. You can access Em from any team conversation and always come back to the app to explore more commands Em can understand.
- Appreciate colleagues: You can type in the “appreciate” command in channels to highlight achievements, milestones, and positive behaviour displayed by a team member. When someone is appreciated, the act of recognition appears as a card on the channel feed, where co-workers can respond and react. You can choose to enjoy one or more users, assign them an award or a value, and add a description to create a personalised recognition certificate.
- Recognition points: Empuls enables a points-based recognition system where you can redeem your accrued points from the Xoxoday gift and incentive catalogue. This includes skills in various categories, including WFH perks, experiences, health benefits, and gift vouchers for leading chains like Amazon, PlayStation, and Chili’s. The catalogue will vary across regions, depending on the retailers available. You can type in “redeem points” when speaking with Em to open the catalogue from Teams.
- Building a culture of recognition: Empuls isn’t just a tool — it actively encourages an employee-centric and positive work culture by reminding everyone to appreciate their colleagues. For example, when there is employee recognition, you will receive a notification alerting you to the event and reminding you to congratulate your colleagues on their achievements. Users are also notified when there is an award nomination for voting, a survey requiring participation, and other engagement activities.
- Employee feedback: Employees can give and receive feedback from their co-workers using Impuls. You can design short, one-line pulse surveys with multiple-choice options so that your colleagues can share their responses without interrupting the flow of work.
- Organisational surveys: In addition to pulse surveys, you can roll out end-to-end organisational surveys via Teams using the Empuls app. Employees can rate their feelings about the various aspects of their work experience, making it easier to spot dissatisfaction and disengagement.
Why the Empuls App Makes a Difference
Impuls is highly convenient and suited well for large organisations. You can define permissions and roles, integrate with your HRMS/HRIS, generate NPS scores, and white-label the experience. Xoxoday also offers 20 hours of in-person support while onboarding.
What We Think
Mid-sized to large organisations needing a simple but effective recognition and engagement solution should consider Empuls for Teams. It has a host of features on the roadmap, like diversity & inclusion surveys and industry benchmark analysis – download the Empuls app for Teams here.
