How to Celebrate Employee Birthdays and Work Anniversaries on Applauz

Celebrating employee events, both in their personal and professional lives empowers your company to attract and retain top talent. But it's not always easy to do.

When companies grow, keeping track of employee events can suck up administrative resources. But it doesn't have to!

Applauz helps organizations keep track of the most important employee celebrations. In this article, we will explain how to customize your Applauz program, so you can easily celebrate both employee birthdays and work anniversaries!

How to Enable Event Reminders on Applauz

The Newsfeed is where all the action happens on your Applauz Program. It's also is the home page of the platform.

Where the Newsfeed comes into help you celebrate employee events is with automated celebration posts.

Automated celebration posts look like this and always have a yellow bar at the top.

To enable automatic posts for birthdays and work anniversaries, the Applauz Administrator can navigate to Program>Settings. 

At the bottom left of the 'Settings' menu, you will see 'Program options'. Toggle on "Announce employee birthdays" and "Announce work anniversaries."'

Viewing Upcoming Employee Celebrations

Administrators and Managers can stay on top of these important employee celebrations by viewing a list of upcoming birthdays and work anniversaries within the Reports menu of Applauz.

Navigate to the "Report" menu in the main navigation bar of the platform.

Under the "Culture Report" you will find the "New and Upcoming" dashboard.

Here you will be able to see all the upcoming birthdays and the years of service associated with each of your employees within the year.

This tool is useful for managers to plan monthly birthday celebrations ahead of time. Or to anticipate having to modify the birthday celebration message, as we will learn how to do in the next section.

Personalizing the Celebration Message for Birthdays and Work Anniversaries

When event announcements are enabled, employee celebrations (birthdays + anniversaries) are automatically posted to the Newsfeed.

However, it's important to note that the default messages posted to the Newsfeed are not personalized. In other words, every employee in the company will receive the same message.

Pro Tip: We strongly recommend personalizing your program's celebrations messages. Recognition is always more meaningful when it's personal. 

It is possible to personalize the default message for all employees celebrating special events, or you can tailor it even further for a particular employee.

Option 1: Customize general celebration messages

Customize the default message posted to the Newsfeed for employees' birthdays and work anniversaries. Note, this affects the standard default message that every employee will see on the Newsfeed for their birthday or work anniversary.

To customize general messages, navigate to Program>Customization>Organization Celebration. 

Under the "Birthdays" tab in the "Custom Post" field, you can customize the default celebration message for birthdays. Under the "Anniversaries" tab in the "Custom Post" field, you can customize the default celebration message for work anniversaries.

Pro Tip: Suppose you have set auto-Points for birthdays or work anniversaries. In that case, we recommend customizing your celebration message to mention these Points so that employees are aware their Points bank has been filled. And they can shop the Rewards Marketplace for their gift!

Option 2: Customize per employee

You can take customization a step further, and customize the default celebration post for a specific employee for their birthday or work anniversary.

This new message will override the standard default message that every employee receives.  Managers can do this on the fly, a few days before the event is automatically announced on the Newsfeed.

To write your personalized message, navigate to Program>Customization>Employee Customization.

Search and select the employee you are looking to recognize for either their birthday or work anniversary and write your customized Newsfeed post or email.

The personalized message will appear on the Newsfeed when Applauz automatically posts the birthday or work anniversary announcement on the day of the event.

Note: If you do not see the "Program" or "Customization" menus, you may not have permission to access them. Please ask your Program Administrator to modify permissions for your Role.

Using Auto Points to Celebrate Employee Events 

Auto Points is a helpful feature that allows administrators to auto gift Applauz Points for employee birthdays and anniversaries.

Auto Points for birthdays

To set auto Points for birthdays, navigate to Program>Customization>Organization Customization.

Under the "Birthdays" tab, you will find the fields to modify the celebration message and also a box to set automatic Points for birthdays.

Set any desired amount of Points you wish. These auto Points will be applied to all employee birthday celebrations in your company. The Points will be deposited automatically into your employees' Points bank on the day of their birthday.

Auto Points for work anniversaries 

To set auto Points for birthdays, navigate to Program>Customization>Organization Customization.

Under the "Work Anniversaries" tab, you will find the fields to modify the celebration message and also a box to set automatic Points for work anniversaries.

Here, you can set the number of Points to offer for all milestone anniversaries. Or alternatively, you can choose to set a unique number of Points for each milestone anniversary. For example, 200 Points for 1-year, 1000 Points for 5-years, etc.

The Points will be deposited automatically into your employees' Points bank on the day of their work anniversary.