A manager-only HR console
Peer-to-peer kudos on a ledger that can't lose a point
HR integrations Real payouts Notifications
40% of a team gives kudos weekly
01Where it started
Companies run recognition through spreadsheets, gift cards and email approvals. Platforms like Empuls and Bonusly fix that with an admin console, and my first spec did the same: HR creates programmes, sets rules and hands out points.
02What changed my mind
Top-down recognition has a ceiling. The manager becomes the bottleneck, and the people who see good work every day, their peers, have no way to say so. A rewards programme only managers can use is just a slower bonus.
How strong is this? It's reasoning from how recognition programmes stall, not interviews. The weekly-givers metric tests whether peers actually use it.
03What I built
A web app with two sides. Employees get a feed where anyone can send points and a shout-out tagged with a company value, plus a catalogue to redeem points. Admins issue spot bonuses, manage the catalogue and work through a fulfilment queue.
Every transfer runs as a single database transaction, so points can never leave one account without arriving in another.
04What I left out, and why
- HR system integrationsValuable at scale, and irrelevant until the core loop works.
- Real gift-card payoutsFulfilment is simulated. Real payouts bring in vendors, tax and fraud before anyone has shown they want to give kudos.
- NotificationsEmail and push are where a recognition app turns into noise. The feed has to be worth opening first.
05How I'll know it's working
40%
of a team gives kudos at least once a week by week six.
- Kudos per active giver per week
- Share of kudos that cross team lines
- Share of earned points that get redeemed
Zero points-balance mismatches. One lost transfer is enough to make people stop trusting the points.
06Trade-offs I accepted
- New accounts are set up by the database, not the app, so a new user gets their profile and starting balance instantly instead of waiting on an email confirmation.
- After every transfer or redemption the balance refreshes from the database. A stale balance leads to "insufficient points" surprises, which is how trust erodes.
07What I'd do next
Pilot it with one real team for six weeks and watch the cross-team share. If kudos only flow inside teams, the product is mirroring the org chart, not changing it.