What are the benefits of incentivizing participation? Creating a buzz around the launch and arranging sufficient training is vital, but encouraging participation is equally important for the ongoing program's success.

Highlighting the benefits for individuals (i.e. what's in it for employees) is a good start. However, to ensure long term success, other means to motivate and encourage participation should be considered.

The Leaderboard

Use the Leaderboard to call out specific teams or users. Use filters to create particular leaderboards which will allow you to:

• Set a competition for a specific timeframe (i.e., users who lead for the first week or month of your platform, the first 6 months, or even the first year).
• Reward users based on the points they obtain.
• Create teams that will allow you to filter the leaderboard even more.
• Target your most valuable performers and utilize their success to kick-start future competitions.

Align your points allocation to the specific goals of your program:

• User Increase: Increase points for inviting a colleague (if your platform is set to allow users to invite)
• Content Reach and Impact: Increase points per unique click
• User Engagement: Increase points for employee-generated content or for sharing a particular piece of content

Rewards

Set up monthly or quarterly competitions to encourage users to post from Haiilo and reward your employees with different prizes:

• Company Merchandise: Consider selecting your own merchandise for low-point rewards, such as t-shirts, tote bags, mugs, notebook bags, etc. All with your own company logo.
• Tickets and Vouchers: A popular way to reward your employees are cinema tickets and Amazon vouchers. These can be easily transferred electronically, perfect for remote teams!
• Hardware: For high-point rewards, consider making your employees' work easier
  by enabling them to exchange their points for headphones, adapters, designer computer mice, etc.
• Lunch & Wellness: Lunch and wellness vouchers for mid-level rewards are a nice diversification and a welcomed asset for all the food and health-conscious employees.
• Educational Rewards: Books, ebooks, and subscriptions with educational content are other popular rewards that can be used not only to empower your employees but also to support them in their personal growth.
• Charity Contributions: In addition to claiming rewards for themselves, employees can also use their points to influence which charities their employer supports by donating them to the causes they care about.

Reward structuring

High ticket items

If you have high-value prizes that you want to award on a quarterly basis but do not want to be giving out on a cumulative leaderboard points basis. Set the points required to a number that could not feasibly be reached within the prize allocation time frame. You can gauge this by calculating the average leaderboard points achieved per quarter.

Low ticket items

You want these prizes to be attainable by accumulating leaderboard points. We recommend setting a points requirement to allow an active user to win these items 2/3 times yearly. Again, you can set the points accurately by working out your average points achieved per quarter.

Further tips & tricks

To successfully run an advocacy program, it is important to consider the following steps regarding gamification as well:

• Include the rewards on your platform so users constantly have a visible reminder and motivator to keep sharing content.
• Make sure you communicate the point system to your users transparently.
• If you have enabled the Trophies feature, it's a great way to add an additional gamification element to your user's individual engagement to ignite self-esteem by enabling them to view their individual progress. Additionally, Trophies are connected with inactivity triggers that send out automatic notifications to all users who have gamification activated and haven’t proposed or shared a post in the last 30 days.