Don't let your holiday rewards miss the people who earned them

00:00Intro

Joe: Pretty much every HR team knows that end of year recognition is a bit of a scramble. Our goal today is to show how we can help you fix that, live. Cam from our team is going to build a complete recognition program from a blank screen, and Kwesi, who has a tremendous wealth of knowledge, is going to call out the decisions behind every step Cam makes. By the end, you'll have watched the whole thing get built and you'll know exactly how to do it yourself.

00:38Set the goal and the budget

Joe: What are your thoughts on just getting everyone a gift card, a gift basket or, like some companies I've heard of, a turkey?

Kwesi: There are times and places in an employee journey where it makes sense to do the same thing for everyone, but it very rarely lands right. Holiday celebrations are so personal that getting everyone the same thing never lands perfectly. Choice and flexibility: put that in their hands and you get a better return right away than deciding what it is and trying to distribute that thing to them.

Joe: One other thing you can do today is make sure you know what your budget is. A lot of companies know they want to do something, but they wait until the eleventh hour to figure out how much they have. If you know your budget today, you can get started tomorrow.

Kwesi: Otherwise you've spent budget on something people can't use, don't want to use, or that sits on a shelf. If the reward is flexible and easy to redeem, the gift actually lands and the budget isn't wasted.

Joe: Cam, let's fix it, starting from nothing.

Cam: To get started, we'll create a new workspace in Guusto. Think of it as the home of your holiday program: it's where you manage branding and budgets, and where you can add other members if they're helping send holiday rewards. We'll call it Holiday Rewards 2026. One of the first things to do is fund the account. Under Manage Funds there's a whole range of options. A credit card is probably the fastest way to get money in, but there are plenty of others if you don't want to use one. I'll put in $1,000. If you had funds in another workspace, say for spot awards or a peer-to-peer program, you could move them over too. Now we've got $1,000 loaded into the workspace.

03:27Build the list

Joe: What does holiday gifting usually look like for the teams you talk to?

Kwesi: It runs the gamut. It depends on how big your team is, how you're doing it and where everyone's located. I've seen programs that are extremely manual: an EA or a team member is out in the world buying things, packaging them together and preparing for a holiday event, or trying to coordinate across locations and larger geographies. At scale, it's a whole different beast. You're gifting across people with different cultures, religions, beliefs and do's and don'ts, and it's often a much heavier process than you think.

Kwesi: Here's a real example. In a former lifetime, we sent about 2,000 people a basket. The idea was dinner: a pasta kit with instructions and two bottles of wine. That sounds great, but how many of those couple thousand people don't drink, for personal reasons, religious reasons or anything else? So we ran a survey to find out who wanted alcohol and who didn't. Then what about people who are gluten-free? You go down the list. And we still had to figure out how to package, mail and deliver a couple thousand packages. It's an onerous task, and a rabbit hole when you do this at scale.

Kwesi: With Guusto, you upload a list with each person, the amount and the message. That message can be as personalized as you like in the upload file, and it can be different for everyone receiving it.

05:37Brand the experience

Joe: Why do you think branding matters for something like a holiday gift?

Kwesi: While we set up the branding, it's important that the message clearly ties back to the company. Giving people choice in the gift itself matters, but it's also important that it isn't just mail. It comes from the company's brand: the logo, the colors and a message that connects back to us. Then the reward itself is their choice.

Cam: Now we can do some customization. There are two parts: branding, and settings that make the program work exactly how you want around the holidays. On the branding side, we'll start with the logo. It shows up on every reward and in the header for anyone else with access to the workspace, so I'll choose a holiday version of our logo. Then a little color: green feels like a holiday color, so we'll use it for the header and the buttons. Next, a default gift image that shows up on the reward. All of this is optional, but it goes a long way toward aligning the program with your brand or the initiative you're running. From there, we recommend setting up a reason. We'll use Happy Holidays, since that's the program we're running, and give it a badge image that shows up on the reward. It's another chance to bring in your brand or, in this case, some holiday spirit.

08:33Protect the spend

Joe: Next are the rules of the program, like a claim period, which is how long someone has to redeem before the credit goes back to the company, and whether to allow guest redemption, so people can redeem without creating an account. Kwesi, how should someone decide, and what's the thinking behind each one?

Kwesi: With Guusto, you can set the claim period, the length of time someone has to claim and use the gift. For a holiday gift, there's a good reason to make it shorter. We hope people use it during the holiday season, so a three or six month claim period means the reward gets used, not put on the back burner and forgotten. I'd recommend shorter rather than longer.

Cam: Guusto has some robust options for program design, and two really important ones are here. First, the claim period. When you place an order, funds leave your workspace balance and become claimable. We hope everyone accepts their holiday reward, but inevitably a few people won't, or they'll forget about it. A claim period sets rewards to expire, and the full amount returns to your workspace balance on that date. For this demo, we'll use three months.

Cam: The other feature, especially for a holiday program, is guest redemption, which is new to Guusto this year. With it on, recipients can claim and redeem the full amount without logging in to a separate or new account, almost like a guest checkout. That's a differentiator: a lot of digital reward providers ask recipients to log in to a new account. It's the holidays and a busy time of year, probably not the right time to introduce new technology, so guest redemption is a really effective tool if you're sensitive to that. We'll turn it on. With the claim period and guest redemption set, we're more or less ready to send.

Joe: When someone receives that holiday reward, what makes the redemption experience a make or break moment?

Kwesi: If there's a lot of friction, if I have to go through three, four or five steps to figure out how to get it, that immediately erases a lot of the goodwill. With guest redemption, it's click, choose, done. If people are creating an account, make sure that process is simple. You want few steps, real choice and, if they need support, access to world-class support that can get them to a resolution.

Cam: Here's the reward as the recipient sees it. I sent this one to myself. You've got the branding we set up earlier: the badge, the custom logo, the message, the gift image and the amount. Because guest redemption is on, the recipient can click through as a guest and redeem the full amount without signing up for Guusto, and without you creating an account for them. No extra hurdles.

13:59Write and send

Joe: How do you think about creating one message that goes out to a thousand-plus people and still feels personal?

Kwesi: Doing it digitally with Guusto, the upload file lets you personalize the message. At scale, not every message can be written by an individual person, but you can call people out by name, and if you're good with mail merges or AI tools, you can make each message feel more personal, not one message that fits everyone.

Kwesi: Make sure it's warm. Celebrate the year that's been, and look forward to the year or the season to come. Don't make it feel like you're adding tasks, and don't make it a business laundry list of what you've done this year. Celebrate the good year you've had, or if it's been a challenging one, acknowledge the challenges and look forward to a positive year ahead.

Cam: Now we're about ready to send. In Guusto you can send from the dashboard one by one or in a small group, but today we'll do a bulk order so everyone gets theirs at once. I'll choose the amount, $50 for everyone, and the Happy Holidays reason we set up earlier. I could write a message here, but I've pre-written one in my CSV template. Next, I'll import the recipients: first name, last name, email and that message. Once it opens, everyone's loaded, with the reason selected, the message filled in and the amount set. For delivery, you can print the links or create digital links to share in a printed package, Teams or another channel. I'll use email and SMS, since that's the most direct way to reach recipients. I'll deliver these immediately, but you could schedule them closer to the holidays, in November or December. You can also change the language or notify managers. Then we'll proceed with the order.

Cam: Our delivery date is set for today, everyone's queued up for a $50 reward, and I'll confirm the order. Those rewards have now been sent.

Joe: And that's it. That was the whole list, and it was really that easy. You could have done that for a couple thousand people.

18:06Track and follow up

Joe: When a company sends hundreds or thousands of holiday rewards, there can be some unease. You're about to press send on something that hits the entire workforce. What should the program's administrator keep an eye on in the weeks after they hit send?

Kwesi: Two things. First, redemption rates: are people actually clicking and using the reward you sent? If they aren't, you may need to send a nudge. Second, the claim period I described: you want to see people claiming their reward, not letting it go unclaimed. The great thing about doing holiday gifting through Guusto is that you can see what happens once it's sent. It's not like leaving a gift and driving off with no idea whether anyone found value in it. You can see that people are clicking, redeeming and using it, and often you'll start hearing the stories too. So watch redemption rates, and claimed and unclaimed gifts.

19:18The build, by the numbers

Joe: Let's recap what was set up: a branded account, claim rules, a decision on guest redemption, and gifts sent and starting to be redeemed. So how long did the build itself actually take?

Kwesi: The actual setup wasn't what took time. The decisions did: branding, claim periods, how people redeem. Once those decisions were made, the whole company's holiday gifting was done in minutes.

19:53Beyond the holidays

Joe: So your holiday gifting is done. What's next?

Kwesi: Once your account is set up, you can recognize your employees throughout the year without any heavy setup. We can create top-down, peer-to-peer and milestone programs, but sometimes you just need to send recognition for a sales incentive, a safety award, an appreciation day or a learning event. You can do that the same way you just did your holiday gifting: come in, load the employees and send.

Joe: What's one thing a leader can do this week so their holiday gifting goes more smoothly than it did last year?

Kwesi: Listen to your employees. From the feedback you got last year, you know they probably asked for more choice, and you probably heard stories about holiday gifts that didn't land. So lean into what you've heard: give them choice and make it simple.