Employee rewards program for a national transportation provider
We run their private recognition store, warehouse all the inventory, automate milestone gifts, and work with their HR team to keep the catalog right.
What the client decides, and what lands on us
When you have thousands of employees spread across the country, recognizing people well gets complicated fast. Service anniversaries, spot recognition, retirement gifts, onboarding kits: each one needs the right product, branded correctly, shipped to the right person on time. Most HR teams cannot manage all of that on top of everything else they are responsible for.
We operate this client's employee rewards program as a managed service. The client purchases the inventory and sets the recognition strategy. We warehouse everything in our Ontario facility, run the platform, process every order, and ship to employees anywhere in Canada. Their HR team stays focused on culture and policy; we handle the day-to-day.
This is the same client whose public-facing merchandise store we also operate. Running both programs means we know the brand inside and out, and that shows in the quality of the employee experience too.
| Client | A major national transportation provider |
| Program | Private employee rewards and recognition store |
| Audience | Internal employees nationwide |
| Use cases | Service milestones, spot recognition, retirement, onboarding, events |
| Our role | Platform customization, warehousing, fulfillment, and program operations |
A platform tailored to how they operate
We did not hand the client a generic storefront with their logo on it. The platform was configured around their organizational structure, access controls, and recognition workflows.
Connected to their corporate directory. The store integrates with the client's corporate identity system, so employee accounts, roles, and access permissions sync automatically. When someone joins, changes roles, or leaves the organization, their store access updates on its own. No manual user management, no stale accounts.
Managers get a recognition budget they can spend through the platform. They browse gift options, pick items within their allocation, and we take care of fulfillment. The system tracks spending so HR can see exactly how recognition budgets are being used.
Tiered recognition categories. The store is organized by recognition type: day-to-day appreciation items, milestone anniversary gifts, retirement packages. Each category has its own catalog, eligibility rules, and fulfillment workflow, and managers only see what is relevant to them. The entire platform runs in both English and French to match the client's operational language requirements across the country.
Platform capabilities
- Integrates with the corporate directory so accounts provision and deprovision automatically
- Manager recognition budgets with real-time spend tracking
- Tiered categories, each with its own catalog, eligibility rules, and workflow
- Runs fully bilingual in English and French
- HR leadership gets usage and engagement reporting out of the box
How recognition actually works
The program covers several recognition scenarios, each with its own workflow. Some run on autopilot from a data feed. Others are initiated by managers through the store. We fulfill all of them.
Service anniversaries. The client sends us a monthly data feed of upcoming milestones. We prepare and ship the appropriate anniversary gifts to each employee's manager across the country. Recognition happens on schedule, every time, and nobody at the client's office needs to track dates or place orders. Retirement gifts follow the same approach: the client sends a list with home addresses, and we ship directly to each retiree.
For spot recognition, managers log into the store, pick a gift within their budget, and place an order. We pick, pack, and ship from our warehouse. The employee gets a well-packaged branded gift, and the manager's remaining budget updates automatically.
New hires get a branded welcome kit assembled and shipped before or on their start date: apparel, accessories, and a welcome card.
What we manage
- Anniversary gifts dispatched automatically from a monthly data feed
- Retirement gifts shipped directly to each retiree's home
- Spot recognition orders placed by managers and fulfilled from our warehouse
- All inventory warehoused in our Ontario facility, with packaging and QC on every shipment
- We curate the catalog alongside the client's HR team as recognition needs evolve
Why this works better than doing it in-house
Many organizations try to run employee recognition internally. Spreadsheets for tracking milestones, manual ordering from promotional catalogs, someone on the team who "handles the merch." It works for a while, until items start arriving late, someone gets the wrong size, or a remote employee gets skipped entirely. What was supposed to build engagement becomes a headache.
With a managed service, the client still purchases the inventory and decides the recognition strategy. We warehouse it, keep the platform running, automate what we can, and handle fulfillment. The HR team can actually focus on recognition itself instead of chasing packages.
We also run this client's public merchandise store, which means we already know the brand well. The internal catalog is not an afterthought. It is built by the same team, with the same quality standards and decoration methods we use on the public side.
The client's responsibilities
The client owns the recognition strategy and policies, makes inventory purchasing decisions, and sets the catalog direction (with our guidance on products and decoration). They also allocate manager budgets and send us the milestone and retirement data we need to automate fulfillment. Beyond that, the operational side is on us.
What we handle
- We configure and maintain the platform, including bilingual operations
- All inventory warehoused and managed in our Ontario facility
- Order processing, gift packaging, and quality control on every shipment
- Automated milestone dispatching so nothing slips through the cracks
- Product sourcing and decoration when new items join the catalog
The numbers since launch
Since launching the employee rewards program in late 2024, managed entirely from our Ontario facility. The average order here carries more than 20 items, because so much of the volume moves as milestone batches and welcome kits rather than single gifts.
This program runs alongside our public merchandise store for the same client. Together, the two programs have processed over 1,800 orders and shipped nearly 24,000 items from one facility, with one team.