Configuring the Rewards Shop for Your Market

The Rewards Shop is where points become tangible, and it’s also where a lot of programmes quietly lose momentum — usually because the catalogue was configured once at launch and never revisited for the actual market it’s serving.

Start with variety, not volume

A healthy starting catalogue has five to ten rewards spanning a range of point costs: a couple of low-cost items employees can redeem quickly for an early win, a few mid-tier options, and one or two aspirational higher-cost rewards worth saving up for.

Match rewards to the market

A voucher platform or catering partner that works well in one region often doesn’t exist, or doesn’t feel relevant, in another. If you’re running the programme across South Africa, the UK, the US, and the UAE, configure the catalogue separately for each — the same reward list rarely translates well across all four.

Setting point costs

Price rewards so the cheapest option is reachable within two to three weeks of normal participation, and your top-tier reward within two to three months. If everything feels either trivially cheap or permanently out of reach, redemption activity will stall regardless of how good the mechanic is.

Stock and availability

Mark rewards as available or out of stock as soon as fulfilment capacity changes — nothing erodes trust in the programme faster than an employee redeeming something that then can’t be delivered.

Reviewing what’s working

Once redemptions start coming in, the pattern tells you a lot: if one reward gets redeemed constantly and others sit untouched, that’s a signal about what your team actually values, not just what looked appealing on a catalogue-design call.

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