Hero Points

Hero Points are a reward currency you can buy from Employment Hero to recognise employees for their contributions, achievements, and milestones. You can purchase Hero Points through the platform and distribute them to employees in various ways. Below, we’ve outlined the options, and the following articles will guide you through the purchase process and FAQs:

•  Hero Points and Fringe Benefits Tax 
•  Purchasing and managing your organisation's Hero Points

Employees can use their Hero Points in the Swag Store, or the Discount Store.

Rewards

You can configure your platform to automatically award a set value of Hero Points to your employees on their birthday or work anniversary via the Reward Settings feature. When enabled, your employees will receive an email notification on the Birthday and/or Anniversary date listed in their employee file, to congratulate them and advise of their newly awarded Hero Points. You can set up automatic Rewards for your employees by following the steps in this article: Enabling rewards for birthday and work anniversary milestones 

Recognition

Enabling the Recognition feature will allow you to award employees each time they are recognised for living one of your company values. Navigate to Settings then Recognition Settings to enable this feature, and it is here that you can set up the number of Hero Points to be automatically issued to employees when a Recognition about them is approved:

In terms of the Recognition process, nominations come to life through the Company Feed on the dashboard. When you or your employees log in to the platform, you will see the option to Shout Out and Recognise your Peers. From here, you can choose to Recognise a Teammate, select the Company Value that best applies to the nomination, and the reason for the nomination.

Once a recognition is sent, it must be approved by the user designated in the Recognition Settings before appearing in the Company Feed. Approvers can review and manage nominations via Engagement > Recognition Management.

As an admin, you can view all recognition items submitted by yourself or other team members, and approve or decline them. Once approved, the recognition will appear in the Company Feed, and the applicable Hero Points will be added to the nominee's account.

The articles below will guide you through managing the recognition process:

• Set up your organisations company values
• Employee recognition management
• Managing your organisations recognition settings

Ad-hoc

Additionally, if needed, you can also manually send Hero Points to employees on an ad-hoc basis, and the process for this is outlined here: Purchasing and managing your organisation's Hero Points

Introducing Recognition

We have also included below some resources to share with employees, to introduce the Recognition nomination process & Hero Points, that I'd suggest as a starting point:

For the Swag app:

• How to Recognise a colleague | Work
• How to access your notifications | Work
• Discounts in the Swag Store | Benefits

For the HR web portal:

• Giving employee recognition | HR Employee Content
• Viewing my recognitions received | Employee HR Guide
• Discount Store purchasing, viewing your gift card and Hero Points Balance | HR Web Platform

Redeeming Hero Points

There are two options available to allow employees to redeem Hero Points.

Spend Hero Points via the Swag or Benefits Store

You can spend Hero Points in the Swag Store on gift cards or cashback partner retailers. When you select an item to purchase via the Swag Store you will be prompted to choose your payment method. Within this selection, you also have the flexibility to use all or a portion of your Hero Points balance to cover the cost.

Please note, to view the full range of products available to purchase via the Swag store, you will need to log on to your Employment Hero account on the web portal and navigate to Benefits then the Swag Store.

Redeem Hero Points via Swag Spend

In order for this feature to work, employees must have a Swag Spend account to successfully redeem their Hero Points. The following article is a great starting point for setting up a Spend account: Swag Spend Visa debit card FAQ via Money. We have outlined below the steps to successfully redeem Hero Points using a Swag spend account:

1. Firstly Set up a Swag Spend Account.
2. Then you will need to transfer funds from your own personal bank account to your new Swag Spend account, enough to cover the transaction you wish to make.
3. Double check there are enough Hero Points to cover the whole transaction + 3.5% fee. Hero Points will not be redeemed for that particular transaction if there aren't sufficient Hero Points to cover the whole transaction.
4. Make a purchase using the funds in your Swag Spend account at any vendor.
5. Once the transaction has settled, the cost of the purchase + the 3.5% transaction fee is redeemed from your Hero Points balance, and the cost of the transaction is reimbursed back to your Swag Spend account.

Points to note

To make a purchase in the Swag Store, you'll need to ensure your Swag Spend account is funded first (you can transfer money from your bank account to your Swag Spend account).

When redeeming Hero Points, you'll need to make the purchase using your Spend account. After the transaction is settled, the system will automatically redeem your Hero Points and reimburse the transaction amount back into your Spend account.

Once your Hero Points are redeemed and you’re reimbursed, you can transfer the funds from your Swag Spend account back to your personal account if you wish. You might also like to view this guide for more details Managing Your Swag Spend Account, or contact the Swag Spend Account Help team via this link.