How the Workhuman Store Supports Employee Recognition Around the World

What Does Workhuman Do?

Workhuman’s global employee recognition platform makes appreciation a meaningful part of everyday work – helping employees celebrate achievements, milestones, values, and life moments through inspirational peer-to-peer awards that can be redeemed in the Workhuman store. Through Human Intelligence®, recognition data is transformed into insights that help leaders better understand skills, culture, and workforce connections. 

Since its founding in 1999, Workhuman has been on a mission to help companies reward their greatest asset: their people. As the world has changed, so has Workhuman’s strategy.

 

What is the Workhuman Store?

The Workhuman Store extends the impact of recognition by enabling employees to redeem points for memorable rewards. With a localized experience across more than 150 countries and 40 languages, it increases participation, strengthens the value employees place on recognition, and helps maximize the return on recognition investment. 

When Jim O’Dea, General Manager in Dublin and Senior VP of Operations, joined Workhuman more than 14 years ago, the company’s online store primarily offered physical gift cards through nine global hubs. As customer preferences evolved, O’Dea and his teammates began spearheading a digital-first strategy, while introducing merchandise and experiences. 

This undertaking required teams to build new global supplier networks, manage complex logistics across more than 150 countries, and develop new operational capabilities around sourcing, fulfillment, and customer support. 

“Every detail matters because every recognition moment matters,” O’Dea said.

O’Dea oversees supply chain, customer support, systems management, procurement services and operational infrastructure, ensuring the company delivers a world-class experience for the more than 8 million who use its platform.

Meanwhile, Product Director Matt Rowan oversees the Workhuman Store experience and the technology that powers it. He and his peers are responsible for delivering a localized e-commerce experience that spans more than 150 countries and 40 languages.

“Our goal is to provide a truly global store experience that serves our users and clients wherever they are in the world”. 

For Rowan and his teammates, managing the Workhuman Store isn’t just about delivering an exceptional shopping experience; it’s about ensuring employees feel recognized for their hard work and more deeply connected to their companies.

“We want employees to fully benefit from the recognition they’ve received and not leave that value sitting unused,” Rowan said.

 

How the Workhuman Store Serves Customers’ Needs Around the World

For Rowan, one of the challenging aspects of building the Workhuman Store was ensuring that it worked across the world. 

“Whenever we introduce a new feature or support a new client in a region where we haven’t operated before, we need to think about language support, available reward assortment, local suppliers and the purchasing behaviors of users in that market,” Rowan said. 

Supporting the localized experience requires infrastructure behind the scenes. At any given time, the Workhuman Store has over 1 million rewards available, so teams are continuously processing supplier data from around the world. Workhuman manages that data through a product information management system that is a central source of truthfor the store catalog.

A key part of this experience involves merchandising, which is where Caroline Stewart comes in. As Senior Manager of Global Merchandising within the e-commerce department, she’s responsible for driving the promotional and site merchandising strategy, ensuring that the company presents the right reward to the right customer, at the right time. 

Employees who say their reward options reflect their culture, values, and interests are 3x more likely to love their recognition program.

Stewart said that Workhuman’s early merchandising strategy was manual, instinct-driven and centralized. The company promoted to core markets and applied that tactic broadly across regions, which wasn’t very scalable and didn’t always produce a locally relevant experience. 

Over time, Stewart’s team shifted to a more data-driven approach, using regional and country-level performance plus customer behavior to guide decisions rather than relying solely on intuition. And more recently, automation and personalization have also been embraced. 

“With the scale we’re operating at now, we are leaning into AI-driven recommendations and dynamic merchandising so we can deliver more tailored experiences without adding additional complexity,” Stewart said. 

It goes beyond merchandising, though. According to Rowan, the Workhuman Store is designed to speak to every customer on a personal level. That’s why his team designed the checkout experience to display the recognition that the individual received from their peers, and then to provide an opportunity to share their Reward Story so that those peers – along with the rest of the company – can see the impact they’ve had on their colleagues.

“We could have designed a much more transactional experience, but we deliberately chose not to,” Rowan said. “When users see comments from a manager or colleague that may have been written months earlier, they’re reliving those experiences. If they’re moved to write a Reward Story, that gratitude can extend even further. We think that’s an important part of what makes Workhuman different.”

 

How Workhuman Fosters Global Team Collaboration

To ensure the Workhuman Store runs as smoothly as possible, every team plays an active role.

The operations team works closely with sourcing, supply chain, customer support, and systems teams to design and manage the processes needed to support customers. As teams work together, they rely on frequent sync-ups and a strong set of tools, including Asana.

Rowan considers Workhuman’s approach to collaboration one of the elements that sets the company apart. Leaders across cross-functional teams have strong relationships and focus on solving problems together. 

“There’s collaboration at every level of the organization,” Rowan said. 

And when collaboration is effective, it shows; Stewart and fellow leaders see faster decision making and higher adoption of shared tools – which can lead to an increase in conversion and average order value, and a decrease in customer escalations. 

With the rise of AI, Stewart said she expects teams to collaborate even more, so they can act faster and with greater precision. Human judgment will remain equally important.

“Strong relationships, cultural understanding, and clear communication will remain essential,” Stewart said. “The future will be about combining advanced tools with highly aligned and empowered teams.”

 

Why Workhuman Store Teams Find the Work Fulfilling

For those involved in developing and operating the Workhuman Store, the undertaking has been more than a business success — it’s a pivotal professional milestone. 

“I’m proud to be a part of a global platform that feels locally and culturally relevant to all employees,” Stewart said. “We’ve created a foundation that not only drives strong results but also enables agility, collaboration and continuous improvement.”

Despite its technological advances, Workhuman hasn’t lost sight of its human touch. 

“Our culture is built on continuous improvement, and there is always a focus on how we can do better for our customers and each other,” O’Dea said. 

Above all else, O’Dea feels most fulfilled by the impact the Workhuman Store has on people around the world. 

“Seeing recognition moments reach people seamlessly around the world, despite the complexity behind the scenes, is something I am incredibly proud of,” said O’Dea.

 

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