What the Workhuman Store Is and How It Supports Workhuman’s Mission
Since its founding in 1999, Workhuman has been on a mission to help companies reward their greatest asset: their people. But as the world has changed, so has Workhuman’s strategy.
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 Human Intelligence®, recognition data is transformed into insights that help leaders better understand skills, culture, and workforce connections. Employees can also redeem recognition points for products, experiences, travel, or charitable donations.
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. But 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 80 countries and develop new operational capabilities around sourcing, fulfillment, returns and customer support.
“Every detail matters because every recognition moment matters,” O’Dea said.
What Is the Workhuman Store?
The Workhuman Store extends the impact of recognition by enabling employees to redeem points for products, experiences, and charitable contributions. With a localized experience across more than 180 countries and 36 languages, it increases participation, strengthens the value employees place on recognition, and helps maximize return on recognition investment.
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 40 countries and 36 languages.
“Our goal is to provide an experience that’s just as strong in emerging markets as it is in North America and Europe,” Rowan said.
For Rowan and his teammates, improving 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 employers.
“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, product 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 550,000 products 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 truth for the store catalog.
Another key part of this strategy 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 product to the right customer, at the right time.
Stewart said that Workhuman’s early merchandising strategy was manual, instinct-driven and centralized. The company was building for core markets and applying it broadly across regions, which wasn’t very scalable and didn’t always produce locally relevant products.
Over time, Stewart’s team shifted to a more data-driven approach, using regional and country-level performance and 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.
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, reminding them of 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. We think that’s an important part of what makes Workhuman different.”
“When users see comments from a manager or colleague that may have been written months earlier, they’re reliving those experiences. We think that’s an important part of what makes Workhuman different.”
How Workhuman Fosters Global Team Collaboration
To ensure the creation of the Workhuman Store went as smoothly as possible, every team played an active role from the very beginning.
The operations team was involved early on, working closely with sourcing, supply chain, customer support and systems teams to design the processes needed to support them. As teams worked together, they relied on frequent sync-ups and a strong set of tools, including Asana.
Rowan considers Workhuman’s approach to collaboration as one of the elements that sets the company apart. Leaders across product, engineering, sourcing, operations and e-commerce have strong relationships and focus on solving problems together.
“There’s collaboration at every level of the organization,” Rowan said.
And when global collaboration is effective, it shows.
Stewart and fellow leaders see conversion and average order value go up, as well as a low level of escalations, faster decision-making and high adoption of shared tools.
With the rise of AI, Stewart said she expects teams to act faster and with greater precision. Yet, human judgment will remain equally important going forward.
“At the same time, 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 enhancing the Workhuman Store, the undertaking was more than a business success — it was 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.
But 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,” O’Dea said.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Workhuman do?
Workhuman provides a global employee recognition platform designed to make appreciation a meaningful part of daily work. The platform enables employees to celebrate achievements, milestones, company values and personal life moments, while enabling them to redeem earned recognition points for physical products, experiences, travel or charitable donations. Workhuman's technology transforms recognition data into actionable insights to help leaders better understand workforce culture, skills, and organizational connections.
What is the Workhuman Store?
The Workhuman Store is a localized e-commerce platform that extends the impact of employee recognition by enabling workers to redeem their earned recognition points for a catalog of over 550,000 products, experiences and charitable contributions. Operating in 36 languages across more than 180 countries, the store is designed to speak to users on a personal level by displaying the original appreciation comments from managers and peers directly during the checkout process, allowing employees to relive those recognition moments.
