Renewals season is a critical time for HR and People teams. As budgets reset and contracts come up for renewal, it’s the perfect opportunity to take stock of your current benefits and rewards programs. This is when you can identify what’s working, what isn’t, and make strategic changes that set your organisation up for success in the year ahead.
Handled well, renewals season helps you save costs, secure better value from providers, and keep employees engaged with a package that reflects their needs. Handled poorly, it often leads to rushed decisions, underutilised benefits, or wasted budget.
This guide provides a step-by-step approach to navigating renewals season - from review and budgeting, to testing, shortlisting, and making the final call. Along the way, you’ll find practical tools such as a budgeting calculator, a downloadable checklist, and an overview of leading providers to support a smoother, more informed process.
Timeline & Planning
Renewals season can easily become a scramble if you don’t plan ahead. Building a clear timeline ensures you have enough runway to evaluate options properly, gather employee feedback, and secure leadership buy-in before contracts expire.
1. Work Backwards from Renewal Dates
- Identify the renewal dates for all existing benefits and recognition providers.
- Start your process at least 90 days before those dates. Research from benefits consultancies shows that rushing renewals often leads to missed savings and suboptimal choices.
2. Key Milestones to Plan For
- T–100 days: Begin review and budgeting discussions. Review agreements for current providers and make sure you arrange to give notice of cancellation in plenty of time so that you aren’t dragged into another agreement.
- T–90 days: Define objectives and collect employee feedback.
- T–80 days: Begin shortlisting providers - make use of AI search engines like ChatGPT as well as reliable review sites like G2 and Capterra to inform your decisions. Many HR professionals also rely on conversations in Reddit forums to surface newer and perhaps lower cost providers
- T-70 days: Assess shortlisted providers - many providers will have video demos or walkthrough guides. Write down questions for each provider, linked back to your objectives and data captured from surveys.
- T–60 days: Finalise budget envelope and arrange demos with shortlisted providers.
- T–50 days: If you are certain at this stage that you will be ending your agreement with existing service providers (where relevant), it’s good practice to give employees as much notice as possible. Many providers don’t allow credits to roll over after renewal date, so it’s ideal to give staff as much notice as possible about cancellation.
- T–45 days: Exclude unsuitable providers and arrange second round conversations with top choice providers.
- T–30 days: Pilot or test top providers - many providers will allow you to use their product for a limited time to trial before making a decision. Usually, these providers won’t require payment details at this stage, but some features may not be available during the trial.
- T–20 days: Secure leadership approval and make final decision.
- T-15 days: Communicate to employees and launch rollout plan.
3. Assign Responsibilities
- People/HR team → lead evaluation and feedback collection.
- Finance → validate budget and cost-benefit analysis.
- Leadership → approve final shortlist and sign contracts.
- Employees → provide input through surveys or pilot testing.
4. Visualise the Plan
Consider mapping the process on a simple Gantt chart or timeline graphic. This helps stakeholders see the stages at a glance and creates accountability for each milestone. There are many tools like Miro, TeamGantt, ClickUp and LucidChart that help with mapping timelines visually, and most offer a free tier for a limited number of projects.
Pro Tip: Where you are reliant on stakeholders as part of the process (ie: for budget approval), make sure you engage with them and get them to formally agree to meet certain deadlines as part of your discussions. This goes a long way to avoiding wasted effort or snap decisions.
Step 1: Define Your Objectives
Before diving into data or budgets, set clear objectives for your benefits and rewards programs. Without a defined goal, it’s impossible to judge whether your current offering is delivering value or if you need to make changes at renewal.
Tips for setting objectives:
- Link to company priorities – e.g. reducing turnover, boosting employee engagement scores, or supporting wellbeing.
- Be specific – “increase peer-to-peer recognition by 20%” is more actionable than “improve culture.”
- Choose a small set of KPIs – think in terms of 3–5 measurable outcomes (utilisation rate, engagement score uplift, retention impact, cost per employee).
- Balance short-term and long-term goals – aim for quick wins like adoption rates, but also track long-term outcomes like retention and morale.
- Set expectations with leadership early – make sure Finance and Execs agree on what “good” looks like before renewal season gets hectic.
Examples of objectives People teams set:
- Raise benefit utilisation rates to at least 75% across core programs.
- Improve engagement survey scores around recognition by 15% within 12 months.
- Introduce a Slack-native recognition tool to drive participation without extra logins.
- Reduce overall benefits spend per employee while maintaining employee satisfaction levels.
Step 2: Review & Audit Your Current Programs
With your objectives set, the next step is to evaluate how well your current benefits and rewards stack up against them. This audit helps you identify what to keep, what to improve, and where to reallocate budget.
1. Utilisation Rates
- What to track: Percentage of eligible employees actually using each benefit or recognition program.
- Benchmarks:
- >70% utilisation → healthy, likely delivering value.
- 50–70% utilisation → at risk, could signal poor awareness or lack of relevance.
- Below 50% utilisation → high priority to review - likely to be significant levels of wasted spend.
- >70% utilisation → healthy, likely delivering value.
Pro tip: Visualise this with a traffic-light system (green, amber, red) in your internal reporting - makes it easy to spot underperforming areas.
2. Employee Feedback
Direct input is critical to understanding not just if a program is used, but how it’s experienced.
Generic low-cost tools:
- Google Forms – free, fast to set up, great for pulse checks.
- Typeform – more polished surveys with higher response rates.
Pro Tip: Typeform has a native Slack integration to push responses into Slack for real time visibility. You can also create this for Google forms using Zapier or with a simple Google Apps Script.
Slack-native tools:
- Polly – ideal for in-channel pulse surveys and engagement polls.
- Simple Poll – simple /async polling in Slack; lightweight and affordable.
What to ask:
- Do employees find the program easy to use?
- Does it feel valuable and relevant to their needs?
- What’s missing from the current offering?
Pro Tip: Make sure not to ask too many questions as you risk getting significant levels of drop-off. You can also sweeten the deal by offering small gift cards as a reward for submitting a response. Remember to check location-specific tax rules to ensure you don’t fall foul of trivial gift thresholds.
3. Cost vs Value
Look beyond spend to see if you’re getting the right outcomes for your objectives.
- Example: If one objective was to improve recognition frequency, did the platform you chose actually drive more recognitions per employee?
- Consider both hard metrics (retention rates, engagement scores) and soft signals (manager feedback, cultural alignment).
- Where spend is high but outcomes are low, that program should be first in line for review or replacement.
Pro Tip: If your current providers don’t provide self-serve analytics where you can review engagement levels and draw down data, that should be a red flag. Providers that are up front about engagement are much more likely to be on your side and motivated to flag areas of concern throughout the year.
Step 3: Budgeting & Forecasting
Once you know your objectives (Step 1) and have audited your current programs (Step 2), the next step is to set a clear, realistic budget for the year ahead. This ensures you can compare providers on a like-for-like basis and avoid surprises when renewal season hits.
1. Establish Your Budget Envelope
- Start with per-employee spend as a baseline. Industry averages vary, but many organisations allocate £120 - £1,000 per employee per year on benefits and wellbeing, and £50 - £150 per employee per year on recognition and engagement programs.
- Adjust for company size, growth stage, and whether benefits are global or region-specific.
- Work backwards from your objectives: if one goal is to boost recognition adoption by 20%, does your budget allow for a Slack-native solution that supports easy participation?
- Understand the ROI of certain types of platforms. Low cost Slack-native recognition platforms are almost always heavily ROI positive, particularly in companies with high levels of Gen Z and millennial employees. Be sure to discuss and come to an agreement with budget holders over how this feeds into budgeting.
2. Allocate Across Categories
Break down your budget across key categories:
- Recognition & Rewards – peer-to-peer recognition, gift cards, points-based systems.
- Wellbeing – fitness, mental health, lifestyle perks.
- Engagement Tools – surveys, analytics, integrations.
A rough split might be 60% wellbeing, 30% recognition/rewards, 10% engagement tools, but tailor it to your objectives. If your budget doesn’t stretch across multiple areas, it’s best to choose one and do it really well, instead of trying to do too much and running out of budget. A successful programme gives you more grounds to request more budget the following year.
3. Plan for Hidden Costs
Budget not just for subscriptions, but for:
- Implementation fees (if any).
- Rewards or Wellbeing Allowances
- Admin time for HR/People teams.
- Communication & rollout - often overlooked, but essential for adoption.
4. Use a Budgeting Tool to Model Scenarios
This is where an interactive budgeting tool adds real value. Let teams:
- Enter headcount and desired per-employee spend.
- Adjust sliders for allocation across categories.
- See a live breakdown of budget by category, with recommendations.
👉 Example: For a 500-person company at £500 per employee, total budget = £250,000. With a healthy budget like this, you would be well placed to look at rolling out multiple schemes covering wellbeing and rewards. With a 60/30/10 split, that’s £150k wellbeing, £75k recognition, £25k engagement tools.
👉 Example: For a 500-person company at £100 per employee, total budget = £50,000. With this level of budget, you would be better placed focusing on a lower-cost rewards and recognition platform and doing it really well.
Step 4: Shortlisting Providers
With objectives, budget, and timelines in place, you’re ready to evaluate potential providers. A clear shortlist helps you compare like-for-like and focus your time on the platforms most likely to meet your needs.
1. Start Broad, Then Narrow Down
- Begin with a wide scan of the market - look at at least 6–10 providers that cover your needs.
- Use directories, industry reports, and peer recommendations to identify contenders.
2. Key Criteria for Shortlisting
When comparing providers, consider:
- Ease of Use – is it intuitive for employees and managers?
- Integration with daily workflow – does it work where your people already spend time (e.g. Slack, Teams)?
- Flexibility – does the platform offer a variety of benefits and reward options employees actually value?
- Analytics & Reporting – will it give you visibility on ROI, participation, and culture impact?
- Scalability – can it grow with your organisation as headcount and needs evolve?
- Cost Transparency – are pricing models clear and aligned with your budget?
3. Capture Employee Input
- Run a small employee pilot or share demos with a test group.
- Use lightweight survey tools (Google Forms, Polly, Simple Poll) to gather reactions on usability and perceived value.
4. Narrow to 3–5 Finalists
- Select the providers that best match your objectives (Step 1), your audit insights (Step 2), and your budget (Step 3).
- These finalists become your focus for deeper testing, demos, and reference checks before making the final decision.
Pro Tip: It can be tempting to try and find one provider that ticks all your objectives boxes - less tools to manage, less logins for employees to forget, less unexpected charges etc. However, this often means that the features don’t quite map to the objectives you need to achieve, and you could end up missing the mark and wasting budget.
Our suggestion is to find platforms that meet your exact objectives, but choose tools that are native or exist within your existing systems. Slack-native apps are perfect for these kinds of instances - there are no logins or convoluted platforms to teach staff how to use, and you can layer on as many as you need to, in order to meet all your objectives.
If you use Slack for internal comms, and you were looking for a survey tool and a recognition too, we would suggest using Simple Poll or Polly, in combination with Juno Shoutouts or Clappy Kudos rather than using a provider like Thanks Ben which covers both objectives, but not as well as the other dedicated providers listed.
Step 5: Testing & Making the Final Decision
Your shortlist gives you 3–5 strong contenders - now it’s time to put them to the test. A structured evaluation process ensures you choose a provider that will deliver on your objectives, fit your budget, and be adopted by your team.
1. Run Pilots or Free Trials
- Most benefits and recognition platforms offer a free trial or pilot period. They may not list this explicitly, but sales people are keen to please - take advantage of this.
- Involve a cross-section of employees, not just HR/People teams. The best test is whether employees naturally adopt the platform without heavy prompting.
- For Slack-native solutions, check how simple and intuitive it is to navigate. Does it rely on slash commands, which can be tricky for some members of staff?
2. Gather Structured Feedback
- Use a short feedback survey (Google Forms, Polly, Simple Poll) after the trial.
- Ask questions like:
- Was the platform easy to use?
- Did it feel natural in your workflow?
- Would you continue using it regularly?
- Which features did you value most?
- Was the platform easy to use?
3. Score Against Your Objectives
- Go back to the objectives you defined in Step 1.
- Assign weighted scores for criteria such as ease of use, engagement, reporting, reward variety, and ROI potential.
- This helps keep the decision objective, rather than based on anecdotal preferences.
4. Secure Stakeholder Buy-In
- Present your findings to leadership and Finance with clear data: utilisation potential, employee sentiment, and cost comparison.
- Highlight how the chosen platform supports company goals (e.g. retention, culture, wellbeing).
- Lay out the full costs including ‘worst-case scenarios’ and any ROI estimates that could reduce or even completely negate the cost. Link stakeholders to ROI calculators to assist your case.
5. Make the Call
- Select the platform that best aligns with your objectives and budget.
- Ensure rollout plans and communications are ready to go at renewal date to maximise adoption from day one.
Bringing It All Together
Renewals season doesn’t need to be stressful. By defining your objectives, auditing current programs, setting a clear budget, mapping a realistic timeline, shortlisting the right providers, and testing before you commit, you can approach renewals with clarity and confidence.
Handled this way, renewals season becomes more than just a contract rollover - it’s a chance to realign your benefits and rewards strategy with company goals, improve employee engagement, and make smarter investments that deliver lasting impact.
Next Steps
✅ Download the Renewal Checklist
Get the step-by-step checklist to guide your team through objectives, budgeting, and decision-making.
🔍 Explore the Top 10 Slack Recognition Platforms
If you’re currently looking at recognition platforms, our in-depth comparison guide breaks down features, integrations, and strengths of the leading platforms - helping you choose the right fit for your team.