Nectar is an employee recognition platform that helps companies create a motivated workplace and handle employee wellness challenges. It brings employee recognition and rewards together so your team can celebrate wins through peer recognition, meaningful rewards, and award nominations.
According to the Gallup report, the global employee engagement rate was only 21% in 2024, costing the world economy an estimated $438 billion in terms of productivity. This underscores the need for robust employee engagement and recognition strategies, where tools like Nectar can help you foster a culture of appreciation and motivation.
But what exactly does Nectar offer that makes it different from other corporate wellness programs? How can it help you manage people in your remote and hybrid setup? Let’s find out from my Nectar review.
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What is Nectar?
Nectar is an employee recognition and rewards platform that helps teams celebrate great work and build a positive culture, while retaining their top talent and keeping them more engaged. In partnership with SHRM, Nectar makes it easier for companies to give shoutouts, track performance, and offer meaningful rewards.
Nectar enables you to offer consistent and visible recognition to your employees, especially those from remote teams, small to mid-sized businesses, and growing enterprises. From tech startups and financial services to healthcare providers and manufacturing, Nectar is used across a wide range of industries to boost morale and reinforce company values every day, keeping teams connected and engaged.
Nectar 3 Main Products
Nectar is a CultureOS that offers you the following features:
1. Recognition & Rewards
Nectar’s Recognition & Rewards feature makes celebrating achievements and boosting employee engagement easier than ever. Its aim is to foster a culture where employees feel valued and motivated, and to achieve that, it provides you with easy-to-use tools that make recognition fun and aligned with your company’s mission.
With instant recognition, teams can share real-time recognition on a dynamic social feed. This immediate visibility means timely and impactful recognition where everyone can participate.
One standout aspect of this module is the Meaningful Meter. It allows your employees to rate the significance of each recognition, ensuring the most impactful contributions get the deserved spotlight. Nectar also helps reinforce company values with tailored recognition, where you can create customizable categories for celebrating achievements that align with your core values.
The platform is designed to get everyone involved in the fun through peer-to-peer recognition. Team members can send shout-outs, add points, and engage with others’ celebrations, creating a sense of community. Moreover, it has an employee rewards system where people can redeem these points for rewards they value.
On Nectar, you get 200+ gift card options and custom incentives, including gift cards to a favorite store, branded company swag, and Amazon items. The flexibility makes recognition feel personal and motivating.
If you are a manager, you will get valuable insights into recognition trends from the analytics data, providing crucial information about employee recognition within your organization. You can use it to track participation and the overall impact of the program. This is beneficial for fine-tuning recognition approaches and ensuring their intended impact.
2. Nomination Program
Nectar’s Nomination Program is a great way to recognize excellence personally and inclusively. Besides helping you build a culture of appreciation and allowing your team to celebrate each other’s achievements, it promotes a supportive and motivating environment.
Allow your team to use this Nectar feature, and they can nominate peers for custom awards, like Employee of the Month or Best Halloween Costume, whatever fits your company vibe. All they have to do is review submissions, choose standout nominees, and share their achievements with the team.
The best part about this program is that everyone gets celebrated, not just the winners. Even if someone doesn’t take home the top award, you can share the positive feedback they received. To keep things fresh and engaging, it offers no limit on how many programs you can run.
You also get the option to customize awards to make them meaningful, on-brand, and reflective of company values. To keep the process fair, reliable, and inclusive, you can select your own review committee. Its built-in analytics offers insights into the performance of your recognition programs, helping you boost engagement and spot trends.
3. Internal Communication
Nectar facilitates smooth internal communication, enabling teams to stay informed, connected, and engaged. Want to create eye-catching announcements? Utilize its drag-and-drop tools, multimedia elements like images and GIFs, and a library of ready-made templates.
If you are too busy to craft a compelling message suitable for the occasion, take help from Nectar’s AI writing assistant to write professional, personalized messages in minutes. When you use Nectar, it really does not matter where your teams stay. You can deliver updates through multiple channels—email, Slack, Teams, and even SMS.
Add the company’s custom branding to the announcements and send them from verified emails to add an extra layer of trust. It also has a Communications Hub that functions like a digital bulletin board to store every update for revisit.
With features like department-specific messaging, dynamic employee lists synced with your HRIS (Human Resource Information System), and campaign scheduling, you can target the right audience at the right time. Just like the other features, this module has analytics & insights for HR to track open rates, clicks, and engagement across different channels to keep your internal communications effective.
Top 4 Use Cases of Nectar
Here are some top use cases where Nectar comes in handy.
1. Boosting Employee Engagement and Morale
It is evident that when employees feel appreciated and valued, they’re naturally more engaged at work. That’s where Nectar shines as one of the effective people management tools. Its recognition and rewards platform is a practical tool that makes appreciation a regular part of the culture.
With peer-to-peer recognition, employees can give and receive praise instantly, without having to wait for an annual review or a manager’s shoutout. And because it’s public, the recognition feels meaningful and often helps to boost workplace productivity.
Nectar lets companies add real rewards, which is a powerful way to connect recognition with motivation. Recognized employees can redeem points for things they actually want—gift cards, custom swag, or even charitable donations. The result? A more engaged, energized workforce where people feel connected, appreciated, and inspired to bring their best selves to work every day.
2. Encouraging Peer Recognition and Team Collaboration
Nectar plays a crucial role in creating a more connected and appreciative workplace by making peer recognition easy, visible, and meaningful. Its nomination feature, which is one of the strongest features of the platform, gives employees the opportunity to highlight the efforts of their teammates in real time.
As an employee recognition software, it allows employees to recognize each other for everyday wins or exceptional achievements. It increases the likelihood of staying engaged, communicating openly, and supporting each other for performance management.
Nectar also enhances internal communication through built-in tools that spotlight recognition. Since these moments become visible across teams and departments, they reinforce positive behaviors and encourage cross-functional collaboration. Such transparency builds trust and deepens interpersonal relationships.
3. Reducing Employee Turnover and Improving Retention
Regularly recognizing your employees’ efforts is one of the best ways to keep them happy, motivated, and loyal — and that’s exactly what Nectar makes easy. It helps to build a culture of appreciation where recognition becomes a daily part of life, be it as a shoutout for a job well done, celebrating a milestone, or acknowledging someone for living company values.
Such consistent, meaningful recognition makes employees feel valued, and when it happens, they are less likely to look elsewhere for that appreciation. In fact, regularly recognized employees have higher job satisfaction and stronger emotional connections to their teams and company. Nectar makes sure they fosters those connections, ultimately reducing turnover and strengthening retention over the long term.
4. Strengthening Company Culture & Values
Nectar helps bring your company’s core values to life by encouraging employees to actively demonstrate them and ensuring they are recognized and celebrated across the organization. Its customizable recognition system allows you to tag collaboration, accountability, innovation, or empathy with the recognition. This makes it easy for both peers and leadership to see how those values are showing up in real work.
Over time, these practices create a culture where values become part of daily habits. As employees start to understand what those values look like in action, they feel motivated to embody them. Public recognition reinforces positive behavior among your employees and sets a clear example for others to follow for a better-aligned culture.
Nectar Integrations
Nectar’s support for a wide range of integrations makes it easy to keep your recognition flowing right where your team already works. It integrates with Slack and Microsoft Teams, so your employees can give shoutouts without leaving their daily chat apps. It’s HR tool integration support for BambooHR and Rippling to simplify syncing employee data and streamline onboarding.
Moreover, Nectar offers an API for workflow automation that helps you tailor the platform to fit your unique processes. Overall, these integrations help recognition become a natural part of your team’s routine.
Nectar Pricing & Plans
Nectar does not reveal its pricing information on their website. However, it does mention that the minimum contract requirement is $4,000/year, and you need to purchase internal communication features in addition to the Recognition & Rewards module.
In my opinion, the minimum commitment amount of $4000/year is quite hefty, and Nectar is not an affordable option for small businesses or startups with less than 25 employees.
Nectar Alternatives
While Nectar is a great platform for boosting your team morale, you might want to take a look at other employee recognition software, depending on your needs. For example, Bonusly starts at around $3/user/month and is ideal for teams looking for fun, peer-to-peer recognition with a social media feel. Another big name in this field is Motivosity, which starts at $2/user/month. It focuses on a manager-to-employee feedback system and is ideal for companies willing to improve leadership communication.
Large enterprises can choose Awardco, which integrates with Amazon for flexible rewards and comes with custom pricing. WorkTango (formerly Kazoo) is another custom-priced software with recognition and employee surveys. Companies that want an all-in-one employee or user engagement analytics can go for it.
Who Should Use Nectar (and Shouldn’t)?
Nectar is an excellent choice for mid-sized and enterprise-level companies that want to make recognition an integral part of their workplace culture. It also works well for remote or hybrid teams looking to stay connected and celebrate wins regardless of their locations. If your company is struggling with employee turnover or trying to strengthen the office culture, Nectar offers you the tools to highlight great work and keep the team morale high.
However, it is not the best fit for very small teams with limited recognition needs or businesses on a tight budget. For those, simpler, lower-cost tools will be more suitable.
Nectar Ratings & Recognitions
Nectar received rave reviews on the following popular software review websites.
- G2: 4.7/5 based on 6600+ reviews
- Capterra: 4.8/5 based on 290+ reviews
- TrustPilot: 9.3/10
As I was going through the user reviews shared on G2, I noticed that ease of use, peer recognition, and employee recognition features emerged as Nectar’s positive points. Many users also liked the fact that Nectar allows them to send GIFs to their colleagues.
On the other hand, I noticed people mostly complaining about limited or insufficient points, point expiration, and limited options for rewards.
Nectar Verdict
Nectar is a comprehensive CultureOS that reinforces company values with flexible employee recognition programs. Its strength lies in consistent and visible appreciation through peer-to-peer and manager-led recognition with meaningful rewards, leading to employee engagement and enhanced productivity. Its ability to integrate with popular communication and HR platforms makes the recognition process easier. For these reasons, Nectar received the Geekflare Value Award.
However, Nectar’s minimum annual contract of $4,000 and additional costs for internal communication features make it potentially unaffordable for small businesses. So, in my opinion, if you are a mid-sized to enterprise-level company that wants to create a culture of appreciation and provide tangible rewards, using Nectar is a worthwhile investment.