What is Reward redemption rate?

What it is

Reward redemption rate is the percentage of earned or issued rewards that employees actually claim within a given period. You calculate it by dividing redeemed rewards by total rewards issued, then multiplying by 100. If you sent out 200 rewards last quarter and 130 were redeemed, your redemption rate is 65%. Low redemption rates are a signal worth paying attention to — they mean recognition is landing, but the follow-through isn't.

Why it matters

A rewards program that nobody uses is mostly just overhead. When redemption rates are low, employees may feel the reward catalog isn't relevant to them, the process is too clunky, or they simply forget the rewards exist. That disconnect quietly erodes the goodwill you were trying to build in the first place. On the flip side, a high redemption rate (typically 75% or above) tells you the program is trusted, accessible, and valued — which correlates with the kind of engagement that actually reduces turnover. If you're already tracking voluntary turnover rate, redemption rate is a useful leading indicator to pair with it.

How to put it into practice

• Set a baseline first. Pull your current redemption data before making any changes. You can't improve what you haven't measured.
• Audit your reward catalog. Employees redeem when they see options they actually want. Poll your team — even a two-question Slack message works.
• Reduce friction. The fewer clicks between earning and redeeming, the better. If redemption requires logging into a separate portal, that's a drop-off point.
• Send reminders through Slack. A quick automated nudge — "You have an unused reward" — dramatically lifts redemption among employees who just forgot.
• Check Asante's AI Insights to see if certain teams or roles consistently under-redeem. Patterns by department often point to a catalog fit problem, not a motivation problem.

Watch out for

The most common failure mode is treating redemption rate as purely a logistics problem when it's often a relevance problem. Adding more reminder emails won't help if employees look at the catalog and shrug. Before tweaking the delivery, ask whether the rewards themselves reflect what your specific team actually values — that conversation usually unlocks more improvement than any technical fix.