Every organization knows the value of celebrating milestones, gathering timely feedback, and communicating total rewards clearly. Yet celebrations get skipped because people don’t know what to say. Surveys miss the moment because no one can manually track hundreds of dates. And employees with valuable equity compensation and benefits packages have no idea what they’re worth. Behind each of these challenges are manual processes that don’t scale. Our Q3 2025 release addresses this by introducing AI and automation across Recognition & Rewards, Employee Communications, and Total Rewards Hub to make celebrations, feedback, and compensation transparency effortless. Below is a closer look at what we’ve built. Recognition & Rewards: AI Takes the Friction Out of Celebrations Our Recognition & Rewards solution helps organizations build cultures of appreciation through peer-to-peer recognition, manager recognition, and milestone celebrations. This release focuses on the celebrations experience, removing two of the biggest barriers to participation that our customers consistently highlight: not knowing what to say and not knowing when celebrations are happening. Writing the Perfect Celebration Message We’ve all been there: staring at the blank message box, wanting to celebrate a colleague’s 5-year work anniversary but unsure how to express appreciation authentically. Should it be formal? Casual? Personal? The worry about sounding generic or getting the tone wrong is enough to make anyone close the tab and move on. And just like that, the moment passes uncelebrated. It’s a common experience. Many employees want to participate in celebrations but hold back because they don’t feel confident in their writing. “I just didn’t know what to say” is the number one reason people give for not participating in milestone celebrations. AI Celebration Messages eliminates this barrier entirely. Built specifically for milestones like birthdays, work anniversaries, and other “moments that matter,” this new capability generates personalized celebration messages on demand. Unlike recognition messages that require context about specific accomplishments, celebration messages are tied to known events. The system already understands the occasion. Here’s how simple it becomes: an employee navigating to the Celebrations page sees their colleague’s work anniversary. They can either enter a brief message or key points about what they want to express, or let the AI generate something from scratch. Then they click “Write it for me” and select a tone (cheerful, warm, or professional). The system instantly generates a personalized message that feels authentic and appropriate to the relationship and occasion. If they want a different approach, they can regenerate. Otherwise, they send it directly. What previously might have been a skipped celebration becomes a meaningful gesture that takes 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes. Keeping Celebrations Top of Mind Celebrations often go unacknowledged simply because people don’t know when they’re happening. By the time someone realizes their colleague’s work anniversary was this week, it’s too late to contribute. Our new automated celebration reminders solve this. Administrators can now schedule automated email reminders before events occur. They can configure who should be notified (peers, managers, direct reports, division members, or any relevant group) and when they should be reminded (for example, 10 days out, then 3 days before the event). This means no celebration gets forgotten because the right people are reminded at the right time, with enough advance notice to participate. Build a recognition experience that’s consistent, inclusive, and impactful Enhance your recognition program Employee Communications: Automating Feedback at the Right Moments Our Employee Communications solution enables organizations to reach all employees through targeted campaigns, surveys, and the Employee App. This release introduces intelligent survey automation that ties feedback collection to the moments when it matters most. Surveys That Trigger Automatically Based on Employee Lifecycle Events One of the most common frustrations we hear from HR leaders is that they want feedback at key moments (after onboarding, before someone exits, at the 90-day mark) but can’t manually track hundreds of different hire and departure dates. By the time they remember to send a survey, the moment has passed and the feedback is no longer accurate or useful. Our event-based survey creation flow transforms how organizations collect lifecycle feedback by automating survey distribution based on HRIS data. Administrators can now create event-based surveys that automatically trigger when specific employee dates occur, no manual tracking required. Here’s how it works: set up an onboarding survey to automatically send 30 days after an employee’s hire date. Every new employee receives the survey at exactly the right moment, when the onboarding experience is fresh, and the feedback is most valuable. Results flow into aggregated reports where HR can identify patterns and address issues systematically. The same automation works for exit surveys. When a departure date is entered in the HRIS, the survey schedules automatically. This ensures consistent feedback collection during offboarding without HR having to remember to send it manually during the chaos of processing someone’s departure. But it’s not limited to just onboarding and exit. Any HRIS date can serve as a trigger for an automated survey. Want feedback at the 90-day mark? At the one-year anniversary? When someone changes roles? Configure the trigger once, and the system handles the distribution forever. This shift from manual to automated survey distribution means HR spends less time coordinating logistics and more time acting on the insights they gather. Convenient Access to Active Surveys As part of this release, we’ve also added a dedicated Surveys page in the Employee App. Employees can now see all active surveys they’re eligible to complete in one centralized location, with clear details about each survey including title, description, number of questions, and privacy status. This makes it easy for any employee (whether they regularly check email or primarily use the mobile app) to find and complete surveys without hunting through their inbox. It’s a simple improvement that ensures surveys are visible and accessible to everyone. Total Rewards Hub: Making Compensation Transparent and Understandable Our Total Rewards Hub gives employees a comprehensive view of their complete rewards package (salary, benefits, and equity) in one centralized location. This quarter, we focused on making complex compensation elements like stocks and mobility benefits more visible and understandable. Giving Employees Clear Visibility into Stock Value Here’s a problem many organizations with equity compensation face: employees have stock grants but no clear sense of what they’re worth or how they’re performing. The information exists somewhere (in spreadsheets, in benefits portals, in annual statements) but it’s not accessible in a way that helps employees understand the value they’re receiving. One customer told us: “We offer competitive equity packages, but in exit interviews, employees say they ‘never really understood’ their equity compensation. We’re losing people who don’t realize how valuable their holdings are because the information isn’t visible or digestible.” To address this transparency gap, we’ve added stock visualization through an interactive widget and downloadable statements. The widget provides a yearly snapshot showing the total shares granted and their value at the time of issuance, with year-over-year comparison to help employees see how their stock compensation is evolving. The downloadable statement gives them detailed documentation for conversations with financial advisors or personal planning. No more digging through old emails or calling HR to ask basic questions about their equity. This visibility matters because equity compensation only drives retention and motivation when employees actually understand its value. By making stock grants transparent and accessible, organizations can boost employee trust, improve financial awareness, and strengthen the psychological link between performance and ownership. Consolidating the Complexity of Global Mobility For organizations with internationally mobile employees, there’s another transparency problem: relocation and expatriate benefits are scattered across systems, policies, and documents. An employee moving from New York to Singapore might receive visa assistance, taxation coverage, migration subsidies, housing allowances, and more, but they’d need to piece together information from five different sources to understand their complete mobility package. The new mobility benefits section consolidates all mobility-related rewards into a single, clear view within the Total Rewards Hub. Employees relocating across regions can now see the full financial and logistical value of their move in one place, while HR teams can communicate relocation support clearly and consistently. This improves visibility and transparency for expatriates and relocating employees while reinforcing trust in the company’s global mobility programs. When someone is considering a cross-border move, they can see exactly what support they’ll receive, making the decision clearer and demonstrating the organization’s commitment to supporting their transition. See how transparent, personalized rewards experiences strengthen trust and retention Explore Total Rewards Hub Looking Ahead These updates build on our innovations throughout the year and reflect our continued approach to building better employee experiences: identify the friction, then automate it away. By making celebrations effortless through AI and automation, making feedback collection intelligent through event-based triggers, and making compensation transparent through clear visualization, we’re addressing the real challenges our customers face every day. Rather than relying on manual tracking, scattered reminders, and individual effort, we’re making it easier for the right things to happen at the right time. The result is a more inclusive, consistent, and meaningful employee experience that scales as organizations grow. HR teams spend less time on logistics and more time on strategy. Managers stop worrying about missed milestones. Employees feel genuinely celebrated, heard, and fairly compensated. And organizations get the data and transparency they need to continuously improve. As we continue investing in AI, automation, and intelligent workflows, we’re committed to making employee experience management simpler, smarter, and more impactful for everyone involved. Ready to see these features in action? Current customers can contact their Customer Success Manager to schedule a product walkthrough and discuss implementation. If you’re interested in learning more, you can request a demo to explore how these capabilities can transform your employee experience strategy. For complete release notes, technical documentation, and configuration guides, visit our Help Center. Related posts Redefining Total Rewards: From Fragmented Data to Strategic Advantage read more Semos Cloud H1 2025 Product Innovation: Powering Meaningful Employee Experiences read more Completing the Big Three in the HCM World: Semos Cloud Now Natively Integrated with SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle, and Workday read more
