The challenge
A growing global workforce and a recognition program that couldn't keep up
Royal Cyber is a global IT services and consulting company with a workforce spread across multiple countries. As the organisation scaled, its traditional recognition programs struggled to keep pace with the size, speed, and diversity of its teams.
Recognition lacked consistency and reach. Internal communication was fragmented. And there was no unified way to gather employee feedback or reinforce the cultural values the organisation wanted to build. The need for a platform that could connect, celebrate, and engage a dispersed global workforce was clear.
- Traditional recognition without dynamism or reach, existing recognition programs were not designed for a large, globally distributed workforce. They lacked the visibility, frequency, and personalization needed to make employees feel genuinely appreciated across different geographies and teams.
- Fragmented internal communication, without a shared social space, cross-departmental collaboration and knowledge sharing relied on informal channels. There was no structured way to surface core values, celebrate team wins, or build a sense of community across the organisation.
- No consistent feedback mechanism, HR had no reliable, repeatable way to collect employee feedback or track sentiment over time. Feedback was gathered sporadically using disconnected tools, making it difficult to identify engagement trends or act on insights quickly.
The solution
A multi-feature engagement platform built around how Royal Cyber's people actually worked
Royal Cyber chose Empuls as its unified employee engagement platform, going live in January 2020. The implementation was designed around Royal Cyber's specific culture, workflows, and tools, with custom award programs, branded recognition experiences, and seamless integration into the systems employees already used.
The platform brought together recognition, social connection, feedback, and collaboration into a single experience, making engagement a natural part of everyday work rather than a separate HR initiative.
- Custom award programs tied to company values, Empuls powered a range of recognition programs specific to Royal Cyber: Aspirin Awards for employees who solved critical problems, Project GoLive incentives for delivery milestones, and Learn and Share awards for knowledge contribution, giving recognition a purpose and vocabulary that resonated with how employees worked.
- Social intranet for values-based recognition, the social intranet created a shared space where employees could recognise peers against Royal Cyber's core values, share knowledge, and celebrate wins together. Teamwork, Excellence, and Behind the Scenes emerged as the most frequently recognised values, reflecting the culture the organisation was actively building.
- Surveys for continuous feedback and improvement, built-in survey tools gave HR a structured, repeatable way to gather employee feedback, track sentiment trends, and identify areas for improvement, replacing ad-hoc feedback collection with a continuous listening engine.
- Integration with Microsoft Teams and Zoho, Empuls integrated directly into Microsoft Teams and Zoho, bringing recognition and engagement into the tools employees used every day. This reduced friction, improved adoption, and ensured the platform became part of the daily workflow rather than a separate destination employees had to remember to visit.
The results
From fragmented recognition to a connected, values-driven culture that scaled
84.2%
Platform activation rate with 1,236 active users from launch
50.6%
Engagement rate with around 661 average monthly engaged users
~1,300
Average monthly active users across the global workforce
Within months of going live, Royal Cyber saw strong, measurable engagement across the platform. Activation and participation rates significantly outpaced industry benchmarks for IT services, and the recognition activity that emerged reflected the culture the organisation was working to build.