Setting up HiThrive: a step-by-step guide

This guide walks through everything from connecting your directory to launch day. It is written for admins setting up without a dedicated implementation manager.

Plan for two to three weeks of elapsed time. The configuration itself takes a few hours total, but HRIS sync, IT approvals for the Slack or Teams app, and internal sign-off on budget are the pieces that stretch the calendar. Start those early.

Your admin portal is at app.hithrive.com/admin. Work through the phases in order, as each one depends on the last.

Before you start

Three things will hold you up if you don't line them up now:

Who owns this. Name at least two platform administrators. One person owning setup alone creates a single point of failure.

Who can install apps. Adding HiThrive to Slack or Microsoft Teams usually requires a workspace or tenant admin. If that isn't you, find out who it is today.

Who owns your HRIS. Whoever administers your HRIS will need to create the integration user and grant permissions.

Phase 1: Foundation

Nothing else works until your people are in the platform and HiThrive can reach them.

1. Designate platform administrators

Navigate to app.hithrive.com/admin/users, select the team member, click User details at the top, assign the roles they need, and click Save.

https://help.hithrive.com/help/user-roles-and-permissions

2. Add the HiThrive app

Install HiThrive in Slack or Microsoft Teams. If your organization requires app review, submit the request now and continue with the steps below while it moves through approval.

• Slack: https://help.hithrive.com/help/adding-hithrive-to-slack

• Microsoft Teams: https://help.hithrive.com/help/adding-hithrive-to-microsoft-teams

3. Connect your employee data

HRIS integration (recommended). New hires, departures, and profile changes flow automatically. Celebrations fire without anyone maintaining a list.

CSV upload. Faster to start, but every change is manual from then on. Reasonable if your HRIS isn't supported, but plan to migrate.

Whichever you use, confirm birth dates and hire dates are populated before moving on. Missing dates are the most common cause of celebrations not firing.

Where: app.hithrive.com/admin/settings/integrations

All HRIS guides: https://help.hithrive.com/help/integrations

CSV upload: https://help.hithrive.com/help/how-to-import-user-information Custom fields: https://help.hithrive.com/help/adding-custom-fields-to-map-user-data

💡 Deciding who counts as a user is a real decision, not a formality. Contractors, part-time staff, and frontline workers without a work email all need an explicit call before you configure your user segment.

4. Create your active user segment

This defines who is on the platform. Your segment conditions determine who gets celebrations, who can send and receive recognition, and who counts toward your seat total.

Where: app.hithrive.com/admin/users

• https://help.hithrive.com/help/managing-active-users-in-hithrive

• https://help.hithrive.com/help/how-to-create-segments-in-hithrive

5. Set channel availability

Choose which channels HiThrive can post to and where recognition appears.

https://help.hithrive.com/help/adding-slack-channels-to-hithrive

6. Whitelist HiThrive email senders

Send this to your IT team early. Notification emails hitting spam filters on launch day is avoidable and hard to diagnose after the fact.

https://help.hithrive.com/help/whitelisting-hithrive-email-senders-and-ip-addresses

Phase 2: Program design

This is where most of the thinking happens. Benchmarks are included at each decision so you are not guessing.

If you want to read one thing before configuring anything in this phase, make it this:

https://help.hithrive.com/help/how-to-design-your-recognition-program-for-maximum-participation

7. Set up your company values

Shoutouts are tagged with a value, which is what turns recognition into something you can report on. Five to seven values works well. Use the values you already have rather than inventing a separate set.

Assign icons and colors at the same time you create the values, not later. Shoutout banners are posted to Slack and Teams as static images, so anything sent before you configure artwork keeps the default appearance permanently.

• Setting up values: https://help.hithrive.com/help/setting-up-your-company-values

• Preparing custom artwork: https://help.hithrive.com/help/customizing-your-shoutout-values

8. Configure peer-to-peer recognition

Team members get a recurring allowance of points to give away. The allowance resets each interval and does not roll over, which is intentional. It keeps recognition current.

Monthly intervals work better than quarterly for most teams. A quarterly allowance encourages people to sit on points and dump them at the end.

• How shoutouts work: https://help.hithrive.com/help/sending-shoutouts-in-hithrive

• How points work: https://help.hithrive.com/help/using-points-in-hithrive

• Individual allocations: https://help.hithrive.com/help/adjusting-individual-slash-user-point-allocations

9. Set up milestone celebrations

Configure birthdays, work anniversaries, and new hire celebrations. For each you are choosing an amount, whether it posts publicly, and which channel it lands in.

Celebrate year 1 and year 3, not just year 5. The average North American worker stays fewer than five years, so a year-5-only program misses most of your workforce. Years 1 and 3 are also the two highest-risk attrition points and the two most commonly skipped milestones.

Tier your anniversary amounts. A flat amount at every year makes year 10 land the same as year 2. Step the amounts up at meaningful marks instead.

Starting ranges by workforce profile:

For 5+ year milestones in higher-compensation environments, a useful cross-check is 1% of annual salary. At $120k that is $1,200. Anchoring to the person rather than a catalog price point is what makes the number read as genuine.

Set your 5 and 10 year budgets first. The earlier tiers follow from there.

Full program guidance, including the milestone maturity spectrum: https://help.hithrive.com/help/the-milestone-recognition-playbook

• Dynamic content tags: https://help.hithrive.com/help/using-tags-for-dynamic-content

• New hire announcement ideas: https://help.hithrive.com/help/new-hire-announcements-ideas-and-inspiration

• Custom card designs: https://help.hithrive.com/help/how-to-create-custom-card-designs

• Branding the celebration email: https://help.hithrive.com/help/customizing-your-celebration-email-template

💡 Employees set their own celebration preferences during onboarding, including opting out of public celebration entirely. You do not need to handle exceptions manually.

10. Configure manager spot celebrations

Give managers a discretionary budget to recognize their teams in the moment.

A useful starting benchmark is $25 base per manager per month, plus $1 per direct report per month. A manager with eight reports lands at $33 a month. This scales with span of control rather than treating every manager the same.

Decide whether spot sends require approval. Approval flows add friction and are worth it mainly when budgets are large or when finance needs a control. Most teams your size start without approval and add it later if needed.

• Sending a spot celebration: https://help.hithrive.com/help/how-to-send-a-spot-celebration

• Team and project budgets: https://help.hithrive.com/help/spot-celebrations-creating-team-or-project-specific-budgets

• Standardizing with Occasions: https://help.hithrive.com/help/how-to-create-occasions

• Approval flows: https://help.hithrive.com/help/spot-celebration-programs-with-approval-flows

11. Set up rewards and payment

Choose which reward catalogs are available and add your payment method.

For budgeting: 100 points equals $1. Roughly 70% of issued points get redeemed, so your actual spend runs below your issued total. A 10% processing fee applies to redemptions.

Size your budget against the programs you have turned on: https://tools.hithrive.com/hithrive_points_budgeting_guide.html

Where: app.hithrive.com/admin/rewards/settings

• Marketplace options: https://help.hithrive.com/help/rewards-marketplace-options-in-hithrive

• Funding methods: https://help.hithrive.com/help/paying-for-rewards-points-in-hithrive

• Budgeting guide: https://help.hithrive.com/help/guide-to-points-budgeting

• Custom company store: https://help.hithrive.com/help/creating-a-custom-company-store

• Gift expiration: https://help.hithrive.com/help/setting-an-expiration-period-for-unclaimed-gifts

• Tax considerations (US): https://help.hithrive.com/help/how-to-think-about-the-tax-implications-of-employee-gifts-and-rewards-for-us-team-members

12. Brand your web experience

Upload your Home feed banner so the platform looks like yours from day one. This takes two minutes and is worth doing before launch rather than after.

Where: app.hithrive.com/admin/settings

• Home feed banner: https://help.hithrive.com/help/how-to-customize-your-home-feed-web-banner

• Everything you can brand: https://help.hithrive.com/help/customizing-hithrive-for-your-brand

Phase 3: Launch

Configuration being finished is not the same as your team knowing HiThrive exists.

Full communication sequence with templates: https://help.hithrive.com/help/announcing-hithrive-launch-communication-guide

13. Brief your managers first

Managers set the tone. If they are recognizing people in week one, everyone else follows. If they are not, the platform reads as an HR initiative and stalls. Brief them before the all-company announcement, not alongside it.

https://help.hithrive.com/help/manager-briefing-guide

14. Get a leadership message out

The highest-impact single action available to you at launch.

https://help.hithrive.com/help/leadership-launch-message

15. Announce to the company

Send the announcement, and have a leader send the first recognition the same day. An empty feed on launch day is hard to recover from.

• Launch presentation: https://help.hithrive.com/help/hithrive-launch-presentation

• Employee FAQ: https://help.hithrive.com/help/hithrive-employee-faq

• Benefits packet brochure: https://help.hithrive.com/help/internal-brochure-benefits-packet

• What employees see when activating: https://help.hithrive.com/help/activating-your-hithrive-account

16. Add a Slack welcome message

New team members see this when they first encounter HiThrive.

https://help.hithrive.com/help/slack-welcome-message

After launch

Check participation at day 30. The number that matters is what percentage of your team has sent recognition, not how many shoutouts went out in total. A high volume concentrated among a few enthusiastic people looks healthy in aggregate and is not.

If participation is low, it is almost always one of three things: managers aren't modeling it, the recognition channel is somewhere people don't look, or nobody knows the platform exists.

Where: app.hithrive.com/admin/reports

• Manager reporting: https://help.hithrive.com/help/manager-reporting-in-hithrive

• Running a challenge: https://help.hithrive.com/help/how-to-use-hithrives-challenges

• Nomination campaigns: https://help.hithrive.com/help/how-to-create-and-manage-a-nomination-campaign

Ongoing administration:

• Offboarding: https://help.hithrive.com/help/hithrive-offboarding-provide-rewards-access-following-exit

• Manual activation and deactivation: https://help.hithrive.com/help/manually-activating-slash-deactivating-team-members-while-using-automated-user-management-via-hris-integration

• Sending a missed celebration: https://help.hithrive.com/help/manually-sending-a-missed-celebration

• Deleting posts: https://help.hithrive.com/help/admin-moderation-deleting-posts-in-hithrive

Beyond the basics

Worth setting up once the core program is running:

• SSO: https://help.hithrive.com/help/integrations-set-up-and-configure-single-sign-on

• SCIM with Entra ID: https://help.hithrive.com/help/integrations-set-up-scim-with-microsoft-entra-ad-fka-microsoft-azure-ad

• SCIM with Okta: https://help.hithrive.com/help/scim-provisioning-with-okta

• Purchasing Power Parity for global teams: https://help.hithrive.com/help/understanding-purchasing-power-parity-ppp-in-hithrive

• SwagLab: https://help.hithrive.com/help/hithrive-swaglab-branded-swag-seamlessly-integrated

• LinkedIn sharing: https://help.hithrive.com/help/hithrive-social-sharing-share-celebrations-on-linkedin

When to reach out

Contact help@hithrive.com if you hit any of these:

• An HRIS that isn't in our integration list

• Multi-country teams with different reward catalogs or currencies

• Custom card designs or branded assets

• Employees without work email addresses