What are Competitions?
Competitions transform everyday performance tracking into a motivating, automated experience. With Applause Competitions, admins can create recurring or one-time contests that track key metrics, like jobs completed, reviews earned, safety scores, or any other metric available to them in Applause, so employees and teams are motivated to push further.
Competitions live directly within the Applause platform, bringing visibility, automation, and fun to performance improvement. Real-time leaderboards, customizable goals, and automatic payouts keep everyone engaged while reducing manual admin work.
Note: Competitions are available to customers on the Essentials Plus plan. A freemium version with basic functionality is available to all other users.
Why Competitions Matter
Many companies already run internal competitions, but most rely on office whiteboards, email updates, or spreadsheets that take time to update manually. Applause Competitions automates this entire process.
With Competitions, admins can:
Launch contests directly from one central dashboard.
Track results in real time with live standings visible in the Applause app.
Eliminate manual tracking and payout work through automated bonuses.
Drive performance around the KPIs that matter most to your business.
Competitions make motivation measurable and fun, helping teams stay focused, aligned, and recognized for their effort.
Key Benefits
Applause Competitions makes it simple to engage teams, track performance, and automate recognition, all from one place.
Operational Efficiency & Automation: Create, schedule, and track all your active, upcoming, and past competitions from a single dashboard. Replace manual tracking, spreadsheets, and whiteboards with one automated system that saves time, reduces admin work, and keeps your team focused on results.
Real-Time Standings: Keep motivation high with live updates right in the mobile app. Technicians can instantly see where they stand and take action.
Automated Rewards: Automatically trigger bonus payouts when competitions end, no delays and manual work required.
Customizable Metrics: Choose from any metric in your library to align competitions with your specific business goals.
Recurring or One-Time Challenges: Run quick contests or set recurring competitions that refresh weekly or monthly for consistent engagement.
Fair Scoring & Tie-Breakers: Built-in logic ensures results are transparent, consistent, and fair—every time.
Setting Up a Competition
To create a competition, navigate to the Competitions module in Applause.
Only users with the Manage Competitions permission can create or edit competitions.
Go to Competitions → Create New Competition.
Enter a Competition Name and Description.
Select participating locations or choose “All Locations.”
Choose a Scorecard Metric to base the competition on.
Set a minimum events requirement (e.g., at least 10 NPS responses to qualify).
Choose a frequency:
One-Time (select start and end date)
Daily
Weekly
Bi-Monthly
Monthly
Set recurrence (how many times the competition should repeat).
Configure placement tiers and bonus amounts.
Click Create Competition.
Viewing Competitions
All active, upcoming, and completed competitions appear in your dashboard.
Active Competitions: View ongoing contests with live performance updates.
Upcoming Competitions: See scheduled contests or recurring competitions that haven’t started yet.
Past Competitions: Review historical results, placements, and payouts.
Access and Permissions
Competitions introduce two new permissions:
View Competitions - Allow users to view competitions and standings.
Manage Competitions - Allows users to create, manage, and delete competitions.
A user with access to a single location can only create location-specific competitions.
Competitions Mobile Experience
The Applause mobile app now includes a Compete tab (formerly called Leaderboards) so technicians can easily track their progress in real time.
Essentials Plus users will default to the Competitions view.
Essentials and Scorecards-only users will default to a Leaderboards view.
Technicians can view all active competitions they’re participating in, see real-time standings and bonus potential, and stay motivated with live progress updates throughout the contest.
For additional questions about competitions, reach out to your customer success manager.