Minga's points and rewards system isn't limited to only students. Owners, Managers, Teachers, and Staff can all receive points through Praise behaviors or direct point awards.
This guide walks you through what settings need to be enabled, plus what to expect once it's running.
Permission Level Required: Owner | Manager | Teacher | Staff
⚠️ Before you begin: Staff and teachers use the same Behaviors tool and the same Points settings that govern student recognition. This guide assumes those features are already active on your Minga.
If you haven't set up behaviors or points yet, start with Create and Manage Behaviors for your School and How to Assign Points to Students and Teams first.
In this guide:
Outline your points program for staff: Decide on your points economy, rules of engagement, and how to redeem.
Decide who can give and receive recognition: Confirm which roles you want assigning points to staff, and which roles can receive them.
Enable Praise behaviors for staff recipients: Configure your behavior settings so staff and teachers can recognize each other with Praise.
Enable Manage Points and Redeem for staff and teacher roles: Turn on direct point awards and redemptions that don't require a behavior.
Know what to expect from reporting: Understand how staff points activity appears in your existing reports.
Step 1: Outline your points program for staff
Running a successful points program for Teachers and Staff uses many of the same concepts as running one for your students. First, you need to identify the "why" behind the program, then decide how you will track progress, and what your incentive structure will be.
Boosting morale, improving peer-to-peer collaboration, or professional development are all great starting points to discovering your objective and aligning with your school values.
Setting Up Staff Points Program Pest Practices
Identify your primary goal: Decide what your main objective is for the program and make it specific, measurable, and realistic.
Involve your team: What would your Teachers and Staff like to get out of this program?
Determine your tracking metrics: Decide what success looks like and how you will share this with your team.
Choose your incentive structure: Similar to your student points program, decide if you will focus on individual success, team success, or a blend of both.
For a deeper dive into setting up your Student point program in Minga, check out Build School Community with Points and Rewards.
Deciding on your points economy
Teacher and Staff roles can earn points in the same ways students do: check-ins, responding to polls and challenges in the home feed, and by being assigned praise behaviors. Like with students, it is important to have consistent point values to keep things equitable.
Minga's Best Practices:
Align your rewards with school policies to ensure they reflect school-wide values and expectations. Common examples include "Leadership," "Acts of Kindness," and "Community Care" for praise rewards.
We suggest 1 point for each praise behavior to encourage positive conduct.
If you decide to allow Teachers and Staff to assign points to each other through peer-recognition manually (outlined in step 4), it is important to establish guidelines on how many points can be assigned at one time.
💡 Good to know: Minga doesn't include a point budget or cap feature in assigning points. If you want to limit how many points staff can give out, agree on that as an internal school policy, for example, "no more than 10 points per staff member per month," rather than relying on Minga to enforce it.
Earning points and reward ideas
Here are a few ideas of how Teachers and Staff can earn points and what they can spend them on:
Earning Points
Professional Development: Attending workshops, conferences, or training etc.
Collaboration: Award points for assisting a colleague, planning team events, or sharing lesson plans.
Community and Culture: Recognize staff members who go above and beyond at creating a positive place for their peers and students, or those who exemplify your school values.
Reward Ideas
School-Level Perks: Offer no- cost items like a "Jeans Day" pass, a pass from lunch duty or detention supervision, or a coveted parking spot.
Experiences: Offer an extended lunch hour, a few hours off of work (district depending), a teacher specific field trip.
Physical Items: Add local gift cards, classroom supplies, or swag to the Rewards area in Minga or implement an internal, staff-only marketplace.
Step 2: Decide who can give and receive recognition
All roles, Owner, Manager, Teacher, and Staff, can receive points in Minga. There's no separate setting to turn on staff or teachers as recipients; the recipient search in Manage Points and the assignment flow in Behaviors already include every role.
The decision you're making in this step is narrower: which roles should be allowed to assign points or Praise behaviors to staff and teachers. By default, Owners and Managers can do this. Teachers and Staff cannot, until you grant that permission in Steps 3 and 4.
✅ Outcome: You know which roles you want to enable for staff-to-staff recognition before you touch any settings.
Step 3: Enable Praise behaviors for staff recipients
Praise behaviors let staff recognize a specific action, like covering a duty or helping a colleague, with a point value attached. To let Teachers or Staff assign a Praise behavior to another staff member, you configure the same Limit who can assign this behavior manually setting used for student behaviors.
Step-by-step guide to enabling points for teachers and staff
Navigate to Behaviors in the main menu.
Select the Behaviors tab.
Click the Edit icon next to the Praise behavior you want staff and teachers to use for peer recognition, or click Create to build a new one.
Toggle on Limit who can assign this behavior manually.
Select Role as the restriction type, then choose Teacher and/or Staff.
This determines who can assign the behavior. It does not restrict who can receive it — any role can be selected as the recipient when the behavior is assigned.
Click Save.
For an interactive guide on enabling permissions, check out How to Choose who can Assign Behaviors and Consequences
✅ Outcome: The Teacher and Staff roles you selected can now assign this Praise behavior to another staff member, and points post to that person's balance.
📖 Go deeper: For the full walkthrough of creating and editing behaviors, including points values, icons, and notifications, see Create and manage behaviors for your school.
Step 4: Enable Manage Points and Redeem for staff and teacher roles
The Manage Points feature in My Tools lets an eligible role award or remove points from an individual or a Team without attaching a behavior.
The Redeem feature in My Tools lets an eligible role process a reward redemption on someone's behalf. Both are gated by role-based toggles in your Points settings, and both work for staff and teacher recipients exactly as they do for students.
Step-by-step guide to enabling reward redemption for teachers and staff.
Navigate to the Points tab in your main navigation menu.
Click the Settings tab.
Toggle on Allow Teachers to manage points and/or Allow Staff to manage points to let those roles add or remove points directly.
Toggle on Allow Teachers to redeem points and/or Allow Staff to redeem points to let those roles process reward redemptions.
Click Save.
Once enabled, an eligible role awards points to a staff member the same way:
Navigate to My Tools.
Click More actions.
Select Manage Points.
Click Add Points under the Individuals tab.
Search for the staff member by name, or filter by Role.
Select the number of Points, enter a Reason, and select a Category.
Click Add.
To redeem rewards, Teachers and Staff would follow the same flow outlined in Manage and Redeem Student Points.
Step-by-step guide to redeeming points for rewards
Start by selecting My Tools from the main menu.
Select Redeem points to start the reward process.
Use the search bar to quickly find any user by name, ID, or email.
Check the box to select the user you'd like to reward.
Click Redeem.
Here you will see the available points the user has.
Open the Add to cart dropdown to choose from the available rewards.
Select a reward.
Hit Checkout to confirm the redemption for your user.
⚠️ Note: When the settings Allow teachers/staff to manage points is enabled, Teachers and Staff can assign or remove points for themselves or other staff members. If Allow teachers/staff to redeem points has been enabled, they can redeem their points and the points of other staff members.
✅ Outcome: The staff member's point balance updates immediately, with no behavior required.
📖 Go deeper: For the full walkthrough of Manage Points, Redeem, and removing points, see How to assign points to students and teams.
Step 5: Know what to expect from reporting
Staff and teacher point activity appears in the same reports as student point activity. There is no staff-specific or teacher-specific points report, and none of the existing points reports, including the Points History Report, can be filtered by role.
When you pull a points report, staff and student activity will appear together in the same list.
If you need to track staff recognition separately from student recognition, use a distinct Category or Reason when awarding points in Step 3, so you can scan for it manually in the report.
💎 Tip: Create Teams for your Teachers and Staff and then use the Teams filter in reports to show only the point information related to faculty.
✅ Outcome: You know how staff points activity will show up in reporting, and you have a workaround for separating it from student activity if you need to.
Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting
A teacher or staff member can't find another staff member when assigning points.
If a staff recipient doesn't appear in the search results in Manage Points, confirm the search term matches the recipient's name exactly, or use the Role filter to narrow the list to Teacher or Staff. If the recipient still doesn't appear, confirm their account is active in Minga.
A staff member can't redeem points for another staff member.
If Redeem doesn't appear under More actions, the role attempting the redemption has not been granted permission. Navigate to Points > Settings and confirm Allow Teachers to redeem points or Allow Staff to redeem points is toggled on for that role.
A Praise behavior isn't available for a teacher or staff member to assign.
If a Teacher or Staff member doesn't see the option to assign a specific Praise behavior, check that behavior's Limit who can assign this behavior manually setting. Confirm their role is included in the allowed list, or that the toggle is off entirely if you want the behavior open to all roles.
FAQs
FAQs
Can staff and teachers receive points the same way students do?
Staff and teachers can receive points the same way students do. Every role, Owner, Manager, Teacher, and Staff, can be selected as a recipient in both the Praise behavior assignment flow and Manage Points. No separate setting is required to allow staff or teachers to receive points.
Do teachers and staff redeem from a separate rewards store?
Teachers and staff redeem from the same Rewards store used by students. Minga does not offer a separate catalog for staff, so any reward added to the store is available to every role with redemption permission.
Is there a way to set a limit or budget on staff points?
There is no built-in setting for a staff points budget or cap in Minga. If you want to limit how many points staff give out or receive, set that expectation as an internal school policy rather than a Minga configuration.
Can I filter my points reports to see only staff or teacher activity?
You cannot filter the Points History Report or any other points report by role. Staff, teacher, and student point activity all appear together in the same reports. Using a distinct Category or Reason when awarding staff points makes it easier to scan for that activity manually.
Do I need to change behavior settings to let staff recognize each other?
You need to change behavior settings only if you want to restrict who can assign a specific Praise behavior. Toggle on Limit who can assign this behavior manually on the behavior in question, then select Teacher and/or Staff under the Role restriction.
Can a Manager award points to staff without any extra setup?
A Manager can award points to staff without any extra setup. Owners and Managers have Manage Points and Redeem permissions by default. Only Teacher and Staff roles require the toggles in Step 3 to be turned on.
How can a teacher or staff member check in if they do not have the self-check-in option?
Teachers and Staff can assign themselves a check in by heading to My Tools>Check In and selecting the correct check in reason and assigning it to themselves. Alternatively, they can have another staff member assign them a check in or they can type in their ID number into a kiosk that is set up with the correct check in reason. That way they can still receive points from a check in if the check in has been configured with a point value.
Resources
Create and Manage Behaviors for your School: The full setup article for Praise and Guidance behaviors, including points values and assignment restrictions. Use this if you need to build a new Praise behavior for staff recognition rather than editing an existing one.
How to Assign Points to Students and Teams: The full setup article for Manage Points and Redeem permissions. Use this if you need the complete walkthrough of adding, removing, or redeeming points.
Create and Manage Student Rewards: Covers building out the Rewards store that staff and teachers redeem from. Use this if you want to add rewards specifically appealing to staff, like a preferred parking spot or a dress-down day.