Archive for the ‘Incentives & Engagement’ Category

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Control Healthcare Costs by Engaging Employees

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

According to the recently released 2012 PSILOS Outlook on Healthcare Economics & Innovation report, engaging and personalized employee health and wellness is key to controlling employers’ health care costs. The new report focuses on consumer engagement, and the report shows that employees who receive some kind of personalized engagement in their health care are more likely to take an active role in the day-to-day management of their health and wellness.

Active engagement in health care management and healthier employees are key to prevention of chronic and/or serious illness. These types of diseases and conditions make up 75% of the national health care spend. Healthier employees, who are engaged in their healthcare will keep costs down. Although the act of maintaining a healthy lifestyle should be enough to keep employees engaged, 80% of employees want to be compensated for their healthy behavior, weight loss, etc. Instead of supplying bonuses for these types of behavior, supplying rewards such as gift cards provides trophy value and a choice to employees that cash cannot offer.

For more information on controlling healthcare costs and engaging your employees check out this Private Equity Hub article.

The author:

Rachel Merkin is a digital marketing professional . She has been exploring the worlds of social media and B2B gift cards since 2006. When she is not blogging, tweeting, or finding ways to leverage Facebook as a marketing tool, she spends as much time at the beach as she can.

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Employee Morale vs. True Engagement

Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

Employee engagement is a proven way to raise employee morale, lower quit rates, and make your workforce more productive. Showing employees how their day to day work contributes to the bigger picture and helps the organization reach its goals leads to engagement. Conveying clear vision and providing a sense of importance is how managers can contribute to overall workforce engagement at an organizational level. Employees are the ultimate driver of an organization to its goals, so it is important to engage employees through training, professional development, and rewards ranging from useful gift cards to larger rewards such as vacation travel and extra time off.

It is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between high employee morale and true engagement. According to Ronald Sanders, a senior executive adviser and fellow at Booz Allen Hamilton, engagement entails innovation, commitment, and employees choosing to use their discretionary energy at work. Engagement goes beyond a happy workforce to a deeper level of commitment to work and understanding of the importance of the job employees do every day. It is important to reward employees who reach this level so that they not only feel the importance of their position but so they feel supported by their organization. Reinforcing desired behaviors and attitudes is crucial to maintaining the engagement cycle into the future of the organization.

For more information on deeply engaged employees check out this Federal Computer Week article. 

The author:

Rachel Merkin is a digital marketing professional . She has been exploring the worlds of social media and B2B gift cards since 2006. When she is not blogging, tweeting, or finding ways to leverage Facebook as a marketing tool, she spends as much time at the beach as she can.

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Creating Total Rewards Optimization within your organization

Thursday, April 5th, 2012

Rewards are great for keeping employees engaged at work, but Josh Strok, Director of Rewards, Talent and Communication, for Towers Watson has a much broader view of how to make your rewards dollars go much further. Creating Total Rewards Optimization, which includes not only rewards benefits such as bonuses or gift cards for engagement, but combines this with other elements such as health and wellness benefits, career development opportunities, trainings, and corporate social responsibility workshops. Putting all of these elements together, Strok believes, creates a total package for employees that not only help retain them, but can be used as a competitive edge to attract employees from other competing companies. Strok believes that Total Rewards Optimization will help attract and retain top performers in a corporate climate where work hours are increasing, and will continue to do so.

It is important to build your Total Rewards Optimization program not only to fit your organizations budget, but to cater to the needs and wants of your employees. For example, if you have $100 to spend on employees, would they rather that go to a reward or loyalty program or would they rather have a lower insurance deductible? Would employees rather have a stronger retirement program or a better career development program? Finding out what employees are interested in and tailoring your organizations program to employee needs is critical to the success of your program and the investment of your rewards dollars. Total Rewards Optimization is a win-win for you and your employees when implemented successfully.

 

For more information about Total Rewards Optimization programs check out this Smart Business Network article.

The author:

Rachel Merkin is a digital marketing professional . She has been exploring the worlds of social media and B2B gift cards since 2006. When she is not blogging, tweeting, or finding ways to leverage Facebook as a marketing tool, she spends as much time at the beach as she can.

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Giving Credit Only When it is Due

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012

Rewarding employees for desired behavior is essential to keeping employees engaged and happy at work. When to reward employees and for what is important, so rewards remain a special occurrence and not something that can be achieved easily or often. Maintaining trophy value, even for small rewards like a small denomination gift card, is what makes rewards programs work. Here are some occurrences of when employees should be rewarded.

Give credit where credit is due: Giving credit based on performance, rather than status or power is important. This keeps employees engaged and maintains the possibility of upward mobility within their organization.

Credit team members for crediting one another: Acknowledging peer accomplishments is important both for the obvious positive reinforcement but also for rewarding employees for acknowledging other’s performance incentivizes peer leaders and motivates them to continue that behavior.

Avoid the temptation to blame: Ensuring that your team reacts well and maintains solidarity in a crisis is important, and should be rewarded.

 

For more information on rewarding employees appropriately check out this Harvard Business Review article.

The author:

Rachel Merkin is a digital marketing professional . She has been exploring the worlds of social media and B2B gift cards since 2006. When she is not blogging, tweeting, or finding ways to leverage Facebook as a marketing tool, she spends as much time at the beach as she can.

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4 Ways to Improving Employee Satisfaction Through Engagement

Thursday, March 29th, 2012

A recent research study conducted by TNS Employee Insights shows that engaging employees at work through programs like incentive rewards and loyalty programs, can improve the overall functionality and performance of a company by 20% points. MolsonCoors found that engaged employees were five times less likely than non-engaged employees to have a safety incident and seven times less likely to have a lost-time safety incident.

Using these types of programs by giving small incentives such as a small denomination gift card, or larger gifts for bigger workplace milestones makes employees feel noticed. Employees who are engaged at work feel as though they have a meaningful voice within the organization, and recognize effective leadership more readily. They feel as though they are being noticed, invested in, and guided professionally. Employees who feel engaged are also more productive, which leads to greater company revenues and 87% reduction in likelihood of employee departure. Here are four ways to invest in employee engagement and increase performance.

1.    Link employee engagement to business objectives and measures of effectiveness. The more substantial the direct connection the more clearly employees can view their role.
2.    Invest in employee programs specifically designed to increase engagement by supporting business objectives.
3.    Establish a system of measuring engagement and the effectiveness of these programs. Getting employee feedback about the programs is the best way to gauge their success.
4.    Make adjustments based on the discernible results. Maintaining flexibility in employee engagement programming is key to a positive outcome for both employees and the employer.

 

For more information on engaging your employees to improve your company’s performance check out this PR Web Article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The author:

Rachel Merkin is a digital marketing professional . She has been exploring the worlds of social media and B2B gift cards since 2006. When she is not blogging, tweeting, or finding ways to leverage Facebook as a marketing tool, she spends as much time at the beach as she can.

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Gift Cards, Perfect Workplace Social Incentive

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

Although the roots of the term “social incentives” goes back to the positive feelings humans gain when interacting with friends and peers; the term and concept has been leveraged in the workplace with great success. Historically, social incentives include the positive feedback one receives from peers, and even the presence of friends can be considered a social incentive.

In the workplace, it has been proven that the presence of friends affects worker’s attitude, behavior and their levels of productivity. Employers can help forge new friendships and relationships in the workplace by formalizing social incentives as part of their ongoing motivation, recognition and rewards programs.

Employers would thereby use the concept of social incentives as a way to encourage teams of coworkers to work together for common goals. Teams, cross-functional teams or randomly assembled  groups can join forces in a health and wellness program to collectively improve a workplace health and wellbeing outcomes, while driving individuals’ positive behaviors, keeping participants engaged and ultimately, drive results.

Where’s the proof? In the article Increase Participation with Social Incentives, by Wellsource; it is reported that a rate of 64% participation was garnered for individuals on a team, versus 44% participation for those in the same program, with the same incentive, but without being part of a team.

Now add a carrot like gift cards for successful participation, reaching milestones, and continued engagement and you are employing a well-rounded idea to keep your programs fresh. Why gift cards? Rewarding with a gift card like The Cheesecake Factory or Subway and the teams can dine together or get healthy take-out together to further develop the Comradery created by your program.

Are you encouraging teams to work together for common goals and individual productivity?

Source: Wellsource: Increase Participation with Social Incentives

The author:

Stacey Sicurella is a 15 year marketing veteran, working in the Boston area for GiftCard Partners. Recent accomplishments include blogging with abandon, acquiring work-life balance and building amazing sand-castles with her children.

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5 Qualities of a Remarkable Boss

Tuesday, March 27th, 2012

Great bosses lead to happy, content, motivated employees. When employees feel like their boss is investing in them they are much more likely to invest more of themselves into their work, which reflects positively on the business, and the office environment. Here are 5 qualities of a remarkable boss, and how it can help your business and employee productivity.

1. Develop every employee: Provide the training, mentoring and opportunities to allow your employees to develop and grow in their roles. Implementing goal oriented incentive programs that provide rewards such as gift cards, or extra time off is a great way to provide growth opportunities while providing added incentive for employees and staying within the employer’s budget.

2. Deal with problems immediately: Ignoring problems can kill team morale. Addressing problems and changing processes internally in a timely manner can be difficult and time consuming but it maintains a positive, focused atmosphere in the office, free of politics and distractions.

3. Rescue your worst employee: Work with the “weak link” on your team to try to rehabilitate their image to the rest of the team by stepping up the coaching and mentoring you provide.

4. Serve others, not yourself: Putting yourself second to your employees and acting selflessly goes a long way in your role as the supervisor. It instills greater confidence in employees and reinforces their support system within the organization which will directly increase their productivity and motivation.

5. Always remember where you came from: Spend time with your employees when presented the opportunity. Spending small moments with employees provides a unique opportunity to inspire, reassure, motivate, and even give someone hope for their professional future. The higher your station in the company the greater your responsibility is to spend time with more junior employees.

 

For more information on becoming a great boss and how to inspire your employees check out the Inc. article.

The author:

Rachel Merkin is a digital marketing professional . She has been exploring the worlds of social media and B2B gift cards since 2006. When she is not blogging, tweeting, or finding ways to leverage Facebook as a marketing tool, she spends as much time at the beach as she can.

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It’s Time to Reward Loyal Employees

Monday, March 26th, 2012

A recent Inc.om article calls NOW the time to reward employees, but they state, “If the economy gets better and job prospects improve, you may need to offer more incentives to keep your best employees”. It’s indisputable that as the economy revives, so will job opportunities to your employees and your competitors will be vicious when it comes to recruiting the best your company has to offer.

Showing your staffers how much they matter is critical to TOP employee retention. GCP’s comments about how gift cards meet the 3 views of this article follow each Inc.

  • “Make rewards personalized and meaningful”: You can include a personal note with gift cards to The Cheesecake Factory; their co-workers and families all benefit.
  • “Whenever possible, win over the family”: Gift cards can be used by your employee or their family and can be used WITH the family. Speedway gas cards help their family summer road-trips, Subway gift cards keep the family moving and eating healthy.
  • “Be unpredictable”: Gift cards are bought in bulk so they are on hand for spot rewards and on an irregular basis if this helps you from being too predictable, “…you don’t want them to go above and beyond just because they think there’s a reward in it for them.”, says Inc.

Check out the details of the Inc.’s: Now’s a Good Time to Reward Employees

The author:

Stacey Sicurella is a 15 year marketing veteran, working in the Boston area for GiftCard Partners. Recent accomplishments include blogging with abandon, acquiring work-life balance and building amazing sand-castles with her children.

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Deep Dive into Gamification for Employee Motivation and Rewards

Friday, March 23rd, 2012

If you are immersed in the world of employee motivation, recognition and rewards; you’ve been hearing a lot about gamification: a business tool to integrate key techniques and mechanics into the workplace via “games”. Simply put, integrating interactive games as a tool within training or incentive programs improves employee engagement, motivation and productivity.

GCP’s gift cards are well engrained in such programs as game points can be accumulated to select a really useful “prize”, like lunches at SUBWAY, Health and Beauty items at CVS/pharmacy, high quality, trend forward, and professional fashions from The Limited…GCP’s gift cards are carefully selected for B2B programs like employee rewards.

GCP’s recent blogs lead to gobs of the evidence that gamification should be looked at seriously within incentive programs, Incentive Experts Point to Gamification as Top Incentive Trend, Snowfly’s 16 Key Findings for Success white paper, IRF’s 12 Trends in Rewards and Recognition for 2012, Gamification Keeps Employees Engaged and Brand Image Strong…but this blog offers you a deep dive into the mechanics of gamification, data on participation levels, performance and reward successes, and what you can expect long term.

Take a deep dive into gamification with “Snowfly’s Gamification in the Workplace: 15 Key Discoveries”, by Dr. Brooks Mitchell. His work has been published and referred to in hundreds of publications, including Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and the New York Times.

The author:

Stacey Sicurella is a 15 year marketing veteran, working in the Boston area for GiftCard Partners. Recent accomplishments include blogging with abandon, acquiring work-life balance and building amazing sand-castles with her children.

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Incorporating Innovation into Recognition

Thursday, March 22nd, 2012

It is easy to provide standard compensation to employees: salary, plus rewards for organizational success and individual achievements. But what about innovation? If an employee finds an innovative way to change the business for the better, or to change the atmosphere in the office, shouldn’t that be rewarded on a higher level? Shouldn’t innovation that improves the business either internally or externally garner organization-wide recognition, not to mention some compensation that goes beyond standard bonuses?

Rewarding innovation is important to move your business forward, and to keep your employees engaged in the company’s work at all times. To know there is a high level reward behind innovative thinking and behavior is a huge employee motivator, and lets employees know that their organization stands behind them as long as they are committed. The compensation could be monetary, or it could come in the form of a choice of gift cards, which would reward the employee in a more personal way. Gift cards hold a trophy value, and can be used by the employee to treat themselves, friends, or family with their reward.

Compensating employees is expected, but rewarding and engaging employees by driving your business to innovation is much more productive. For more information on how to reward your employees for innovative behaviors check out this Fast Company article.

The author:

Rachel Merkin is a digital marketing professional . She has been exploring the worlds of social media and B2B gift cards since 2006. When she is not blogging, tweeting, or finding ways to leverage Facebook as a marketing tool, she spends as much time at the beach as she can.

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Posted in General, Gift Card Trends, Incentives & Engagement | No Comments »

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