GiftCard Partners recently published our Gift Card Usage results white paper, which is chock full of ways employers are using gift cards to engage, motivate and reward employees.  Employers use incentives to promote all kinds of desired behaviors, but amongst the most important are for complying with safety regulations and precautions. A safer workplace leads to lower company healthcare insurance premiums, lower employee coverage contributions, less sick days, fewer short-term and long-term disability work outages, and increased productivity.

Here are a few of our best safety program success stories involving gift cards as incentives. Motivate yourself to motivate your employees with these success stories!

-  An electronics and process controls company plays “Safety Bingo” every month and they have been accident free for 15 years. “I use them as prizes, sometimes we will have 2 games going at one time like 4 corners and a regular Bingo, so I will give a $50 gift card for the 4 corners. Or I will surprise an employee who I catch using all their PPE (personal protective equipment) correctly.

-  An off-highway vehicle manufacturer uses gift cards “as incentives for Safety (no accident) and also for project team participation gifts”.

-  An engineering and remediation company created a “Spot Bonus plan where managers can reward an employee on the spot for doing a job exceptionally or safely.”

-  A community hospital gives gift card incentives to “staff who use creative ideas in initiating safety activities such as promoting better hand hygiene, and appropriate use of personal  protective equipment for patients in isolation.”

These employers and programs buy their gift cards in bulk to save money on their incentives.

Want to read more Safety Blogs from GCP? Click here for more on safety programs and safety
incentives.

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.

Using positive reinforcement to promote and reward for workplace safety guideline adherence is not a new concept. But what you choose to reward with can impact your program’s long term success and ROI. Do your employees really want more swag or tchotchkes? Really…not very likely.

But, if employees are offered a choice of gift cards, combined with the choice of what they purchase with those gift cards puts the power of choice in their hands. This power of choice stays in the employee’s memory, and it’s tied in their mind to their employer’s generosity.

It’s not just about what employees want. When employers offer “most wanted incentives” like gift  cards, their likelihood of realizing ROI in the short and long term increases. Offering flexible and coveted rewards offers workplace safety programs repeated adherence to safety precautions and sends the message that the employer cares as much about the employee as the ROI.

Here are a few examples of our typical gift card customers’ workplace safety incentive programs:
-          Measured accident reduction
-          Safety awareness contributions
-          Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) programs
-          Increased productivity rewards
-          Health and wellness programs, tailored to specific job functions
-          Driver safety and incident reduction
-          Training milestones

Check out America’s Most Wanted Gift Card Incentive Choices

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.

According to the 2011 Job Satisfaction and Engagement Research Report,conducted by the Socety for Human Resource Management 83% of American employees are satisfied with their jobs. However, only 52% feel engaged at work, and 53% enjoy going above and beyond in their professional role. In order to keep employees feeling engaged and satisfied it is important to both engage their thoughts and opinions to improve your workplace and offer opportunities for training and advancement. Setting up both formal training and informal mentoring sessions keeps employees engaged and feeling as though their employer cares about their career path.

Providing these opportunities for employees is productive, and can be paired well with spot rewards. For employees who achieve goals and milestones that are set in these types of sessions providing small rewards, like an afternoon off or a small denomination gift card goes one step above and beyond the role of the employer. Pairing these two employee engagement techniques allow employees to work toward personal achievements and become more committed to the company as the company allows and rewards them for growth.

Engaging and rewarding your employees will improve not only their commitment to their job and the company but their dedication to their role and their willingness to go above and beyond the employers expectations.

For more information on the SHRM survey or how to engage and incentivize your employees check out this “Small Business Trends” article.

Rachel Merkin is a recent college graduate, beginning a career in marketing and public relations. 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 IN or ON the ocean as possible, beaching and boating.

According to WorkSimple 2012 we’ll see a growth in empowerment and engagement of employees. Employers will invest in ensuring their employees are feeling confident and recognized in order to guarantee they are productive and committed to the company and its mission. Here are three simple steps to empowering your employees.

1. Remove Barriers to Success- Conduct surveys or interviews to find any barriers employees feel bar them from success. These may be policies that were put in place with good intentions but make employees feel limited.
2. Create a Supportive Culture- Encourage employees to build a supportive workplace together. This should be an activity all areas of the company can be involved in together.
3. Allow for Trial and Error- not all strategies work, that doesn’t mean they have been a failure. Trying different methods will mean both the employer and employee learn more from the experience.

Rachel Merkin is a recent college graduate, beginning a career in marketing and public relations. 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 IN or ON the ocean as possible, beaching and boating.

The American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration (ASHHRA) has designated the week of March 11-17th, 2012 as THE week to recognize HR professionals in hospitals and non-hospital organizations across the US. These professionals deal with difficult issues day in and day out, and they are the backbone of the healthcare workforce.

If you are an HR professional in the healthcare industry, lead the way and reward your colleagues with the gift they can use, like CVS and CVS Select^TM gift cards. It’s the employee gift that goes a long way to help with everyday family healthcare costs. Learn more about Healthcare HR Week!

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.

86% of businesses use employee recognition programs. Rewards and incentives can spur sales, improve retention and employee loyalty, and raise productivity.

The Incentive Research Foun­­dation (IRF) reports that incentives can attract and retain good employees, boost team performance by as much as 44% and increase individual productivity by an average of 22%.The right kind of recognition program can provide staggering benefits to an organization. In a recent WorldatWork survey 90% 0f businesses indicated that rewards and incentives improved length of service, 79% of respondents indicated rewards incented employees towards “above and beyond” performance, and 43% of respondents indicated that incentives led to peer to peer recognition.

This kind of data reveals that creating programs for employee rewards, recognition and incentives is a small investment that reaps significant returns. Not only keeping employees happy, but creating a work environment where the employee appreciates the company can lead to longer and more prosperous employee employer relationships. Ensuring that these rewards are properly and often communicated from the employer to the employee using different modes of communication such as a company intranet, email, bulletin boards, and the like help to remind employees constantly of the appreciation of the company for their hard work and dedication. Measuring success and gauging satisfaction of recognition and rewards programs is another important way to ensure that as an employer you keep your employees engaged in these programs is important.

Rewards do not have to be big, rewards can range from small spot rewards such as a gift card, and can extend all the way to more valuable incentives like a trip or extra time off.

For more tips on engaging employees in rewards programs that drive performance check out this Business Management Daily article.

Rachel Merkin is a recent college graduate, beginning a career in marketing and public relations. 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 IN or ON the ocean as possible, beaching and boating.

There are many 3rd party companies that define, administer and track customer loyalty programs as a service, but there are also many companies that successfully run their own loyalty program in-house. Incentive and loyalty points platforms are utilized to create and maintain customer accrued points, and they include the redemption platform which is loaded with the rewards.

These systems also integrate features like social media, communications tools, survey systems, and special online promotion tools. What do internally-run or independently-run loyalty programs look like? They look much like the ones that loyalty program providers run, and they often include a portfolio of gift cards to choose from when redeeming loyalty points.  Each program has its own attributes for accruing points, some examples are:

*    Simply, dollar to point system
*    Promotions like spend X and get double points
*    Member discounts
*    Retailer partnering, like fuel discounts
*    Additional points for online purchases

Companies that run their own loyalty programs should be sure there are flexible rewards, like gift cards and bulk gift card buyers receive % discounts based on the spend for cards purchased. These programs are an integral piece of a loyalty strategy and they work to help acquire, retain, and reward customers via the accumulation of points. Do you run an internal loyalty program?

Tell us about it here.

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.

Health care premiums are increasing at an unprecedented rate, said to reach around $10,000 per employee in 2012. As a result employers are looking to cut health care costs whenever possible. Here are 5 ways employers may need to cut health care costs this year.

1. Offering high deductible health insurance plans
2. Steering employees toward cost-efficient health care providers
3. Rewarding good health habits, penalizing bad ones
4. Charging extra for spouses who can get health insurance coverage elsewhere
5. Raising copays and share of the premium

Four out of these five actions are out of an employee’s control and will happen if necessary, regardless of employee behavior. But when employers reward good health habits and penalize bad habits, they are doing a service to their employees and to their bottom line. Rewarding healthy behaviors with small denomination gift cards or an afternoon off is a great way to gain desired behavior from employees and keep health care costs manageable. Healthy employees are more productive, and require less time off for medical attention and sick days. Maintaining a healthy and happy workforce could help employers prevent raising employee health care contributions and improve their employees’ overall well being.

For more information check out this Fox Business article on rising health care costs. 

Rachel Merkin is a recent college graduate, beginning a career in marketing and public relations. 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 IN or ON the ocean as possible, beaching and boating.

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, many are gearing up to figure out just the right gift for their significant other. Why not take the worry and stress out of finding that “perfect” gift that usually comes with a gift receipt and another trip to the store.

Calling all employers! This is a great time to exercise that wonderful incentive or loyalty program you’ve just put in place. Show you care by rewarding your employees with gift cards to 1-800-Flowers or CVS/pharmacy so they can reward the ones they love.

While the gentlemen are scratching their heads on whether to grab the Small shirt, so not to offend their wife, or trying to decide if her favorite color is purple even though she’s been wearing a lot of black lately, there is an easy solution. A gift card to The Limited will insure she gets exactly what she wants and leave him out of the dog house this February 14th.

The women in the office may be having some trouble of their own. They can get their guy the gift that keeps on giving with an AutoZone Gift Card…for the other love of his life. Or give him the chance to revamp his wardrobe with a gift card to Burlington Coat Factory.

Use this Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to reward your employees hard work and let them reward their loved ones.

Lauren McAuley is a fresh face to the GiftCard Partners family. She is a recent graduate who she enjoys diving head first into several aspects of the business including social media, graphic design, marketing, business development and public relations. Her passion for challenging herself keeps her trying new things every chance she gets, vegetable lasagna this week, maybe skydiving next week.

Social health games have proven to be effective in the fight against obesity. Whether it is a friendly race, a push-up competition at the gym, or use of a health tracking application. These applications often provide rewards such as gift cards, and health tips to further the participants effort to live a healthy lifestyle. These games do not only provide a social component, which motivates individuals to continue with their healthy companions, but provides an easy opportunity to reward desired behavior.

These games and mobile apps could be a great way for employers to engage their employees in a health and wellness program without having to invest the money to create the program. Encouraging a particular social health app or a particular regiment would bring employees camaraderie and shared motivation to work towards rewards, and a healthy lifestyle. These social health games could essentially act as a ready-made health and wellness program for your employees. The only cost that the company would incur would be small rewards such as gift cards to help maintain engagement in the program and promote ongoing healthy living.

How does your company use social games to motivate employees to be healthy? For more information on specific social health games and platforms check out this U.S. News and World Report article.

Rachel Merkin is a recent college graduate, beginning a career in marketing and public relations. 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 IN or ON the ocean as possible, beaching and boating.