Posts Tagged ‘employee incentives’

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Safety Program Ideas You Can Really Use

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

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.

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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America’s Most Wanted Incentives & Rewards for Safety Programs

Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

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

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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Keeping Small Business Employees Satisfied

Monday, February 20th, 2012

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.

The author:

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.

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Empowering Employees to Improve their Experience

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

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.
This list is just the beginning. To learn more check out the full story from Business2Community
The author:

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.

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Employers look to cut health care costs as premiums increase

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

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. 

The author:

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.

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Reward Your Employees this Valentine’s Day with a Gift They Can Give

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

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.

 

 

The author:

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.

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Effective Social Health Games

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

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.

The author:

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.

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Reward Your Employees, Help Them Save

Monday, February 6th, 2012

U.S. Workers are spending $3,0001 a year on WHAT? The answer might be shocking to some…coffee and lunch. Sadly, I’m not shocked.  For years, I spent lunches at Boston’s Newbury and Boylston Street eateries in addition to daily trips for my (former) favorite chai tea latte. Those were the days…of draining my cash!!

Help Your Employees Save $$$

Employers across the country have realized that they offer aid their employees’ budgets, even if the younger employees don’t (yet) have budgets.

Employee incentives can be practical and they instill practical qualities when the incentive itself is practical. Many employers look to practical retailer and merchant gift cards, like SUBWAY and  Boston Market to help curb that expensive lunch spending. Many employers take the “practical” theme further and offer CVS/pharmacy gift cards, so employees can care for themselves and their kids and cover prescription co-pays, over the counter medicine, or the travel sized products they need for their next business trip.

Are you ready to save your employees some cash while rewarding them?

Source: 1. Accounting Principals Workonomix Survey

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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Can Smartphone Apps Help Maintain a Healthier Workplace?

Monday, January 30th, 2012

People rely on their smartphones to ring alarms, retrieve all facets of communications, navigate where they’re going, and so much more! But what about navigating one of the most difficult challenges of life…changing behavior to improve one’s health? There is ZERO debate over the attractiveness and popularity of Smartphone, tablet, and computer apps to help us in our everyday life; but can they help change our behaviors, or keep our attention on our goals on a long-term basis?

One of my first experiences with a healthy-app was more than 10 years ago, on my Palm Pilot with a program that tracked the foods I ate (down to the TBSP of milk in my latte). The program allowed me to input my daily exercise, and it would tally up my healthfulness for the day, week,
month and adjust my workout accordingly to stay on track. I have to say, I was pretty good for a few years about tracking those crunches and treadmill walks to counter whatever food I ate.Although the technology became obsolete, the habits of how I make my coffee and the calorie & fat counting sticks with me to this day.

Such apps could certainly be integrated into a workplace health and wellness program. Since tracking health and wellness milestones is an

important cornerstone of any program, apps can be set up with individuals’ health and wellness goals to help employees track, in real-
time, their own success…connecting them closer to their potential incentives or rewards, like the gift cards or premium reductions. With or without a health and wellness program, workplaces can promote such apps to keep healthy behaviors on track through the workday.

Check out this Quora discussion, to find some great ideas that you can pass on to your employees, coworkers,
and teams. By supporting these technologies; you could help create a healthier workplace, one app/one person at a time.

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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Inspiring a Healthy Workforce in 2012

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

This health and wellness incentives article caught my attention since it’s such an important channel for our gift card sales, but what kept my attention was Ken Baker’s sense of humor and fun approach. Baker, CEO of NewAge Industries “is willing to do whatever he can to encourage his employees to live a healthier lifestyle — including making bribes and bets.” His approach is more sophisticated than that statement leads one to believe.

There are many cute snippets in this story, like, if Baker’s sales manager Mike Allard lost 40 pounds in 2 months, he’d produce and wear a t-shirt printed with “The Man” in honor of him…if he failed to lose the weight, Allard would wear a shirt decrying defeat. It worked! The crux; motivation and incentives work to build a healthier workforce. “The programs, while voluntary, can offer financial benefits, including lower insurance premiums, gift cards and employer contributions to health savings accounts.” states Phillyburbs.com in Inspiring employee healthy lifestyles with employer incentives. NewAge Industries is just the kind of company that is taking advantage of federal health care reform policies that offers qualified companies grant money and tax credits to help such companies launch health and wellness programs. “By 2014, companies will be able
to offer rewards of up to 30 percent of the total cost of an employee’s insurance coverage.”

Small to medium sized business owner and not yet conducting your own health and wellness program? Read on, this is a great overview with interesting context and facts:Inspiring employee healthy lifestyles with employer 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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