Posts Tagged ‘employee incentives’

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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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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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Gamification Keeps Employees Engaged and Brand Image Strong

Thursday, March 15th, 2012

According to Gartner Inc., of Stamford, CT 70% of the top 2,000 publicly held companies will use game-like applications to engage and reward their employees by 2014. Gamification is changing the employee engagement and rewards landscape. Gamifying employee rewards falls in line with social media and the concept of social sharing to create brand awareness and positive brand image. Whether applications are used internally, based on employee performance or externally, rewarding employees for promoting the company and bringing in referral traffic, the trend is growing.

Gamification can reward employees in a number of ways. Some applications are designed for employees to accrue points for larger rewards, but others reward employees more frequently with smaller rewards such as gift cards to a choice of retialers, allowing the employee to essentially choose their own gift. The combination of the social component of game-like applications and the rewards employees work toward through the use of the applications makes gamifying employee engagement productive for both the employer and employee.

 

For more information on gamification and to check out some existing examples check out this article in “Entrepreneur.”

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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Incentive Experts Point to Gamification as Top Incentive Trend

Monday, March 12th, 2012

For many employers, making the connection between “games” at work and increased productivity can be a tough leap to make. But evidence of the success of gamification increasingly piles up and now there are many corporate success trends we can point to. Yet, the term “gamification” and the motivation technique is becoming a cornerstone of corporate and employee incentive programs.

Snowfly, an employee recognition and incentive company reports over 2,700,000 hits on Google for the term, over 150 million of their corporate performance games have been played, and they expect gamification to be a 2.8 billion dollar business by 2015.1 In Snowfly’s 16 Key Findings for Success white paper, they tout that their workplace games have a 93% participant approval rate within incentive and employee performance programs, yet the national approval average for traditional programs hovers around 45%.2 Many more key discoveries and lessons learned can be found in the white paper.

In Incentive Research Foundation’s (IRF) recent top trends webinar, they list gamification as #4 out of their 12 Trends in Rewards and Recognition for 2012. IRF white paper outlines Gartner Group’s prediction “that by 2015, half of all managed innovation processes will include game mechanics, and that by 2014, 70% of all the Global 2000 organizations will have at least one “gamified application” in place.3

The future seems quite bright for this innovative interactive method of motivating, incenting, and rewarding. Are you using such techniques yet?

Sources:
1 & 2: Gamification after Twelve Years and 150 Million Games: 16 Key Findings for Success
3: IRF Trends & Gartner’s report: Gartner Says By 2015, More Than 50 Percent of Organizations That Manage Innovation Processes Will Gamify Those Processes

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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The Value of Effective Health and Wellness Incentives

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

According to a study from Fidelity and the National Business Group on Health released last week, 73% of companies are using incentives to motivate their employees to live a healthy lifestyle. The average value of the incentives has also increased to $460, up from an average of $430 in 2010 and $260 in 2009. The study showed employers using different types of incentives, including gift cards, and showing that the programs were more effective than employers expected.

Not only is health and wellness program usage on the rise, more and more companies are requiring employees to participate. In 2011, 5% of companies required their employees to participate in health testing (e.g., cholesterol screening) or ricks being excluded from coverage. That number is expected to nearly double in 2012 to 9%. 7% of companies required completion of a health-risk assessment last year. In 2012, 10% of companies will require it. These numbers prove how important employee health is both for the good of the employee and for the health care budget of the employer. How is your company changing their health and wellness policies?

 

For more information on the rise of health and wellness programs check out this Employee Benefits News 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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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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