Posts Tagged ‘gift cards’

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Social Gaming Towards Health

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

As pressure increases on employers and health insurance companies to bring down costs by improving plan participants’ health, insurance companies are developing virtual reality games and inter-organizational competition with real rewards. As employees hit health goals and milestones in gaming portals that can range from basic health tracking and rewards to more social, team based competition applications, health care providers and insurance companies offer rewards. The rewards can range from small denomination gift cards to a much bigger prize like a vacation upon reaching the participant’s desired wellness goals.

Gamification of health and wellness programs aims to target the social nature of people, and the current application of social media. Health care providers are looking to tap into the same kind of addictive social gaming as apps like Farmville. Allowing participants to be social while working towards wellness goals makes them feel a part of a greater mission and they can affect not just themselves, but their teammates and colleagues.

 

For more information on gamification of health and wellness programs check out this Wall Street Journal 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, Health & Wellness | No Comments »

The History of Prepaid Infographic

Friday, April 6th, 2012

Thank you to the Prepaid Expo for bringing us this interesting infographic, which was commissioned by CoreCard®. The History of Prepaid Infographic highlights the progression of Prepaid, starting in the 1970’s and heading into predictions for 2013. The future of prepaid is not just about spending and consumerism; prepaid will thrive in government and healthcare sectors via benefit payment programs.

Thanks to CoreCard for creating this and PrePaid Expo for bringing it to us

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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Posted in General, Gift Card Events, Gift Card Trends | 1 Comment »

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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Posted in General, Incentives & Engagement, Loyalty | 1 Comment »

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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Posted in General, Incentives & Engagement | No Comments »

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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Posted in General, Incentives & Engagement, Loyalty | No Comments »

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 »

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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Posted in General, Incentives & Engagement, Loyalty | No Comments »

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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Keeping Meaning in Rewards

Tuesday, March 6th, 2012

Rewarding employees can become trite and lose its meaning. Sometimes coming up with interesting ways to recognize exceptional employees like presenting a public reward or giving an innovative gift such as a gift card, instead of cash can make the reward more meaningful. Here are a few quick criteria for keeping meaning in your employee rewards program.

  • Spell out the criteria- Be clear about how employees can qualify to win rewards. Define what it takes to be a top performer.

 

  • Customize prizes- Giving gift cards is a fantastic way to customize gifts. Offering gift cards to an employee’s favorite retailer is a great way to customize the reward without breaking a budget.

 

  • Recognize multiple top performers- This prevents an employer from placing arbitrary limits on which employees can be recognized. If many employees perform exceptionally, recognize them all.

 

  • Limit the kind of awards- Recognizing employees for a limited number of specific skills maintains the meaning of the awards and the opportunity to recognize employees with unique skills.

For more information on how to maintain meaning about employee rewards and how to think of employee rewards in an innovative way check out this 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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Posted in General, Incentives & Engagement | No Comments »

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