GiftCard Partners Blog

Gift cards have become a versatile and appreciated choice for holiday gifting in the workplace. They provide a hassle-free way to say thank you and can cater to diverse preferences. Here are five innovative ways to use gift cards in your workplace during the holidays, benefiting employees, customers, co-workers, and even your company's philanthropic efforts.

Employee appreciation is a great tool when used properly. When not used properly employee appreciation efforts can be ineffective and can cost an organization money with no ROI. Ensure your employee appreciation program works for you and your employees by following 3 easy steps.

A Boston area start up may have a breakthrough in the very slow adopting mobile payments market. Loop is an e-wallet that not only attaches to your phone like a case, but actually works with your retailer's existing POS system. Mobile payments were predicted to have taken off by now, and adoption is still occurring but at a much slower rate. Mobile payments that aren't compatible with existing retail POS systems are tough for retailers because a change to a national chain's POS, involves a large scale hardware upgrades which cost money and take a long time. Bringing mobile payments to retailers existing systems is taking a new approach to this mobile payments puzzle. It puts the investment on the consumer, who is choosing to use the system, rather than force retailers to provide a system that they don't have guaranteed ROI from. Since Loop is set to hit the market this winter, we will see soon if this alternate approach catches on. The adoption has been slow but the potential could be high.
For more information on mobile payments check out this article from the Boston Globe.

According to the new Ixaris Study of Reward & Incentive Preferences, which gathered responses from over 4800 employees form 4 countries (including the U.S. and Canada) employee incentives work in keeping employees satisfied and motivated. According to the survey 28.6% of U.S. employees indicated they had been rewarded or recognized. The more staggering numbers are that 70% of respondents indicated they put in extra effort when they know they are going to be rewarded. 80% of respondents indicated that incentives make them feel valued. Rewarding employees by treating them to something special. 70% of respondents indicated that when given cash rewards they used the reward just like regular pay, but over 75% of respondents indicated that gift card incentives were used to treat themselves to something special. Allowing employees to treat themselves to something special like a meal out with their families at
The Cheesecake Factory, or a shopping spree at
The Limited, or even a bouquet of flowers for a loved one from
1-800-Flowers is a great way to show employees you care, and that their efforts are valued above and beyond their standard compensation.
For more information on the Ixaris study or the positive impact of employee incentives check out this article from Incentive Magazine.