GiftCard Partners Blog

A great post from Prepaid Expo; they outline some interesting financial prepaid stats, usages, mobile stats  and more. Interesting information about the decline in use of cash; this is a fact that employers can keep in mind when planning employee incentives and rewards. Prepaid and gift cards aren’t just as good as cash…they ARE cash and loaded on mobile devices, they are the cash of the future! Here are the tidbits most interesting to us, click below for the whole shebang: - $82 billion. That's the amount expected to be loaded onto Prepaid cards in 2012. - Consumers are using prepaid cards as a way to access wages, direct deposits increased by nearly 70% in 2011. - Mobile POS payments is expected to grow from $362.6 million in 2011 to $1.4 billion in 2017. - The use of cash is predicted to decline 3% a year until 2015, through 2015, the use of cash will decline by nearly $200 billion. - Cash point-of-sale purchases is expected to drop to 23% by 2017.
More interesting stats from Prepaid Expo

Career development isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have. In today’s competitive job market, employees want more than a paycheck: they want growth, purpose, and a future. For HR leaders, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Get career development right, and you don’t just retain employees—you build a motivated, high-performing workforce.

According to the 2012 Workforce Mood Tracker from Globoforce employee recognition programs are on the rise, and for many employees the presence of these programs can dictate their satisfaction with their employer. The statistics from this study are staggering, and further cement the importance of employee recognition programs as part of the investment employers make in their staff.

Thinking you can’t afford an employee incentive and rewards program? Incentives don’t have to be expensive and you can pair them with the financial needs of your employees. A recent study from researchers at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) suggests that employees could “choke” if the stakes or rewards are high. They  liken this performance phenomenon to a sports event in which people become afraid of losing their reward. “It is a somewhat unexpected conclusion. After all, you would think that the more people are paid, the harder they will work, and the better they will do their jobs -- until they reach the limits of their skills”, states Science Daily. However, these researchers have found that the more that is at risk, the more performance could be hindered, therefore demotivating and working against larger company goals. Digging deeper, their  research also revealed that “performance improved as the incentives increased -- but only when the cash reward amounts were at the low end of the spectrum. Once the rewards passed a certain threshold, which depended on the individual, performance began to fall off.” This speaks volumes about “knowing thy employee”. Interesting science that is easily parleyed into the concept of providing more incentives, in smaller amounts, like gift cards. Gift cards can be purchased in bulk in any increment, but cards like
SUBWAY,
Boston Market, and
CVS at $20 or $30 per gift card offers your employees small incentives that they can really use. They will grab lunch on the way to their summer destinations, bring dinner home for the family and stock up on sunscreen and first aid for the season. Source:
ScienceDaily Online – Science News

The following infographic from
mashable.com shows how obesity, growing ever more prevalent in workplaces across the country, can cost your company valuable money and resources. Implementing health and wellness programs for employees using small incentives, such as gift cards to assist in living a healthy lifestyle, such as the
CVS/Pharmacy Select Card  or a GNC gift card can save your company money and keep your employees healthy, productive, and happy in their jobs. Check out the information below to help prevent obesity in your office.