GiftCard Partners Blog

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."

Are you running a customer loyalty points program and looking for the right FIT for your customer rewards? Selecting the right gift cards to include in your program goes beyond strong brands and lots of locations. The gift card brands you offer should not only be a category leader, but they should innovate by facilitating a perfect fit for their customers, and in this day-and-age; they should provide social experiences that enhance the buying experience. Last September,
Charming Shoppes launched Fashion Genius™ for Lane Bryant® and its sister brands Catherines®, Fashion Bug® and Sonsi®.  The Fashion Genius™ includes breakthrough “fit and style technology that takes the guesswork out of shopping online, enabling plus size women to turn personalized recommendations into fully styled, head-to-toe outfits.” Now couple that technology leadership with offering a mobile shopping experience which integrates PayPal, adds customer crowd-sourcing and shopper collaboration on social media platforms, and; Charming Shoppes offers your loyalty program participants more than a cutting edge gift card reward, it’s a seamless customer experience. Read more about
Charming Shoppes' Fashion Genius and their latest advancements in social shopping technology.

With social media and current marketing trends it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify "insiders" and "outsiders" in an organization. This new and changing climate provides opportunity for brand ambassadors, and puts companies in a position where they hope their organization is put in good standing on social media sites, message boards, and on blogs. Ensuring that your employees are engaged at work creates a likely environment that they will become positive brand ambassadors in online public spaces, and in turn engage consumers.
Here are some tips from a PR Web article on how to engage your employees to become positive brand representatives and teach them how to drive the consumer brand experience. 

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

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.