GiftCard Partners Blog

Initial engagement in employee health and wellness programs doesn't always drive long term participation like healthy employee cultures. While new employee health and wellness programs often drive short term engagement through the first few months, or maybe even the first few years, creating healthy employee champions and a culture of wellness is what creates long term employee participation. Providing non-cash rewards as a component to a healthy employee culture is a great way to drive long term participation. One example of this was offering a discount in the employee portion of the health insurance premium which almost doubled employee participation in
Herman Miller Co's employee wellness program; jumping from 40% to 79% year over year for the first 3 years, but seeing a plateau in participation levels in subsequent years. Offering small denomination gift cards to retailers like GNC, Nutrisystem and CVS/Pharmacy are another way to promote a healthy employee culture by assisting employees in forming a healthy lifestyle. Instead of using typical carrot tactics to get employees to change habits, providing an environment for creating a healthy employee culture will provide longer term results that will have a greater impact on your workforce and healthcare costs.

Employee turnover is constantly on the mind of human resources professionals in all types of organizations. However, once you see the infographic from TribeHR below you might put some urgency behind an employee retention initiative. On average, a new employee costs over $57,000 in lost productivity, on-boarding costs, benefits application, and that figure does not even include the cost of training. For the cost of $57,000 could pay a junior level employee for an entire year, which has much greater potential to have a lasting impact on your business than simply bringing on a new employee. Want to lower the cost of employee turnover? Keep your current employees on board! Make sure employees feel appreciated through recognition of exceptional actions. Provide opportunity for learning and growth through professional development. When employees feel appreciated and feel like their employers are investing in them, employee turnover will decrease and retention rates will rise.

As technology continues to advance and increase efficiency across a variety of industries, organizations continue to slow their hiring rates. Surprisingly enough, it's not always due to a slow economy or lack of growth, but simply that technological infrastructure is preventing companies from needing as many people. Additionally, for the positions employers are looking to fill, there is often a skills gap between the candidates available and what the employer is looking for. So even for the limited positions available, employers can't find qualified replacements for their departing staff. The solution? Employee retention, invest in people so they stick around. A recent study from Ken Esch and PwC Private Company Services notes that 20% of employers surveyed feel pressure to raise salaries, partially to retain employees. 56% of employers indicated that hiring remains a priority for the company, given the skills gap and the increased difficulty to fill positions with the level of talent and skill set required. However, most compelling is that a whopping 84% of employers surveyed are making substantial workforce investments, ranging from training programs, to talent retention benefits like workplace rewards programs. Workforce investments that recognize employee effort, motivation and increased production are great ways to increase employee retention. Using small denomination gift cards to retailers like
Subway,
Crutchfield or even
Xbox Live are effective ways to reward employees, with trophy value that creates a lasting impression. For more information on the skill gap and workforce investment head over to Forbes
here.

According to a study released last week, employee engagement has reached levels that it has not experienced since 2009. 68% of employees are now engaged based on the survey of 400,000 employees at nearly 5,000 various organizations. The average increase over the last 3 years has been about .43%. If this rate continues, employee engagement could be back to 2007 levels, which was 70.6%. Throughout the past 7 years the same top three items have had the greatest impact on employee engagement:

The title pretty much covers it for this one, so if you have to stop here (which we at GiftCard Partners DON'T recommend) you've gotten (part of) the point. For most organizations, employees are the biggest and greatest asset. Invest in them! Employees matter, and employee training produces ROI like any other investment. Here are three ways to invest in your employees.