GiftCard Partners Blog

A company's most valuable asset is their top performing employees. Employee engagement and keeping those employees happy are the easiest way to retain those top performers. Most companies focus on finding and hiring the best talent, but the goal shouldn't stop there.  Employee engagement, keeping employees motivated and invested in the company culture, and the strategy behind it all is equally important.  Management must do more than just the "given" benefits, such as compensations, vacation, and paid lunches.

We talk a lot about employee engagement, but today let’s focus our attention on customer engagement (and as you may know, customer engagement and employee engagement correlate with each other).  The best companies know that acquiring new customers and customer retention are key to real sustainable growth, no matter what industry your company is in.  Jobs follow customers. Without your customers there would be no company. Over the last 5 years, gaining and retaining customer has been difficult and the customer base has changed dramatically.  Customers are more cautious about spending and demanding more in return. Over the next 30 years, roughly
$140 trillion in new customer spending will be up for grabs! The best companies set out to win their customers over for life. They also understand that customer engagement is not something that happens overnight. Each encounter with a customer has a chance to strengthen and even undermine a customer/company relationship. Strong customer engagement creates customers that spend more, visit more, and promote your company, all while resisting competitors and forgiving mistakes. The economic landscape has improved over the last year and companies can make significant progress in growing their customer base. Last year the greatest percentage of customers were fully engaged based on global data analysis – more than at any other point in the last 5 years.  Companies should focus on optimizing every customer interaction, create emotional connections with their customer, and constantly measure customer engagement (a good method is surveying customers either online or in-store). With meaningful data, companies can easily spot positive trends to build on and eliminate negative issues before they become problematic. Want more insight into your customers?  Download the State of the American Consumer:
Insight for Business Leaders from Gallup, Inc.
here!

Gamification is a booming business, and it helps businesses boom. It has become a great tool for giving simple rewards, like getting a free game for hitting a high score, to an industry that does everything from track your workouts and push you harder, to serve you special offers for becoming the "mayor" of your favorite coffee shop. Gamification helps drive business forward, and for employers it helps drive employees to the next level. The infographic below from Click Software, notes that by next year 40% of the top 1,000 companies by market share will be using gamification as their primary lever to make operational changes.
Gartner notes that 70% of companies that try to make large scale operational changes fail due to lack of adoption within the organization. Gamification combats this issue by working within your organization to motivate employees towards organizational goals and values. Rewarding employees for reaching certain goals and milestones builds camaraderie, relationships and drives a unified organization towards company goals.

When it comes to employee engagement the best companies strive to not only lead but also inspire their employees. They create a vision for their company that allows them to grow by valuing their employees and giving them a voice within the company. Here are some best practices that company leaders can use to help engage their employees:

Employee retention is a hot topic in a job market where there’s no such thing as a “company man” anymore, and changing positions every 2 years has become the norm. For employers, employee retention should be a top priority for any HR staff because frankly, new employees are expensive. Between onboarding, training, manager’s time lost, break in team rhythm and potential costs of signing bonuses, relocation or travel and new employee socialization taking on new employees are expensive. Check out the infographic below for a full breakdown of why making employee retention a priority can help keep your organization in the black for the back half of the year. Employee rewards programs can often fall victim to budget cuts, or not get approved at all due to lack of executive buy-in. However, make smaller investments in employee rewards like gift cards or extra time off can actually provide ROI, not only in the saved cost of employee retention but also in increased productivity and further employee motivation across your entire workforce. Positioning employee rewards programs as promoting employee retention, and even the “lesser of two evils” can help any executive see the benefits of employee retention vs. employee on-boarding. Thanks to 
SHRM.org for this great infographic on the ROI of Employee Retention