GiftCard Partners Blog

A study released by Performance Improvement Council suggests that implementing an employee engagement program can breed a culture of leadership within your organization.

Employee recognition is a tricky business. Employees all have personal recognition needs. Some are extroverted and appreciate public recognition, some are introverted and would be mortified to be recognized in front of peers. Some are instantly loyal and motivated to the organizational goals, others take longer to build loyalty to the organization. Some employees like gamification, and enjoy the playful nature of that type of recognition, while others don't enjoy the distraction. In the following infographic you will find 5 myths of employee recognition that can apply to all employees. Make sure your employee recognition program is what your employees need to stay motivated and at the peak of productivity.

Employee engagement has been defined as "the willingness and ability for employees to go the extra mile", but what about those employees who aren't willing to complete the first mile, never mind the extra mile? Improving our employee engagement strategies can attract employees and maintain motivated employees.

A new study recently released by the Aberdeen Group suggests that employee engagement and ensuring the satisfaction of your customer service representatives could significantly boost your end customers satisfaction with brand interactions. Consider this: when a customer is calling your customer service line, they are unhappy with aspect of your product or service. If that unhappiness is met with disgruntled employees who are unwilling to go above and beyond to rectify whatever the problem may be, their impression of your brand only deteriorates further. The study shows that among employee engagement "leader" organizations 75% are using eLearning tools to train their employees and gauge employee satisfaction while only 44% of "follower" organizations are following suit. Using these types of tools that easily integrate into your employees' systems helps employees voice their opinions and allows employers to make adjustments to ensure the critical employees who have end-consumer interactions remain engaged and satisfied at work. Employee engagement can take a number of forms outside of a survey. Attendance management is a way to boost employee engagement, especially for those employees who are working more and taking less vacation time. Offering incentives like professional development opportunities or small rewards like small denomination gift cards to
CVS/Pharmacy,
Boston Market or
1-800-Flowers is another great way to reward employees for participating in employee engagement efforts.
For more information on how to use employee engagement to ensure your consumers' satisfaction check out this article from Incentive Magazine.

Finally, after years of industry experts providing research on how effective gamified employee incentive program are,
Incentive Magazine has come up with a formula for how to prioritize and rank employee incentives and rewards. The SAPS hierarchy will help guide you to design the optimally effective employee rewards program to meet your organizations budget and your employees' motivational needs. Here is how SAPS works and why. Status: Think about boarding a plane, the most loyal airline customers always get to board first. Shouldn't your most loyal employees get first pick for things like which days they take vacation. Your most loyal employees don't want the same 5 year anniversary gift that sits like a paperweight on their desk. Allow them to chose something that reflects their loyalty in a way that matters to them. Access: Give access as employee incentives. These types of employee incentives don't hold any monetary cost but does hold intangible value to employees. Access to their C-level executive for lunch one day could incent a junior level employees to work hard and stay motivated to get some facetime with a high-level employees that they don't normally interact with. Power: Allow employees to gain power through peer leadership. Power doesn't need to come through promotions, but can be earned by becoming a peer leader. Employee incentives can earn them a spot to lead an employee committee on organizational recreation or an employee committee on safety. Good behavior should be met with more opportunities to exhibit good behavior. These types of employee incentives create a natural culture of leadership and professional development. Stuff: Stuff should come last. Once an employee has reached past the first three levels of employee incentives, that is when you can reach for a bonus, or a gift card, or even a paid vacation. Stuff should come last, because an employee should have worked loyally through many other levels of incentives before an employer simply hands over the goods. However, when an employee does earn "stuff" incentives, it is because they are your most loyal employees, most deserving of incentives.