Employee Collaboration Fosters Employee Engagement
The HR landscape is changing with the face of the American workforce. As baby boomers move into senior leadership roles and begin to retire, and millenials begin to represent a larger portion of today's working world employee needs become drastically different and the way employees learn and process also diversifies. Millenials and baby boomers do things differently. They think differently, they act differently, they are motivated by different things and human resources professionals are tasked with engaging employees at all levels. Employee empowerment is the new key to pleasing everyone and the key to successful employee engagement. Empowering employees to train each other, help each other through on-boarding processes creates a dynamic leadership structure that empowers employees and fosters employee engagement. Younger workers are looking for an environment where their voice can be heard, and more senior members of the workforce don't want to feel like they are "aging out." By combining these two needs and creating and empowered employee leadership structure everyone can teach their strengths and learn their weaknesses with their peers, rather than within a rigid hierarchical power structure. The result is greater harmony and increased employee engagement. Rewarding employees for participating in this new-age peer-to-peer training program helps aid professional development and provides an opportunity to reward employees for giving of themselves for the greater good of the team. Rewarding employee engagement doesn't have to be a trip to Hawaii. It could be a gift card for a luxury item from Crutchfield, or a gift card for dinner out at The Cheesecake Factory, or for the shopaholic a gift card to a popular retailer like The Limited. Gift cards allow engaged employees to chose their ultimate reward as a "thank you" for giving back to the team.
For more information on employee engagement or collaboration through dynamic leadership check out this article from Forbes.
The Golden Rule(s) of Employee Appreciation
Our parents all taught is the golden rule. "Do unto others as your would have done to you." In instances of employee appreciation, we broke it down into 3 key rules. If employees are appreciated at the right times and in the right ways, their tenure with the company will be longer and no one will go home and complain about work or their boss or the annoying colleague two cubes down. Here's what we came up with. Have additional suggestions? Leave us a comment.
3 Easy Steps to Employee Loyalty
In our recovering economy it sometimes seems like there will always be more candidates than jobs. In some industries today that is already not the case. A talent war is looming, a time when companies are poaching each other's human capital and when employee loyalty should be at the top of your HR Strategy agenda. Here are three ways to build, maintain and teach loyalty in your organization.
"Stick" Deterrents Gain Popularity
22% of employers who use financial incentives in their health and wellness programs are structuring them as penalties. After all the studies done over the last few years proving that "carrot" incentives are more effective at motivating employees to a healthy lifestyle than stick deterrents." Still stick incentives are up 4% from 2013 and employees with extenuating health circumstances risk a steep tax penalty from the Affordable Care Act, along with the penalty from their employer. Employees with minor health issues like decreased lung capacity from asthma cannot change how their lungs work. Their condition cannot be improved through exercise and won't change no matter how healthy their diet is. So is it fair to potentially tax them and charge them organizational penalties? This is one of the ways carrot incentives help drive employees to their best state of health. Incentivizing health improvement shows support of employee efforts regardless of if they are in perfect shape. It shows appreciation for the effort as well as the result. If you are considering health and wellness incentives, consider a carrot over a stick and reward your employees' healthy efforts all year round.
For more information about stick deterrents and carrot incentives check out this article from 22WWLP.
Who is the Remote Employee?
Here at GiftCard Partners we are all a remote employee. We communicate through various forms of technology, but for the most part our "office" is virtual and our staff stretches all over the country. Throughout the American workforce remote work is on the rise. Companies are allowing their employees to work from home, or wherever works for them. This is not just a millenial phenomenon either, the average remote employee is 49 years old with a college degree and earns an average salary of $58,000. Companies are allowing remote employees because technology allows them to be wherever they need to: in meetings, on calls, talking to clients and to their colleagues. Employees from all kinds of industries are embracing the telecommute. Here are a few industries with the highest recent increase in telecommuting:
