GiftCard Partners Blog

We’ve all heard of the gold watch after 10 years on the job. But in today’s workplace, employees aren’t sticking around for a decade just to feel seen. Recognition needs to start earlier, happen more often, and feel more meaningful. If you're trying to boost retention and keep employees engaged, one of the most effective—yet often overlooked—strategies is milestone recognition.

As businesses increasingly recognize employee wellbeing as foundational to both employee performance and organizational success, it’s clear that a holistic approach is essential. Gallup’s 2024 report on employee wellbeing highlights the need for companies to address five interconnected elements of wellbeing: career, social, physical, financial, and community. Yet only a small percentage of employees feel their employer supports these elements. This gap can leave employees feeling undervalued, risking burnout, low engagement, and attrition.

Employee engagement is a critical factor in driving organizational success. When employees are engaged, they are more productive, committed, and aligned with the company's goals. However, measuring employee engagement can be challenging. It's essential to ensure that the time and resources invested in engagement initiatives yield tangible results. Here’s how you can measure employee engagement effectively:

Social Gaming Towards Health

As pressure increases on employers and health insurance companies to reduce costs by improving participants’ health, innovative approaches are emerging. One such approach is the use of health gamification in the workplace. By leveraging virtual reality games and inter-organizational competition with real rewards, companies can motivate employees to reach their health goals. These gaming portals, ranging from basic health tracking to social, team-based competition applications, offer rewards for hitting milestones. The rewards can vary from small denomination gift cards to larger prizes like vacations upon reaching significant wellness goals.

As GCP continues to expand our portfolio of gift cards we offer to corporate health and wellness incentive programs; we are always happy to provide you with information that helps pave your way to a healthier and more productive workforce. The Change Agent Work Group published a comprehensive paper (a whopping 75 pages) called Employer Health Asset Management: A Roadmap for Improving the Health of Your Employees and Your Organization, which offers decision makers some great tools to meet the challenges of reducing healthcare costs for their organization. It includes rationale to: