GiftCard Partners Blog

Employee retention can be difficult in today's job market. There is no such thing as a "company man or woman" any longer, and employees tend to switch jobs for one reason or another more frequently than we have seen in the past. Making employee retention a priority for your organization helps maintain continuity in the workforce, which makes the whole organization more productive, happier, and more motivated to succeed within the organization, not outside of it. Check out 3 common mistakes that can drive top talent out, and how you can make employee retention a priority in your organization.

According to a new study from the Midwest Business Group, more than 80% of the nation's largest employers use a carrot and stick approach when it comes to their corporate wellness program. Using this approach allows employers to reward for desired behavior, while creating penalties for employees who participate in unhealthy behavior, such as smoking. As the full implications of the Affordable Care Act take effect and employee benefits costs continue to rise, employers place more value on employee healthcare benefits savings, by both maximizing the health of employees and lowering the cost of their healthcare benefits. Here are some quick facts about employers who use a carrot and stick incentive strategy to manage employee wellness.

Step 1: Create a safety program. Step 2: Make it successful. Still struggling with Step 2? Many strategies have been tried, from payroll bonus, discipline, performance review, to issuing penalties. But the question still remains, what works best to foster a safety culture within the workplace? The answer could be as simple as corporate wellness incentives in the form of gift cards. They are a flexible and affordable way to incent and reward for accident prevention, increasing morale and productivity, and encouraging feedback.
GiftCard Partners makes using gift cards a budget-friendly choice.
Contact us today to get the best discounted rate on volume purchases from some of America's top selling gift card brands.
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Everyone wants to feel appreciated at their jobs. We all work hard and it validates our hard work when our boss, or the head of our department, recognizes our efforts.

Small businesses are often challenged with striking a balance between offering employee loyalty incentives and controlling costs of these very incentive programs. Often some of the most meaningful mechanisms for boosting and maintaining employee loyalty are also the most cost efficient. Here are three easy, low-cost ways to ensure your employees remain loyal for years to come.
Reward Them With Time Off: Offering hard-working and dedicated employees with extra time off in an ad-hoc fashion isa really effective way to keep employees on their toes and make them feel like their effort is appreciated by management. By giving employees a random day off after a long project or a particularly stressful stretch of time, will help keep them motivated and working hard on a long-term basis, since they never know when management may reward them. To employees, time off is extremely valuable and an extra vacation day to take a long weekend can be a great way to de-stress and re-motivate an employee to return to work with new energy and new perspective. Since there is no upfront cost for this type of employee loyalty incentive it can also be a great way to help control employee loyalty program costs.
Give the Right Incentives: When designing employee loyalty incentive programs ensuring that the incentives provided are meaningful to employees is critical. If the incentives do not motivate employees, then employers will not get the ROI they seekand the incentives will not have perpetuated the desired employee behavior. Offering incentives that are flexible and can beadjusted to different employee tastes, with equal value, is the most effective and cost efficient solution. Gift cards can offer flexibility on experience while the cost remains the same. Being able to offer a diverse variety of gift card brands such as Boston Market, to help a working mom take care of dinner one night, or Crutchfield, for an employee who may be looking to make some home improvements, provides an experience for every individual employee, while management can maintain the cost.
Open Door Policy: Giving employees access to senior management is a great way to show appreciation for a job well done orfor reaching milestone anniversaries with the company. This shows both acknowledgment for loyal employees, making them feel appreciated by the organization, while also allowing them to give valuable feedback to management from an employee perspective. The open door policy is mutually beneficial to both parties. Some employees may also view the opportunity to pick the brain of a member of senior management as a unique career development opportunity, which is both valuable to the employee's personal career goals and also helps an organization grow from within. Since this only costs the organization time spent, it can be a great way to provide a meaningful employee incentive experience while controlling internal costs.