GiftCard Partners Blog

We’ve all received cash bonuses. It’s the biggest staple of employee rewards and incentives, but should it be? The Incentive Marketing Association and the Incentive Research Foundation have partnered once again to take a closer look at the rewards and incentives that make the biggest impact in your programs. Their Participant Survey, surveying 452 employees with 80 in-depth questions, helped prove a point that GiftCard Partners has emphasized for a long time: that cash is NOT king when it comes to employee reward programs. The Participant Survey showed incredible statistics about employees’ propensity to choose non-cash incentives when presented with a choice. A few key findings included:

The care that a patient receives directly after leaving the hospital is critical to keeping hospital readmission rates low. It is estimated that nearly 20% of patients are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of being discharged and about 75% of those readmissions are preventable. There are various factors as to why hospital readmission occur. Most often patients are not seeing their Primary Care Physician while they are in the hospital and their PCP is only receiving a summary of treatment instead of a complete diagnosis with follow-up care recommendations. Low-income readmissions can potentially lose hospitals money with the odds being higher that another hospital bill will go unpaid. In 2015, The Affordable Care Act has mandated a financial penalty of up to 3% for institutions that have not complied with standards for reducing readmission rates. Incentives can play a huge role in reducing readmission rates. They allow you to reward patients for taking small steps that make a big difference between a healthy recovery and another trip to the ER, whether it be following up with their Primary Care Physicians or adhering to their prescription medication. Download our free white paper Reducing Readmission Rates through Incentives and Education to learn more on how to use incentives to reduce that 20% readmissions rate. Learn more about:

Technology is part of all of our lives and, if you haven't already, it may be the right time to add technology to your rewards program. Technology can help integrate rewards into existing HR systems, integrate your rewards program into your employees’ consumer behaviors, and eliminate some of the cost of the program. Here are HR.BLR.com’s“ 4 C’s” for integrating technology into employee rewards.

The latest innovation in employee rewards is linking the rewards with company values to create “Value-Based Employee Rewards.” The key to this new reward theory is to create a mutually beneficial rewards system. When value-based rewards are implemented, employees need to embody company values, which is the initial goal of the HR program in the first place. The company wins by having employees on message, employees win by receiving spot rewards like gift cards, or even an extra few hours off. Here are three tips to implement value-based rewards at your office:

Imagine offering merchandise or a gift card instead of a standard $10 off incentive to drive sales. Changing your discount structure in such a way may seem crazy but new research from Ifeelgoods may have you thinking differently. The research revealed that, if given a cash-based offer or a non-cash reward, consumers carried more brand equity and purchase intent than when retailers put more cash back in consumers’ pockets. The study revealed that non-cash incentives had diverse positive correlations with consumers including: