GiftCard Partners Blog

Moments of recognition are powerful, they give us a feeling of purpose, a sense of accomplishment and an undeniable drive to produce our best work. Recognition is continuously proven to motivate employees by allowing them to see and feel their personal value.

Employee success is more likely to occur and has greater impact when it's shared by a team. Humans are social beings and we work better in groups. The word along the side is not subliminal messaging...it's meant to grab your attention.
Tell employees when they are on the right track. Open communication is key and it should go both ways, make   feedback a 360-degree process.
Everyone's opinion matters. Gather opinions and ideas from all levels of your team. Experience doesn't always mean innovative thinking.
Always reward success. No matter if it's an exceptional job on an individual project or a long career full of exceptional service, giving even small rewards like
gift cards can be highly effective in evoking repeat behavior.
Mix it up! Make sure employee working groups change. The more diverse working environments become, the more kinds of success employees get to experience. Cross-team collaboration is also a great team building exercise. For more information on employee success and how to promote it through team building check out Derek Irvine's
"Recognize This!" blog.    

Employee leadership is critical to maintaining employee morale and motivating employees toward organizational goals. Here are three tips to ensure you lead your employees effectively.

 
GiftCard Partners polled 500 consumers, equally divided between men and women, to get a pulse on where they are both receiving and redeeming their gift cards. These infographics dive into B2B gift card usage behaviors and outlines retail gift card awareness and purchase. We also take a look at the degree to which gift cards drive new customers and incremental visits. Below are the two infographics from our latest survey on gift card usage. Some interesting insights!
Click on each image to see a larger version open in a new window. Feel free to embed it on your own website with the code below.

This topic is really exciting for us at GiftCard Partners. In the past we've reference the growing popularity of non-cash incentives in the marketplace, highlighting statistics from the 2013 study from
Incentive Federation Inc. and
Aspect Market Intelligence's
Incentive Market Study. The 2013 study touched on the popularity of non-cash incentives, stating that 74% of businesses use non-cash options to recognize and reward key audiences in the form of incentive travel, merchandise, or 
gift cards. Now 
new research by the
Incentive Research Foundation (IRF) and Aspect Market Intelligence, conducted for the
Incentive Gift Card Council,  is showing how non-cash incentives (specifically gift cards) are still hot, hot, hot. The study highlights the continued preference for gift cards in a variety of programs, with the largest companies using them at a rate of 56%. So what are these gift cards being used for? Of the companies using gift cards, 67% are using them for employee incentives, 38% for sales incentives, 30% for customer rewards, and 8% are allocated to channel incentives. As gift cards continue to be a staple for rewards and incentives, with goals to foster motivation or drive engagement, acquisition, retention or loyalty, it's safe to say they're here to stay. Does your company use gift cards in any of their programs? If so, we'd love to here more about how. And if you're looking to add gift cards to your programs check out our gift card brands
here.