GiftCard Partners Blog

GiftCard Partners recently published our Gift Card Usage results white paper, which is chock full of ways employers are using gift cards to engage, motivate and reward employees.  Employers use incentives to promote all kinds of desired behaviors, but amongst the most important are for complying with safety regulations and precautions. A safer workplace leads to lower company healthcare insurance premiums, lower employee coverage contributions, less sick days, fewer short-term and long-term disabi
lity work outages, and increased productivity. Here are a few of our best safety program success stories involving gift cards as incentives. Motivate yourself to motivate your employees with these success stories! -  An electronics and process controls company plays “Safety Bingo” every month and they have been accident free for 15 years. “I use them as prizes, sometimes we will have 2 games going at one time like 4 corners and a regular Bingo, so I will give a $50 gift card for the 4 corners. Or I will surprise an employee who I catch using all their PPE (personal protective equipment) correctly. -  An off-highway vehicle manufacturer uses gift cards “as incentives for Safety (no accident) and also for project team participation gifts”. -  An engineering and remediation company created a "Spot Bonus plan where managers can reward an employee on the spot for doing a job exceptionally or safely.” -  A community hospital gives gift card incentives to “staff who use creative ideas in initiating safety activities such as promoting better hand hygiene, and appropriate use of personal  protective equipment for patients in isolation.” These employers and programs buy their gift cards in bulk to save money on their incentives. Want to read more Safety Blogs from GCP?
Click here for more on safety programs and safety incentives.

GiftCard Partners continues its path of helping employers understand why now is the time to include a health and wellness program with incentives. GCP was published in this February’s issue of Voluntary Benefits Magazine, outlining the top 5 reasons why and how to start such a program! Inside the article, you'll find: 1. Employers Can Shape a Healthier Workforce 2. What to Expect from your Health and Wellness Program 3. How to Overcome Participation Obstacles 4. How to Measure Results 5. The Thing Most Companies Don’t Get Right I'd like to extend a special
Thank You to Denise Holland, President of
Inside Employee Wellness & Consulting for her contributions to this article. Check out:
GCP’s, Start a Health and Wellness Program in 2012

Most people in corporate America understand the benefits of health and wellness programs…from the potential insurance premium savings and government incentives to companies, to individual employee productivity increases, and long term behavior changes; health and wellness programs seem to be a win-win when you incent and motivate people to get involved. But, it’s not just the corporate side of America looking closely at health and wellness incentives. U.S. Medicaid and Medicare programs, States and insurance companies are also looking at incentives such as the
CVS Select gift cards. Such gift cards work as incentives in prevention programs that demonstrate changes in health risk and outcomes, such as tobacco cessation, controlling or reducing weight, lowering cholesterol and blood pressure, and avoiding the onset of diabetes or improving the management of their diabetes condition.1 CVS Select gift cards is an example of a healthy gift card incentive that filters out unhealthy products, such as tobacco and alcohol, and supports positive purchases such as medication co-pays, over the counter medicines and other healthcare products. In many ways, the users of Medicaid and Medicare programs are some of the most vulnerable of our population, as they need prompting to get healthy and remain healthy, yet they often have fewer resources to do so.
Read more from CMS.gov to learn how incentives can benefit Medicare & Medicaid Services. Source: 1.
Overview of Medicaid Incentives for Prevention of Chronic Diseases Program

An effective safety rewards program can reduce injury and illness in an organization by 20-40%. Here are 6 ways to improve your safety reward program to ensure employees are being honest and using the safety reward program properly.

Total holiday spending on gift cards last year totaled $27.8 billion. And if history is bound to repeat itself, 25% of that gift card money will remain unspent by the end of 2012. Gift cards are a very popular holiday gift. They are convenient for the giver and stress free for the receiver. However, gift cards tend to be forgotten as the holiday season winds down, and recipients are less likely to spend the balances as the year goes on. So what happens to unused gift card balances? The Securities and Exchange Commission allows retailers to count unused gift-card balances as income once they can reasonably say the card won't be redeemed. Some states require unused gift cards to go to an unclaimed-funds accounts, or put a time limit on the validity of gift cards. Beyond the reasonable timeframe to claim unused balances, retailers can use the balances for general purposes. So, as we move further into 2012, consider this a friendly reminder to spend your holiday gift card balances sooner rather than later.
For more information check out the TheStreet.com.