GiftCard Partners Blog

As we approach 2026, the new year presents an exceptional opportunity: employees feel renewed, ready to adopt fresh habits, embrace new goals and take on new challenges. It’s also a pivotal moment in many organizations’ fiscal calendars to help teams start strong and set up a year of success.

Personalizing employee engagement is critical to the success of a program. Making employees feel personally recognized and appreciated makes them feel that their individual contribution and impact on the organization truly matters and is noticed. Here are three ways to personalize employee engagement, and things to avoid:

Employee advocacy can be a powerful tool in building employee trust, investing in the company, and also helping to recruit talent and spread positive word-of-mouth about your organization and its products. However, employee advocacy needs to fit your staff, your company, and your objectives for a program to have the desired affects. Here are three components to help when deciding if employee advocacy is right for your organization:

Employers are constantly looking to find ways to promote employee loyalty in a professional climate of job hoppers and career changers. Employers try everything from nap pods to unlimited vacation to
beer in the kitchen. But what do employees really need in order to feel dedicated to an employer? The answer, real purpose. To feel important and connected to organizational goals and to be provided with opportunities to learn and grow outweigh any perk an employer could provide. In short, invest in employees and they will invest in you.

Workplace wellness programs come in many shapes and sizes. Some focus on mitigating long-term health risks like smoking or obesity, while others address immediate health problems, or chronic conditions like heart disease or diabetes. Whatever components your program focuses on, motivating behavioral change or encouraging involvement can be difficult, especially when it comes to physical activity or exercise. This is typically where the rewards aspect comes into play. Using rewards in workplace wellness is a powerful tool, if utilized correctly. A new study done at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, finds that the fear of losing rewards (in this case money) works better to motivate employees to get more physically active than having the opportunity to win it.