GiftCard Partners Blog

The most effective employees are those that feel empowered to do their job and learn and grow into the best contributor they can, not those that feel caught up in a hierarchy or a corporate system. Although employee engagement and employee empowerment are important in creating a successful workforce,
according to a recent Inc.com article, emphasizing these two key components can actually be counter intuitive. Here are a few tips to creating employee empowerment and engagement without emphasizing it.

Our society, and our work standards, strive toward perfection. We sometimes feel we must be perfect, the perfect boss, the perfect employee, the perfect parent, etc. We may even think that making no mistakes is the best possible scenario and that a squeaky clean record at work, and in life, is what it's all about. Well let's think about challenging that notion. According to
Kate Hamill of the Freelancer's Union, weaknesses and mistakes can actually bring out some of our other strengths and can help harvest self-reflection that makes us, our staff, our managers and our organizations more successful. Your weaknesses are inextricably tied up in your strengths. Every cause has an effect and every action a reaction. If you invert your weaknesses, you will uncover your strengths. This is where employee imperfection is key. There is no way to invert perfection, nothing to learn from it. Employees can't grow from perfect, and frankly perfection is boring. There's no evolution or growth that comes from perfection and stagnation can be unfulfilling. When employee imperfection is embraced, it can lead to self-compassion. Employees who learn to give themselves a break, instead of getting frustrated, give themselves a chance to improve upon their discovered weaknesses and get a lot farther in their careers. Self-teaching and independent growth are valuable skills that breed great team members and hard workers. Weaknesses don't have to be negative, but rather should be looked at as the ultimate opportunity, not to achieve employee perfection, for employee growth potential.

As we embark on 2015 and our workforce has shaken off the holiday rust it's important to think about how to maintain a culture of motivation not just through the cold winter months but throughout the year. Here are a few ways to keep employee motivation, productivity and job satisfaction at the top of your company's priority list all year long.

In today’s hybrid / remote work environment, many employees often feel isolated and lonely. On days with less meetings, employees can go whole days without talking to a coworker live and that can take a toll. Lonely employees are more than twice as likely to look for a new job than employees who are not feeling lonely. 

As we use asynchronous communication more and more, like Slack and Microsoft Teams, sending memes and other lighthearted communications has become more normalized. But what if you’re looking to bring a remote team together?

Team communication is key. The better a team can communicate, even non-verbally, the better that team can work together in any situation. Being able to pick up on signals and non-verbal tendencies can help co-workers in critical situations like client meetings or big presentations. So, how do you expedite your teams bonding and ensure everyone gets to know each other and gets comfortable? Put everyone in an equally uncomfortable position doing a fun(ny) activity like stand-up comedy, improv or karaoke. Get everyone nervous, so their teammates learn their nervous habits. That way when they are in front of the big client and may not have the best answer, their teammates know, seamlessly, to jump in. Creating fun team building activities also helps teammates get to know each other outside the office. It gets everyone loose and talking to each other about something other than work. Building team bonds makes client meetings stronger and the potential for sales and upsells greater.  Improving team communication can translate to improving your bottom line. For more information on how to improve team communication through comedy check out this
video from Inc.com.