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.

Using positive reinforcement to promote and reward for workplace safety guideline adherence is not a new concept. But what you choose to reward with can impact your program’s long term success and ROI. Do your employees really want more swag or tchotchkes? Really…not very likely. But, if employees are offered a choice of gift cards, combined with the choice of what they purchase with those gift cards puts the power of choice in their hands. This power of choice stays in the employee’s memory, and it’s tied in their mind to their employer’s generosity. It’s not just about what employees want. When employers offer “most wanted incentives” like gift  cards, their likelihood of realizing ROI in the short and long term increases. Offering flexible and coveted rewards offers workplace safety programs repeated adherence to safety precautions and sends the message that the employer cares as much about the employee as the ROI. Here are a few examples of our typical gift card customers’ workplace safety incentive programs: -          Measured accident reduction -          Safety awareness contributions -          Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) programs -          Increased productivity rewards -          Health and wellness programs, tailored to specific job functions -          Driver safety and incident reduction -          Training milestones
Check out America’s Most Wanted Gift Card Incentive Choices

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.

At GCP, we typically blog about how gift cards are being used to incent and motivate employees, customers, or partners, as well as trends around incentives. However, this article by Roy Saunderson of the
Recognition Management Institute  has motivated me to highlight the importance of not just recognizing and rewarding your employees, but… inspiring them. “How do we get them to commit their hearts and spirits to the mission of the company?” Roy asks…we love his answers and we hope they inspire you to truly influence the workplace in a meaningful way all year long. Click here to read:
Incentive Magazine’s, 10 Ways to Inspire Employees at Year End

Incentives within workplace safety programs have long been central to engaging employees in achieving and promoting an optimally safe work environment. However, learnings over time have led to debate about HOW to incent properly, whether it be with gift cards, merchandise or travel. Promoting not only safe behaviors, but also creating a safe environment to report unsafe behaviors, is critical to the long term success of a safe workplace. Some look to incentive companies like TharpeRobbins to create their workplace safety programs. These companies help define ideal, safe working environments and behaviors and they roll out programs like “Safe Work and Safe Driver Programs”. These programs promote and work towards accident-free workplaces through recognition and rewards via point systems. A recent
Incentive Magazine article, noted that “During the announcement of the new programs, TharpeRobbins put the reality of workplace safety into context with some financial statistics from the National Safety Council 1: *         There are 3.8 million workplace injuries in the US each year *         90,000 of those injuries cause permanent disabilities *         The average cost per injury: $28,000, adding up to $130 billion for the country overall So, there is a lot of cash at risk for companies to get their safety programs “right” and to do it right, it means creating an incentive program for the long term. Organizations like The National Safety Council support the use of incentives to promote a safer workplace, as long as the program goes “beyond the gift cards and improved performance indicators” to ensure that unreported injuries aren’t on the rise. They say, “Incentive programs can enhance established occupational safety programs but should not be considered an easy fix to underlying safety problems”. 2 OSHA also stands strong on the incentive debate, challenging companies to not just institute a safety rewards program, but be sure they aren’t based primarily on injury and illness numbers. Successful programs  weigh heavily on promoting proper reporting of injuries, without the risk of retribution or loss of incentives. Some food for thought for your creating or improving your workplace safety incentive program for 2012. Sources: 1.      
Incentive Magazine: TharpeRobbins Rolls Out Safety Incentive Programs 2.     
National Safety Council: What's your reward? The debate over incentive programs