GiftCard Partners Blog

Do you need employee engagement ideas to start the New Year off right? 
Is your current employee engagement strategy working, or could it use a little tweaking? Low employee engagement is not just a U.S. problem. According to
Gallup's 2014 study, only 13 % of employees worldwide are engaged at work. While the U.S. does have the highest employee engagement rating, the numbers are still troubling when looking at those who are disengaged. At the regional level, Northern America (the U.S. and Canada), has an employee engagement level of 29% but 54% of employees are considered
Not Engaged, and 18% considered
Actively Disengaged. Higher employee engagement increases productivity, reduces absenteeism and can decrease health care costs.  According to a 2013
report released by Gallup on the state of the American workplace, businesses are losing
$450-$550 billion annually due to active disengagement.  Implementing some or all of the employee engagement ideas can help increase profits for your organization, all while having a happy, engaged workforce. Here are a few employee engagement ideas:

Organizations regularly compensate people outside traditional payroll, but the type of payment matters just as much as the amount.

For years, people have predicted the end of physical payment cards.

Every time a new payment technology emerges, someone declares that debit cards are on their way out. First it was online banking. Then mobile payments. Then digital wallets. More recently, fintech apps and real-time payment rails have fueled another round of predictions.

Yet debit cards haven't disappeared. They are simply becoming less visible. According to PaymentsJournal, as consumers increasingly interact through mobile wallets and embedded payment experiences, debit cards often remain part of the underlying payment infrastructure. Federal Reserve research has also found that cards continue to play a major role as funding methods for digital wallet transactions, even when the consumer experience happens through a phone rather than a physical card.

Absenteeism in the workplace due to poor health costs U.S. businesses an estimated $84 billion a year in lost productivity. While this number is down from just a few years ago, employers can continue to improve absenteeism in the workplace by promoting wellbeing.  Promoting wellbeing benefits both the employer and employee.  A healthy employee is likely to take fewer sick days and be more productive when they know that their wellbeing is important to their employer. While some ideas for wellbeing can take some time to implement, here are five simple, inexpensive ways of improving employee wellbeing that you can start as soon as today:

Innovation can be hard to come by, especially during December when everyone is counting down the days until the holiday break. Crowdsourcing ideas is one great way to help get the innovative juices flowing and build camaraderie among colleagues. Here are 3 ways to cultivate and maintain your team's efforts:
Be Realistic: Identify key organizational challenges and use team competitions like a "hackathon" or a full team brainstorming day to allow employees to innovate and overcome the key challenges for the organization. This gives employees ownership of their company and the competition gives the employer solutions to major issues within their organization.
Provide Basic Training: Instead of giving your employees the proverbial fish, teach them to fish. Provide enough comprehensive training to let employees' minds run free to create constructive and innovative solutions to problems.
Be Specific: Frame employee innovation competitions around specific initiatives. Trying to solve one problem at a time focuses employee innovations and allows thoughts and ideas to be more creative. Focused initiatives also make problems seem more realistic to solve. Employee innovation can be a powerful tool to transform your business externally and internally.
For more ideas on how to cultivate employee innovation check out this article from Inc.com.