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:

GiftCard Partners insights on the 2013 pymnts.com Innovation Project held at Harvard University.

Online purchasing and mobile apps have been a go-to in our lives both personally and professionally, and this trend is growing in the gift card world as well.  Purchasing online gift cards are becoming the industry standard. According to First Data's 2014 Consumer Insights
survey, in comparison to 2013, more people chose online gift card purchasing.  Purchasing online gift cards increased to 34% in 2014 – up from 26% in 2013.  The purchase of gift cards using social networks, such as Facebook, increased from 8% in 2013 to 13% in 2014.  Both plastic and e-gift cards can be purchased online.  Overall, 81% of respondents planned on purchasing the same or more plastic gift cards than in 2013 and 84% planned on purchasing the same or more e-gift cards than in 2013. Gift card apps came to the forefront in 2014.  55% of consumers are interested in using an app to store gift card information on their mobile devices and 58% of consumers said they would prefer to use one app to store multiple merchants instead of using separate apps for each.  With more than 13% of gift card purchases in 2014 made through the use of a mobile app, mobile apps are becoming mandatory for a successful gift card strategy. For more insight into the First Data Consumer Insights Survey
click here!  

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.