As the holidays approach, employers want to find ways to recognize their employees. They need options that fit their budgets and deadlines while also satisfying employee expectations. Gift cards provide the perfect combination of variety and flexibility. They also help build employee loyalty and satisfaction for the new year.
Gift cards offer rewards across a range of categories from retail, dining, and entertainment to prepaid cards, providing personalized gifts that fit individual employees’ lives and interests. The memorable nature of gift card rewards boost employee morale and performance. This blog explores the best gift card categories for employees, the power of gift cards for recognition and rewards, and why gift card personalization matters.
The Power Gift Cards have on Employee Recognition and Rewards Programs
Gift cards are the most versatile option when it comes to employee recognition and rewards. They increase employee satisfaction and engagement, and provide personalized experiences to employees while maintaining flexibility for employers.
30% of respondents to Fiserv’s Q4 Gift Card Gauge report indicated that receiving a gift card from their employer would motivate them to stay with their current company over considering other job opportunities. This sits in contrast to other popular recognition rewards, like cash, which often get lumped into standard payrolls and can go towards employees’ standard expenses like bills. When recognition rewards aren’t memorable, they don’t have the power to build employee loyalty, and while cash may improve morale, its affects don’t last as long, prompting the need for more frequent - and often increasingly costly - employee rewards.
Gift cards provide value that is both personal and memorable. Gift cards can be tailored to employee’s interests: a retail gift card for someone who likes to shop, a dining gift card for the office foodie, a prepaid reward card for someone just starting out. The versatility and personal nature of the gift allow employees to create memorable experiences with the card. While money is nice, it often gets used practically. Gift cards allow a splurge, whether for themselves or their loved ones, that employees recall when investing in their work, or even considering looking for another job.
Gift cards are often part of a larger employee engagement strategy, raising overall employee morale, and boosting employee engagement, building real relationships, satisfaction and loyalty between employees and employers.
Best Types of Employee Gift Cards to Boost Engagement
One of the most compelling components of gift cards as employee recognition and rewards is their versatility. Gift cards don’t need to be a one-size-fits-all gift like other common corporate gifts. They can be brand-specific based on employees’ interests, making them a more personalized, experiential option for corporate gifting.
And with innovative options like the Engage2Reward™ Choice Card, employers can instantly deliver a valuable amount to employees and let them choose how they want to use their gift by selecting from over 250 eGift card brands. Once selected, digital gift cards can be added to mobile wallets for convenience and ease of use, making them ideal for last minute rewards.
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Ready to invest in your team's engagement and loyalty? Let's look at some of the best gift card ideas for employees.
Dining Gift Cards: A Memorable Treat
Dining gift cards are valuable because they allow employees to create long-lasting memories with their friends and family at a favorite place. The memories they create highlight the employers’ emphasis on work-life balance, and provide a foundation for the employee loyalty and satisfaction employers look to create with gift-card-based employee recognition and rewards programs.
Retail Gift Cards: Promoting Guilt-Free Shopping
Retail gift cards provide an opportunity for employees to use their rewards either to treat themselves or in a practical way, like on new clothing or shoes for the kids. However they are used, retail gift cards provide a specific shopping experience for employees, rather than cash rewards which often get lumped into the “practical use” categories.
Entertainment Gift Cards: Capitalizing on Personal Time
Entertainment gift cards, like those to a movie theater, arcade, or even popular streaming services, provide a way for employers to endorse employee downtime. This is another way to highlight work-life balance and support employees taking meaningful breaks and spending time with loved ones.
Prepaid Gift Cards: Flexibility for Employees
Prepaid reward cards offer maximum flexibility. Employees can use them almost
anywhere they can use a major credit card, for virtually any purchase. These are great when you don’t know an employee’s specific interests well or want to provide a general gift.
Prepaid gas and grocery cards are also available and serve as a great solution for fuel and everyday costs. Redeemable at grocery stores and gas stations nationwide, prepaid grocery and fuel cards help recipients save on practical, essential expenses.
Finding the Right Gift Card Solution
When building a gift-card-based employee recognition and rewards program, bulk purchasing, streamlined delivery, and taking advantage of corporate discounting are operational ways to maximize ROI.
According to recent research by the Incentive Gift Card Coalition, 70% of retailer- specific gift cards purchased for corporate incentive use were physical cards, which could indicate that the cards were purchased from consumer retail outlets, rather than in bulk for coordinated programming. Solutions like the Engage2Reward™ Gift Card Ordering Platform allow employers to avoid retail purchasing and manager-led “random acts of recognition.”
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The Engage2Reward Platform also offers special features to enhance corporate orders. These include discounts on bulk orders and flexible payment options. They can also personalize messages on each card or add a video and company logo. Employers also gain access to hundreds of top name brands in one place, with flexible delivery methods to meet individual employee needs (digital cards for spontaneous gifting or distributed workforces, physical cards for in-person workers or predictable programmatic gifting).
Gift card recognition and rewards programs are an effective way to boost employee satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty at any time of the year. Whichever categories work for your staff, personalized gifts provide memorable experiences for employees while giving employers budget-friendly options that offer a measurable and trackable return on investment.
Schedule a call today and discover how the Engage2Reward Platform can power your employee reward programs with access to over 250 top digital brands!
