GiftCard Partners Blog

The days of sneaking to the break room to meet those afternoon cookie cravings may be long gone. Employee wellness programs have no doubt grown in popularity and some of America's top universities, like Cornell, Stanford, Oklahoma State, and The University of Alabama are no exception. Seven universities in all were surveyed for their employee wellness programs and chosen based on their strong, established employee wellness programs in the
NIRSA report,
Employee Wellness Programs: Collegiate Recreation Trends Research.
The Motivation: The study showed that four primary concerns motivated the establishment of their employee wellness programs: health insurance costs, restructuring, employee productivity, and general improvement of health.
The Components: Similar components were found in many of the universities stemmed from common goals like increasing participation, fostering lifestyle changes, smoking cessation and education. Components included everything from health risk screenings and assessments, wellness workshops, wellness websites and newsletters, release time, physical activity, to smoking cessation efforts and incentives.
Implementation and Engagement: While resource allocation varied across all campuses, most campus-based employee wellness programs were not directly integrated into benefits packages, even though funding sources may be linked. Populations that were targeted also varied across schools; some campuses focused on those least likely to participate, like staff from facilities, while others focused on deans and department heads. Depending on the scope of the program, marketing efforts were also implemented at some schools. To increase participation in all wellness programs, incentive structures were put into place in virtually all schools, with anything from high cash rewards at the end of the year, to gift card rewards for drawing winners and successful program completion. Overall, the results from the universities surveyed was generally positive. Both Stanford and Cornell characterized their employee wellness programs as "a way of life," and all of the schools cited the data they've taken from surveys and assessments as a basis for measuring employee wellness program success. Positive results were also shown in key areas; in return on investment, health outcomes, job performance, effects on campus, and program sustainability. Time to start looking closer at your employee wellness program? The findings from these universities can be applied to any corporate wellness program for any organization. Take a closer look at the full NIRSA report
here.

Employee turnover is constantly on the mind of human resources professionals in all types of organizations. However, once you see the infographic from TribeHR below you might put some urgency behind an employee retention initiative. On average, a new employee costs over $57,000 in lost productivity, on-boarding costs, benefits application, and that figure does not even include the cost of training. For the cost of $57,000 could pay a junior level employee for an entire year, which has much greater potential to have a lasting impact on your business than simply bringing on a new employee. Want to lower the cost of employee turnover? Keep your current employees on board! Make sure employees feel appreciated through recognition of exceptional actions. Provide opportunity for learning and growth through professional development. When employees feel appreciated and feel like their employers are investing in them, employee turnover will decrease and retention rates will rise.

It's a question many brands face.
How can I increase my company's gift card sales? Perhaps you already have a point-person in charge of gift cards, or you're looking to adopt a gift card strategy for the first time. Either way, the opportunity is grand.
Gift cards are a mainstay - more than half of U.S. households report receiving a gift card in the last 12 months, and 85% of those recipients redeem the cards within the same time frame. Without a focused effort and a sound, smart plan for spreading the word and increasing awareness of your gift card program, it can be difficult to reach the many potential customers likely to be interested in your offer. We just
published a free guide that covers
five of the key strategies we've used with our clients over the last several years. From optimizing your in-store and online presence to thinking more strategically about third-party relationships and B2B programs, this guide is sure to help spark some ideas. Let us know what you think!

How well do you know your neighbor? With the hustle and bustle of everyday life many are finding themselves more and more dettached from their neighbors and the community as a whole can end up suffering.
Using small rewards to incentivize community engagement can help not only accomplish community goals, but engage a certain subset of your community to slow down and get involved. Whether you need to clean up the neighborhood playground, seed the community garden or encourage young adults in your community to get in the habit of giving blood, a small incentive could do the trick. Offering a $5 gift card to retailers like
Subway or
Speedway to incentivize either your whole community or a specific group, like young adults or seniors (or both to get cross-generational volunteerism going!) can provide a small boost to get community members active. Whether your goal is to make a positive impact on a small budget or to bring the community together as a whole, gift cards are a great motivational tool and something everyone can appreciate. How is your community incentivizing community engagement? As the summer comes to an end and fall is quickly approaching, what are you doing  to bring your town, city or community together in a unified effort to make your community a better place? Leave us a comment with your ideas!

According to a study released last week, employee engagement has reached levels that it has not experienced since 2009. 68% of employees are now engaged based on the survey of 400,000 employees at nearly 5,000 various organizations. The average increase over the last 3 years has been about .43%. If this rate continues, employee engagement could be back to 2007 levels, which was 70.6%. Throughout the past 7 years the same top three items have had the greatest impact on employee engagement: