GiftCard Partners Blog

A great company can’t be great without great talent. Take a brand new shiny sports car for comparison. Without key factors like high performance or hard workers and a sleek profile or thoughtful leaders; your shiny sports car or successful business isn't getting enough mileage. So how do you ensure that your ‘key factors’ or top talent won’t leave your company? Well it always mean you have to add another ZERO to the end of their paycheck. Most employees are simply looking for a little recognition, appreciation, challenge or leadership from their employers.
Forbes interviewed a number of employees and got some pretty interesting feedback:

Mobile recognition, Social, Interactive, Green…there are many key initiatives rolled up in Roy Saunderson’s Top 10 Trends for Employee Recognition in 2013, but he shows us that it’s not just important to identify the trends, but to also put them in context. It’s not surprising to see gift cards rank in top recognition trends for the new year, but Roy shares his insights around making recognition and incentives meaningful for the employee.
“6. Give me the cards I want." Employees will no longer be satisfied with mainstay gift cards from big box stores and established suppliers. Employees will demand to receive customized cards from meaningful places they prefer and not just what the employer deems everyone should get.” This bodes well for GCP’s strategy of bringing the most wanted gift card brands to employers for recognition rewards and incentives. It forces employers to not just toss a cash equivalent gift card at an employee, but to be thoughtful about the gift. Give gift cards to great restaurants so your employees take their families to dinner, pharmacy gift cards so families can be proactive with healthful and personal care purchases, retail apparel gift cards…often a real treat.
Check out the rest of Incentive’s Top 10 Trends for Employee Recognition in 2013

We’re finding that people are still questioning why companies across the U.S. are spending $22.7 BILLION
¹ on gift cards and what this segment of the B2B gift card market is all about. AND we’re also finding that corporations and companies of all sizes are STILL surprised to learn that there are savings to be had on gift card incentive BULK purchases for motivation, incentives, and rewards.  Why are 52% of U.S. businesses using gift cards to recognize and reward employees, sales folk, partners and customers.
² Check out GCP’s new Customers and their Programs page on our website for
B2B Gift Card Incentives Defined. Want to dig deeper into how gift cards are utilized in the workplace to motivate, incent, and reward? Download our
Incentives in the Workplace eBook. 1 & 2 Source: IRF Market Study: B2B Gift Cards

2012 is coming to a close and as you prepare for 2013, it’s important to ensure that your Employee Recognition Program is up for the challenge that the new year is sure to bring. Incentive Magazine’s, Roy Saunderson, explains, ‘Vendors and practitioners must now learn to reinvent themselves and the way recognition will look and is managed in order to lead out into the future.” It’s time to get excited about a brand new year and keep in mind some helpful insights that will start you out of the gate running:
Mobile devices take a more prominent role in recognition. The use of recognition apps on cell phones and tablets brings acknowledging greatness in the workplace to the tips of your fingers: can you say convenient?
Give the rewards they want.
Take an interest in the types of rewards that your employees will use and more importantly appreciate. Gift cards to
The Children’s Place for young mothers or cards to
AutoZone for the car fanatics in the office are the perfect way to show you are thinking about what an employee really wants.
Show them the results. Technology makes it easy to track your employees achievements and recognize both individuals and teams that have advanced towards their goals and the goals of the organization.
Check out more insightful trends from this article in Entrepreneur’s, “Top 10 Trends for Employee Recognition in 2013.”

It may sound like an obvious thing to say…”that management needs to be committed to their safety program for it to work”. But, all too often safety programs feel like a pretense to employees and this sets the stage for safety behavior. Real world experiences with safety programs and safety incentives tell us that this is happening all the time. The act of selecting which incentives and rewards will be offered sets the tone for your program. Will you expect employees to feel rewarded for fewer accident reports with a “super-star” coffee mug, or other trinkets? Cash is appreciated and remembered, but you won’t receive discount on cash rewards. Gift Cards are the perfect incentive for safety and corporate rewards and business incentive programs, as discounts are achieved for volume orders. Companies like
GiftCard Partners offer only volume orders and discounts on top gift card brands like
Speedway (Gasoline),
The Cheesecake Factory,
Boston Market,
AutoZone and
many more.