GiftCard Partners Blog

In today’s hybrid / remote work environment, many employees often feel isolated and lonely. On days with less meetings, employees can go whole days without talking to a coworker live and that can take a toll. Lonely employees are more than twice as likely to look for a new job than employees who are not feeling lonely. 

As we use asynchronous communication more and more, like Slack and Microsoft Teams, sending memes and other lighthearted communications has become more normalized. But what if you’re looking to bring a remote team together?

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:

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.

Employees can be your greatest advocate or a horrible detriment to your customer interactions. They are face of your brand, and can create exceptional customer experiences that last in the minds of your customers or they can create bad experiences that leave a horrible bad taste in your consumers' mouths. Here are 3 ways that, when motivated, your employees can
positively affect your bottom line.

Surprisingly, we've found that fixed pay (salary) and individual performance pay have little affect on innovation, while variable group pay and indirect pay (employee benefits) have a much stronger impact.