GiftCard Partners Blog

Employee leadership is critical to maintaining employee morale and motivating employees toward organizational goals. Here are three tips to ensure you lead your employees effectively.

We always strive to make our clients proud, but many times we also get to be proud of our clients, and we like to brag about them. Last week Speedway was named in a
Market Force Information study as North America's 5th favorite convenience story. The survey considered a number of factors including fast and reliable service, locations, cleanliness, merchandise selection and many others. Speedway excelled in all categories and came in fifth overall!
The study revealed important information for convenience store chains and franchisees. While price remains a competitive factor, only 26% of respondents marked it as number one. Service and cleanliness ranked higher among consumers than price alone. One criteria made Speedway an out-and-out winner, though. Speedway came in first in the "promotions and discounts" category, which can create loyal customers and brand advocates. The fact that Speedway customers find promotions and discounts (and presumably price) a satisfaction category of importance means that they will be particularly happy to receive gift cards to either begin or continue shopping at Speedway. If your employees are Speedway loyalists, using
Speedway gift cards to promote employee engagement and rewarding a job well done can go a long way in creating trophy value and a lasting impression on your employees.  

We write a lot about utilizing gift cards for employee recognition in this space because frankly they're a great way to recognize your employees for great work on a limited budget. But all of our effort to convince you is for naught if employee recognition programs are not implemented correctly within your organization.
Here's the concern,

Apple unveiled their forray into the already crowded mobile payments space earlier this month and it seems to have the whole industry talking about how Apple Pay and all of the other mobile payment ventures are integrating not only payments, but gift cards and gifting into consumer shopping experiences and retailers' POS. Here's the one component of mobile payments no one is talking about yet: will consumers adapt? A new study by Princeton reveals important information about how consumers feel about mobile payments. Without consumer adopting, it won't matter how many companies invest in the space or who has the best option.

Work life balance is something that all employers and employees struggle with. However, working to maintain that work life balance can be some of the most important time you spend keeping your employees happy and fulfilled at work. Here are three ways you can work with your employees to ensure that both you as the employer promote a work life balance and an environment where employees believe in the importance of a work life balance.