GiftCard Partners Blog

Athlete's Performance made a name for itself training elite athletes (think NFL and MLB players) in their off-seasons. Athlete's Performance had recently gone through a rebrand, becoming Exos, and focusing on helping employers reach the maximum potential in employee wellness  in their workforce, both in the gym and in the office. Taking the Athlete's Performance philosophy of intense fitness and rising to the top of the clients field transitions directly into Exos' broader reach theory. Helping employers successfully introduce, apply and follow through on the promise of a wellness program benefits employer and employee insurance costs. Ensuring each employee has their own individual experience and plan to succeed while contributing to the greater goal of the organization is where elite athletics meet employee wellness. Are you treating your employees to elite wellness?
Check out more on how to reach your office's "peak performance" with this article from FastCompany. 

Today, the team at GiftCard Partners is participating in the annual ThinkAThon. The 2014
ThinkAThon brings together big brains from all over the payment industry in a competition to solve some of the area’s most puzzling questions. This year’s problem-solving will focus on finding creative solutions within the following areas:

We rarely do this. Our focus is on B2B gift cards and how employee/employer relationships can be improved through various HR programs. But we have such a compelling example of one of our brands doing right by its customers and promoting loyalty through employers. Here are a few ways Auto Zone is promoting loyalty to its customers and helping employers promote loyalty too:

Employee incentives can be great when offered and given at the right cadence and the right size for the occasion. According to a new study by the  Association for Psychological Science's Minds for Business, people who had been promised a higher reward for completing a task and thus had heightened levels of dopamine in their blood, had more difficulty completing simple tasks. This definitely seems like a long shot with a lot of extrapolating. However, the same theory could apply to employee incentives. If employers offer too much in the way of incentives for employees, employees can be so blindly driven by the incentives that the quality of their work falters because they lose sight of organizational goals and get so focused on the incentives at hand. You can avoid this situation by offering small "spot" rewards that come as a surprise to employees and are not pre-announced. When employees don't expect a reward, they are driven by their goals and company missions, not a reward they never knew was coming. Keep it simple and small to keep your employee incentives effective.
To learn more about the study or how to keep your employee incentives in check, head over to Inc.com.

Integrating employee advocacy and collaboration is a great way to build camaraderie across teams and encourage employees to work together no matter what department they work in or who their boss is. The same goes for departments and areas of your organization. Employee advocacy is extremely effective when working to amplify your marketing program.