GiftCard Partners Blog

As health care models shift and the various pieces of the Affordable Care Act take effect, it seems that both employers and employees are paying more for health care. As a result, employers value health and fitness as part of the value proposition for providing health benefits. Offering health and fitness rewards in exchange for consistently healthy behavior is an increasing trend that is helping employers control the cost of health benefits, and helps employees control both their cost of care and their health and body. Health reward programs can range from cash, to discounts on health promoting activities such as attending the gym on a regular basis, joining a fitness center, or healthy activities like yoga or tai chi. Rewards can also take the shape of gift cards, offered to employees upon reaching certain health goals, or exhibiting healthy behavior like participating in a smoking cessation program. These types of rewards are not as direct as cash, but are equally effective in motivating employees by offering assistance in forming healthy lifestyle habits. Offering gift cards to retailers such as GNC or 
NutriSystem can give employees an extra boost to get healthy and stay healthy, which means lower costs and a higher bottom line for your organization.

HealthyAmericans.org reports some pretty impressive corporate wellness program successes, like:

Our employees and colleagues, whether we like it or not are the people that we spend the most waking hours with during the week. It is crazy to think that sometimes employers don't make the time to develop interpersonal relationships with employees, and ensure that employees are also forming those relationships at a peer level. GiftCard Partners prides itself on functioning as a company, but also as a family, making time to get to know each other outside of work, and spend recreational time together throughout the year. Treating employees like family build a bond, trust, and an environment that is going to make employees productive and keep them satisfied with their jobs for longer. Here are 3 ways to treat your employees like family to make sure they maintain a lasting relationship with your organization:

Gamification is a concept that is gaining popularity among employers to motivate employees to certain goals. Those goals can range from certain performance goals, to health and wellness goals, to workplace safety goals. Adding a gamification component to your workplace safety program can be a great way to keep safety top of mind for employees and decrease accident rates in your work space. Gamifying safety can be as simple as creating a public website, and for each day a worker, team of workers, or your entire workforce completes without an accident points can get added to a pool, which can then be cashed in for a variety of rewards. Some organizations opt for a more complex safety rewards game, creating teams, similar to fantasy sports, who compete against each other for points that can be later cashed in for rewards. This option allows the employer to track both individual and team performance, to find strengths and weaknesses organization-wide.

In the age of social media, a constant news cycle and a constantly connected consumer base, we all know how important it is to keep customers happy. Happy customers can mean free marketing and public relations in the form of brand evangelization through social media. Unhappy customers can have the opposite effect, casting a negative shadow on your organization's brand through social media or consumer reports. Customers are happy when they have positive interactions with your brand, and when the people who represent your brand, your employees, have a positive effect on the customers. When your employees become true ambassadors and do all they can to positively represent your band to consumers your employees are happier, your customers are happier, and your revenue will grow and gain potential. The importance of happy employees directly correlates to the happiness of your consumers and the strength of therelationship your consumers develop with your brand. Using employee rewards and recognition is a great way to ensure employees represent your brand appropriately, and develop positive consumer relationships. All levels of rewards can fit into an employee rewards program. From a small denomination gift card to a retailer like Boston Market, or Burlington Coat Factory for a well handled consumer interaction, to a weekend getaway for the employee with the highest promoter score, or lifetime value assessment. Employee rewards programs can be tailored to any budget, but their value proposition will always be felt in a big way. Happy employees, happy consumers, and measurably increased revenue.
For more information on using employee rewards to ensure happy consumers check out this article from xceleration.com