Wishing You a Happy New Year!

Ultimate Choice wishes you a happy, healthy and safe new year and wants to thank you for the many positive comments and support we have received on our recognition award systems! 

Holiday Shopping and Recognition Awards

What does holiday shopping have to do with recognition awards?  It is the best time of the year to prove to recognition specialists that giving your employees a choice of any award they want it is a key to the success of your program. 

This holiday season sales are expected to be in excess of $655 billion.  Online Black Friday sales alone exceeded $3 billion!  So what did they buy and where did they buy it? You name it, anywhere and everywhere.  Certainly the national bricks and mortar retailers and their websites got the lion share of the sales, but many regional retailers had millions in sales as well.  In addition the online-only companies achieved huge sales as well, the foremost being Amazon.

Our point, when you plan an incentive program, it is virtually impossible to pick the handful of retailers or merchandise items that will appeal to your entire workforce, so why try.

Almost all incentive studies have shown that gift cards are the most popular and effective options within the safety incentive category. Over 80% of respondents to Incentive Magazine’s “Gift Card IQ” survey are currently using gift cards in their reward programs.

Some gift card suppliers would like YOU to choose which gift cards to offer in your incentive programs and will recommend what gift card brands would be most effective based on the unique composition of your employee base. That may be one way to do it, we however think you should give that option to your employees and let them choose the one they want.

As mentioned, it is virtually impossible to pick the handful of card brands that will appeal to all your employees.  Use a gift card system that will allow them to choose from a much larger list of brands that comprises over 95% of all retail sales.  Then you will have an incentive with far greater motivational appeal.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Should Gift Cards Be an Option in Years of Service Programs?

Believe it or not, the latest market research conducted by Incentive Magazine showed that close to 40% of all Years of Service programs use gift cards as some of their award options.

It wasn’t too long ago that you would never see gift cards in employee anniversary programs for several reasons.  First, the major recognition companies spent millions of dollars marketing their traditional awards such as company identified jewelry items, crystal, clocks, watches and the like.  Second they used very sophisticated training programs for their sales forces as well as for clients building a mystique that only deluxe trophy type merchandise would be proper to recognize an employee who remained at a company for a period of time usually in 5 year cycles  starting at 1, 3, or 5 years.  And lastly, they created excellent software platforms that made is very easy for a client to purchase a turnkey employee service award program.

So what changed?  How did gift cards start to become an option in these programs?  It certainly wasn’t because the companies that specialized in gift card systems spent millions in advertising, or marketing or a sales force that was trained to call on the clients. And it wasn’t because they built sophisticated electronic platforms to implement them.  It came about because clients were getting tired of paying very hefty premiums over retail price for these traditional trophy type items and hearing from employees that they were tired of being told an item as valued at $500, but they could see it every day online for a lot less.  Employees simply wanted more choice at a better value. 

With the age of the internet anyone could do a quick search to determine the value of an award, it didn’t take long for the employees to ask why the award that they understood cost $250 or $500 actually had a value of only $125 or $250.  That was the rule rather than the exception.

Gift cards are a part of Years of Service programs because it gives your employees what

they want without incremental cost to you.  If you are going to spend $250 or $500 on an award, wouldn’t it make sense to make sure that your employee receives as much of that budget as possible?  The traditional recognition companies will fight long and hard to keep you from putting gift cards in your program.  They know that once in, they will lose prized profit dollars year after year.  But do you really want to support their Taj Mahal corporate offices at the expense of your employees?

If you would be interested in how to use our gift card systems in your employees years of service programs please contact us at ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net.

Your Employees Make a Difference!

Shouldn’t the main focus of management be to maintain a work environment that keeps your employees coming back every morning?  Do you believe that the way you treat your employees is also your instruction to them on how to treat your customers?  As Richard Branson once said…

”It’s all about people, people, people!

No matter what industry a company is in,

its employees are its biggest competitive advantage.”

Ultimately successful companies not only know that their employees matter, they act on that principle in very simple ways:

They Know That Every Job is Relevent

If you can’t explain why each job matters, you probably shouldn’t have it in the first place. 

And you need to know how to explain how each job function contributes to the success of the company as a whole

Make Sure Each Employee Knows Why Their Job Is Significant

It’s the job of management to explain to everyone why their job matters and how it impacts the business. Connect the dots for them; make it easy for them to understand their company from the top of the organization to the outside customer.

When Employees Know Their Job Matters, They Do a Better Job. 

It’s difficult to pick up a magazine about human resources and not see an article about the importance of employee engagement.  Employees often become engaged simply when they know how important their performance is to the success of the company 

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net