Employee recognition and reward systems are as crucial as the employees’ Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). If you do not recognise people for their hard work, but you continuously criticise them for not hitting their KPIs, it would not be long until you find the best seats in your office empty.
If people are recognised in the workplace, there is a higher chance for them to perform better. If you reward them with something simple as a universal gift card, for example, it is as if you are telling them that you care. In fact, in a study shared on LinkedIn, one of the reasons why people fail their KPIs is that they do not feel engaged.
The issue does not end by institutionalising a reward system. After setting this up, you need to find the best reward that could move people to participate. It is natural for people to ask ‘what is in it for me?’ when asked to do something that they did not sign up voluntarily for. This includes accomplishing a team goal, too. People need to be on board before you can ensure the success of your team.
Why Choose Universal Gift Cards?
When you give someone the usual gifts like plaques, certificates, and banners to reward them for a job well done, they will have a minimal option as to what they will do with such a reward. After the bragging rights, they have no use for it. Here are other reasons why you should give them a universal gift card instead.
No Paperwork For The Company
The thing with certificates, plaques, banners, and other usual giveaways is that you need to substantiate your request with proposals, bids, reimbursements, reconciliations, receipts, and other complicated forms. If you replace these with a gift card, you eliminate this paperwork. All you have to do is submit a proposal indicating the amount of the gift card and purchase it. Every time the recipient uses the card, the money equivalent to their spending automatically reduces the general fund. With this, you significantly reduce paperwork and accounting, while also decreasing your costing, too.
Reduce The Budget For Employee Expense
Another advantage of using these gift cards is you get to set the monthly budget. If you agree to give 300 USD, that is the only amount you need to load up the card. Some would say that these gift cards diminish the value of the award because it is reduced into money. This is not precisely the case, though. With these universal gift cards, every time the recipient uses the card, they are reminded that what they are spending is a reward from the company for their hard work.
Safe And Secure
Since these gift cards are reloadable, the moment the recipient exhausts all the rewarded funds; the card will no longer be used. If you need to transfer it to another recipient next time, you can top it up again. Plus, once it is lost or misplaced, you can temporarily suspend the card’s spending power until it is returned to the rightful owner. If due to reasons beyond one’s control, this card gets lost, you can replace it with another reloadable card. There are very minimal security risks in the process.
Universal Gift card is just one of the many creative yet useful ways you can reinforce the excellent performance of your employees. The goal here is not to diminish hard work and work values and reduce it to something quantifiable with money. Instead, the raison d’être of this practice gives something people can use however they want. After all, the essence of a reward is to feel gratification after a job well done.