Award Employees

Gift Card IQ…#1 Employee Recognition Award

The September issue of Incentive Magazine published the results of the Gift Card IQ research.  This is survey is about gift cards used as recognition or incentive awards and is done on an annual basis. Following are some highlights of that research: 

Gift cards are still the number one award in the recognition industry with no signs of slowing down.  When asked the primary benefits of using gift cards over other forms of awards respondents stated: 

Ease of administration   70.2%

Redemption options/flexibility   59.1%

Broad audience appeal   51.5%

Perceived value   46.6%

Cost effectiveness   35.0%

Has a lasting impact   23.0%

Back-end / ROI tracking   15.2%

Other   2.2%

 Virtually all of these responses were increases from the 2010 survey. 

Other interesting findings were: 

• While number of incentive programs with budgets less than $25000 shrank by about 10%, the five largest program budget categories all increased! 
• 19% of the respondents had annual budgets and a whopping 10.6% spent more than $1 million or more! 
• There are many types of gift cards used, retail stores and dining/restaurants top the list with 66.9% and 63.2% respectively. 
•  When asked about the effective ness of gift cards compared to cash, 73.5% say they are more effective than or at least as effective as cash.   
• How often did the respondents say the used gift cards?  77.9% used them for specific initiatives throughout the year or for frequent on-the-spot recognition. 

Gift cards have grown exponentially from the beginning and have taken over the top spot in employee recognition and incentive awards.  When you use a gift card system that contains virtually the top 500 merchants in the industry, you will ensure that the award you give your employees will be the one that they really want.  It takes the guesswork out of which card to give.