Posted August 31st, 2010 by Ley
This article does a tremendous job of explaining what it takes to provide expert fulfillment for a merchandise award program. For years any incentive company worth their salt has been touting their ability to satisfy the award winner with nothing less than 100% guaranteed satisfaction. That’s the way it’s been since the beginning of the industry and that’s the way it is today. In fact that is the only way it should be.
I was in that end of the business for a quarter century and can attest to the importance of flawless merchandise fulfillment. In fact that was a key piece in our sales presentations. Award winners deserved the best, and we made every attempt to provide 100% satisfaction. Frankly with the merchandise pricing we used, often substantially over retail, that kind of customer satisfaction was paramount!
Please read this article. In fact, if you are in the position to purchase incentive or recognition awards this is a MUST READ.
When you’re finished, contrast it with the following steps to fulfill a gift card award system like Award of Choice.
Step one: Choose a gift card system supplier
Step two: Purchase the product that you choose
Step three: Issue the gift card award to the winner
Step four: you’re done, all the rest is up the merchants that are in your gift card system
Next: Your program winner chooses the gift card of their choice from over 500 of the country’s most popular retailers
Which fulfillment system would you rather use?
Posted August 3rd, 2010 by Ley
Was wandering around the net the other day and came across this article from Enterprise Engagement Alliance that reminded me of a post on the same subject last year.
The incentive industry sells awards, that’s how we make money, and we’ve done a great job of it. But by and large we’ve done a horrible job of showing clients how to use those awards. We’ve been so intent on selling the award that we often forget to ask the client why they are using them and offer our expertise to make their programs as successful as they can be.
Not so long ago when a client approached us with a need we would assemble a room full of subject matter experts and spend some quality time in putting together recommendations for a successful program. Now clients approach us with a need for an award and we spend our time putting together a pricing proposal…not much thought in that!
So what changed? Clients haven’t necessarily become more sophisticated in their understanding of how to implement programs, but they are often challenged to do it themselves. More often, the sales folks in the incentive industry are not well trained in the nuances of successful incentive programs and there is pressure to just “make the sale.” So they cut all the corners and go straight to the pricing proposal and don’t muddy the waters with suggestions of ideas to improve the program. Frankly we’ve made the buyers just want to talk about the awards first.
It’s a shame the majority of the industry has evolved to be proficient peddlers of prizes. But such are the times. Frankly that’s about all we do these days. We do ask the client if they want help in the other phases a well-run incentive program, but all too often they decline. It’s sure less stressful. If you are a customer that is implementing an award activity you might want to consider asking for experience from your supplier before you ask for the awards, you may be surprised at the outcome. Then again if all you want is a prize, we’ve got lots of ideas for those too!
Posted July 20th, 2010 by Ley
This was one of the most popular articles last year on Incentive Magazine online. In it the authors discuss the following as the top three reasons why so many incentive programs fail are:
1. Most companies don’t address all issues related to performance and human motivation
2. Most companies lack the knowledge or will to create properly constructed programs
3. There is no pre-program evaluation that leads to program-objective setting, ongoing measurement, and post-program evaluation.
Having been involved in hundreds of recognition and reward programs we would offer another reason that programs fail. It’s because the reward choice used to motivate is not what the participants want or is not useful to them. Unless you use an award that is appealing to the audience, you won’t have the buy-in to the program that you’ll need for it to be successful.
Click here to view award systems that offer tremendous choice to ensure that your participants will receive the reward that motivates them to improved performance
Posted July 13th, 2010 by Ley
The above article in Incentive magazine online brings up a great point about knowing your audience when you are implementing any kind of recognition program. All too often companies try to make the standard size 8 shoe fit every size foot.
The article paints an excellent picture of how different people in different walks of life don’t want the same things. According to the article and research mentioned, “patterns to employee recognition preferences are directly related to the kind of work people do. Some personalities are attracted to certain jobs, and these personalities seem to share some likes and dislikes.
The traditional awards that were uniformly used to recognize our parents and grandparents don’t provide the choices that most workers want today. Sure, when presented with a traditional award today they take their “prize”, but they are often disgruntled that they didn’t have better choices. If you could compare the award selections used in 1970 by the prominent recognition award companies to the ones used today, you would find they are appreciably the same. Why? Well the companies would say that’s what you should use to recognize performance, when in reality, those are the items that provide the most profit to the selling company. This point has been proven by insightful research on the subject available on request.
The incentive industry has made great strides in developing various awards to address this problem. Today you can find life experience awards such as hot air ballooning, spa treatments, special dining experiences, gourmet food, cooking classes, various collectibles, and special music venues and of course the most popular of all…gift cards. When presented with this kind of choice, your participants will set their sites on the award they want, not the one you think they want or what your award company wants them to have. A great example of this kind of system would be Award of Choice where they can choose from virtually any gift card that will provide an award to their own likes and needs.
Posted June 29th, 2010 by Ley
As mentioned in an post last month in this blog, when Amazon.com decided to withdrawal from the incentive merchandise fulfillment market, it left many of their incentive partners with as little as 15 days to find a replacement supplier for their points based merchandise programs.
The cover story in last month’s edition of Incentive magazine mentioned that Amazon’s legacy was to provide the lesser valued $25 and $50 type awards. That is completely true, but to say that is this was their only legacy is disingenuous. The merchandise pricing in the incentive industry has grown ridiculously out of proportion compared to retail, and by using Amazon as a benchmark, the price of incentive merchandise was exposed. Anyone with a computer, a calculator and a couple minutes of time can determine just how wacky the pricing of traditional incentive merchandise really is. And it’s not just in those $25 and $50 awards. Comparisons at AwardEmployees.com show a wide variety of merchandise purchased at retailer such as Amazon.com to the traditional incentive industry. These comparisons are startling.
Thankfully Amazon.com is staying in the industry with their gift cards and gift card fulfillment systems like AwardofChoice.com exist to give your participants a much better value for the budget corporate America uses to reward employees for improved performance.
Posted June 8th, 2010 by Ley
According to a recent article in Workspan, the e-newsletter for WorldatWork more than half the workers in the US value appreciation over compensation and benefits.
This is surprising especially considering the state of our economy. The survey goes on to show that 52% of workers feel that they are more appreciated by their colleagues than they are their supervisors of company executives.
When they economy settles and we are much better business times, what’s to keep these disgruntled employees from leaving their current job and joining another company with a much better reputation for appreciating and recognizing their employees?
Employee satisfaction is a complex issue, there have been many articles written on how employee recognition and appreciation can influence the attitude of employees. In the book the Carrot Principle, the authors state much evidence that recognition definitely drives bottom line results.
We developed Award of Choice for companies to be able to reward and recognize employees in very simple yet cost effective way. As recognition budgets are usually less than $100 per person, this award system will provide rewards and recognition at a fraction of cost of traditional award systems. For a sample of this high value low cost award option, and a discount client code that reduces the fee administrative fee by 40%, please contact us.
Posted June 1st, 2010 by Ley
To understand and discuss this question, some historical perspective is necessary. From the inception of the modern incentive industry in the 50’s, the companies that set the precedent for awards programs didn’t want participants to be able to add cash to an award they could earn in an incentive program. There were two reasons for this, one ostensibly because if you allow a participant to add cash to an award they wouldn’t produce the effort necessary to win the award outright. They could under perform and just add cash to make up the difference. While there may be some minor validity to this line of thought, the industry never produced any empirical evidence to support it. Just the opposite, when you allow some cash to be added to the award it can add to the stretch motivated needed to get to a higher award. I’ll be happy to show you how that can work, just let me know.
The second reason is one that no one ever mentioned to a client. The reality was that the incentive companies didn’t want to allow cash added to an award because the value of the award was typically clouded in the smoke and mirrors pricing of award points or groups of awards at a specified price labeled simply as A, B, C, Etc. You see incentive companies didn’t want to provide the formula necessary to add cash because they would have to divulge the value of the award….and letting someone know they were paying exorbitant prices for awards could cause some real angst to say the least. Incentive companies really didn’t want to advertise to the clients that the blender priced in points or in a grouping was double the cost of the same blender they could find down at their favorite store! I know this to be true because it seems I was spending half of my 25 years in the traditional merchandise award industry trying to justify and defend these prices.
Some of their same reasoning goes into not wanting awards to be priced in dollars, or in anything close to dollars where it is easy for the participant to put a value on the award. The traditional merchandise companies of today constantly harp on this as a reason not to use gift cards as incentive or recognition awards. They say that 60% of folks who use gift cards actually add cash to the value to purchase something greater than the card itself. Is that really a bad thing?? Let’s consider the following.
An employee in a rewards program earned a $100 gift card to her favorite shoe store, and store then had a fabulous sale where everything was marked down by 50%. This happens all the time, right? Especially in these economic times! So, she heads off to the store, finds three pairs of shoes that used to cost $100 each, with 50% discount they are now only $50 each. She loves all three pairs so she adds $50 of her own money and happily (probably more like ecstatic) walks out of the store with three terrific pairs of new shoes. Is this a bad thing? Not if you ask my wife or any of my three daughters it isn’t!
So, should you be able to add cash to an incentive award….absolutely!
For the latest in a gift card award system that provides ease, flexibility, terrific choice and value for your award needs, log on to the Award of Choice.
Posted May 25th, 2010 by Ley
This recent post by Globoforce mentions an interesting MBA case study completed by Stanford University that clearly shows why employees love gift cards over traditional merchandise awards.
The study stated that when compared to gift cards, the items in traditional catalog merchandise programs were too expensive and not a good value proposition. The items were outdated and often missing important accessories, merchandise was often broken during shipping and delivery times were long especially for out of stock items. And, when gift cards were added to the award mix as options they quickly became 90% of the award redemption.
Our experience parallels these findings. Whenever a client adds gift cards to an existing traditional merchandise program, the overwhelming redemption goes to gift cards. Why does virtually every bank card award program include gift cards? Because that’s what folks want, and the banks are interested in selling their services and pleasing their customers so that’s what they give them. We’ve been told that the redemption rates for gift cards in bank programs also exceeds 90%.
Award of Choice is a recently introduced employee award system that has the most inclusive list of merchant gift cards in the industry.
For a sample Award of Choice card and a code that will provide you with a 40% discount on administration fees, please feel free to contact us.
Posted May 18th, 2010 by Ley
This article recently appeared in Employee Benefit News. It discusses the Midwest Business Group on Health conference and focus group conducted to identify triggers and barriers to engaging employees in health benefits and how to improve and manage their health.
Along with other important observations from the focus group it was noted that “Overall, employees are open to the use of incentives and disincentives, but perceive incentives as more powerful than disincentives in changing behavior.”
Award of Choice is a recently introduced employee award that can be extremely useful in rewarding employees to start on road to healthy lifestyle. For a sample Award of Choice card and a code that will provide you with a 40% discount on administration fees, please feel free to contact us.
Posted May 11th, 2010 by Ley
This white paper from the Incentive Gift Card Council offers ten good reasons why gift cards are number one in popularity for corporate incentives and are more effective than cash. Choice, ease of program administration and flexibility lead the reasons.
Of all the design issues that face an incentive planner, choice of what award to use may be one of the most important decisions. When your participants can choose an award that they really want, they will work harder to achieve it.
Our new product, Award of Choice, offers the most extensive list of merchant gift cards in the industry. Give your participants the option to choose the gift card that they want, the one that fits their lifestyle.