7 easy tricks to improve employee long service awards

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Most employee long service award schemes, if they even exist, are not great. And that’s us being polite.

They’re mostly poorly managed, badly executed afterthoughts. Very few companies give their service awards the proper attention.

Even fewer back that up with the right rewards.

No one really wants to hear that. But it’s the ugly truth of most longevity awards.

Whether you have no formal long service award scheme, or you have a feeling your scheme is lagging behind, you’re in the right place.

Read this blog and get a grip on how to schedule, structure and fulfil your employee long service awards.

Balance your service awards

A lot of long service award schemes were designed with a funny definition of “long service” in mind.

They don’t start until 10, or even 20 years. And the rewards are loaded closer to the 30 year mark of service.

The problem is, it’s much less likely these days that an employee is going to last 20 years or more in one business. That means it’s a bit of a baked-in defeat to start your service awards in multiples of decades.

Your employees are unlikely to be starting at your company with 20-30 years of service in mind. More than likely, they don’t think they’ll ever reach ten years with a company. Let alone 20.

And, what’s more, we know that modern staff are more hungry for immediate recognition than previous generations.

Young staff expect to hear some recognition after just one year of service.

Instead of hoarding your awards for the longest service, spread the same budget over five-year periods.

You’ll be satisfying the expectations of younger employees, and getting more short-term benefit from the scheme.

Equality in recognition

On a more serious note, spreading your rewards around avoids any suggestion of discrimination.

Older employees, closer to retirement, are unlikely to be in the company for 20 years. It would be impossible for them earn the same rewards as younger staff.

Focus on more frequent recognition for loyal service, and a more even distribution of rewards in employee long service awards.

Move away from cash

It’s always tempting to look to cash. Whether that’s a long service award, an incentive, or a general employee reward.

Good old cash is always there. Reliable, familiar. And kind of boring, if we’re honest.

Employees will often ask for cash, but try to look around that. They ask for cash not because it will be a thrilling treat, but because money is one of the most pressing concerns in just about everyone’s life.

We’ve written a longer explanation of this before, but cash just doesn’t do the same job as non-cash rewards.

It doesn’t grab us in the same way, and it doesn’t feel like a “gift” like rewards do.

Financial stress

Financial stress is a genuine problem in the UK’s workforce. It might seem counter-intuitive, but that’s a great reason to keep your rewards non-cash. Ask yourself – why would you choose the greatest source of stress in someone’s life as a way to show your gratitude?

A one-off long service award payment isn’t going to alleviate any problems your staff have with money-related stress.

In fact, more money might not address the problem at all – a significant amount of higher-earning staff have reported financial stress that effects their productivity.

Your employees’ long service awards are an expression of gratitude and joy. How you choose to reward staff has to reflect that intention.

By going with a non-cash option, your staff have to take up something that really feels like a trophy.

Rewards for employee long service

As we pointed out earlier, when you give out rewards for employee longevity, they become trophies. Once you put cash to one side, a whole world of possibility opens up.

Reward staff with:

  • Watches
  • Tech
  • Gift cards
  • Certificates
  • Reward codes
  • Special meals
  • Travel
  • VIP experiences

It should go without saying, but that list is nothing close to exhaustive. You need to make choices by considering what’s special to your employees.

Multi-choice rewards, like gift cards and codes, make it easier. They let employees choose for themselves. Our Love2shop Gift Card, for instance, offers your staff access to everything from high street shopping to an international holiday.

Put a price on the value of loyalty

Scaling the value of service awards over time is always a sticking point for an employee long service award scheme.

For a sense of scale, start with the simple pricing guide below.

It keeps things pretty simple, and it’s based on surveys of what other companies have used for rewards.

  • 3 years
  • £25
  • 15 years
  • £300-£400
  • 5 years
  • £100-£140
  • 20 years
  • £400-£500
  • 10 years
  • £150-£270
  • 50 years
  • £500-£1,300

As you can see, it’s extremely simple. Jostle and jiggle the figures to get what you want, and what suits your budget.

But remember that the money isn’t really the focus. Like we’ve said in other posts, it’s really more about the humanity behind the numbers.

Shout about staff loyalty

We’ve mentioned before that the recognition for employee long service should start after one year.

The table we showed you above only focuses on the big milestones. Every employee anniversary should come with some kind of recognition for their long service.

You should make an effort to recognise every year of employee service, not just the biggest milestones.

At the same time, when employees do stay with your company for five years or longer, make some fuss.

Acknowledge and thank them internally, whether that’s in a department meeting or an internal newsletter.

Presentation matters

It’s not just what you do, it’s how you do it. Even the best employee long service awards need some context and a personal touch.

Your staff are humans, and the human touch amplifies the benefits you get from recognition and reward.

This is one of the reasons not to use a third-party outsourcing company to actually fulfill the rewards themselves. Being present when the recognition and reward are being distributed is valuable.

On top of that, when employees are passing milestones in double digits, your senior leaders should be involved in the presentation.

Not just as a feel-good gesture for employees, but as a demonstration of your company culture. To make it clear your leaders buy into the value of recognition too.

It’s not enough for employees to be important, you have to show employees they’re important.

Personalise rewards and recognition

Personalisation and care demonstrates your gratitude as effectively as the value of your awards themselves.

Taking the time to customise and personalise shows employees that you care. The thought, and the effort, really do count.

However you choose to approach your long service awards, take the time to make it personal.

Show, through words and deeds, that your staff matter to you.

Keep the tax man happy

Remember that your spending on recognition and rewards is subject to tax once it crosses £50 in a financial year.

Stay on the right side of HMRC. Talk to your finance department, or read more here if you don’t have anyone to hand with tax experience.

Measure the effects of employee long service awards

If you want to measure the benefits of employee long service awards, talk to your workforce.

Ask your employees what they’re thinking, and give your staff a chance to tell you how they feel.

Ask them if they think the company values loyalty. And ask if they think the company does enough to recognise and celebrate the company’s most loyal staff. This could be as part of a wider employee survey, or a quick pulse survey.

As a side note: You should be asking employees every year about their wider employee experience anyway.

Asking about your approach to long service should dovetail nicely with your other employee service efforts.

Read the results

Let’s keep it simple. Look for an improvement in sentiment about your internal approach to long service.

Remember what we said about service recognition being done, and the need for recognition to be seen. If you want to change how your staff think about their years of service, you need to make an effort to show your staff you value their tenure.

To see any significant changes, you will have to make sure your management get on board. They need to recognise and embrace the need for long service recognition. Then make the time to do it properly.

Retention is the big one

As we’ve pointed out before, poor retention costs thousands. If not tens of thousands. And employees become more valuable to a business the longer they stay.

Losing one skilled employee could cost your business up to £30,000, and in 2013 voluntary turnover cost the UK over £1bn.

*Oxford Economics, Brain Drain, 2014

Increasing retention by recognising long service is one of the biggest outcomes you can hope to generate with better employee long service awards.

If you’re not sure, ask

If you have questions about your long service awards, ask. We’re always happy to talk.

Call us with the number at the top and bottom of the page, email us, or use our live web chat.

10 Reasons to upgrade from paper Love2shop Vouchers to plastic Love2shop Gift Cards

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Still using paper Love2shop Vouchers? There many reasons why you should upgrade to plastic Love2shop Gift Cards (at no extra cost). 

Here are 10 ways the Love2shop Gift Card is a better reward for employees and customers alike.

1. Bigger brands 6. Mobile app
2. A more personal experience 7. Discounted top ups
3. Load with any value 8. Spend at M&S
4. Cheaper, more secure delivery 9. Use on the Love2shop Holidays website
5. Replacement cards 10. Use on the Argos website

 

1. Access bigger brands through exchange

 

By exchanging the balance of a plastic Love2shop Gift Card at www.love2shop.co.uk, cardholders can access big name brands not available on paper Love2shop Vouchers, such as…

Popular retailers

Treat recipients to dining out

See the full list of where you can spend Love2shop Gift Cards here.

 

2. A more personal experience for the recipient

Upgrade to a Love2shop Gift Card and make your rewards even more personal to the individual.

Designs to reflect the occasion

A selection of off-the-shelf gift card designs are available at no additional cost to reflect a variety of reasons you might give a gift.

Personalised thank you messages on card carriers

Choose a card design and then add a personalised thank you message addressed to the individual, on the card carrier. Add a message for your entire audience or customise to each individual.

 

Fully branded cards

Create a completely bespoke gift with a card and carrier that is custom designed to reflect your brand.


3. Load with any value up to £10,000

Where paper Love2shop Vouchers are limited to just £5 and £10 values, with a plastic Love2shop Gift Card you can choose cards loaded with:

  • £5
  • £10
  • £20
  • £25
  • £30
  • £50
  • £100

All with the value printed on the card.

Or you can load with any value you like up to £10,000 (minimum load £5).

 

 

4. Lower cost, secure delivery

 

Low cost, secure delivery options are easy with a Love2shop Gift Card. Unlike a paper voucher, gift cards can be sent inactive. Card are only loaded with funds once they are received by you (please note: this not applicable to all orders, please confirm with our team prior to dispatch).

This means that you can choose to receive them by standard post or lower-cost courier, safe in the knowledge that the cards are worth nothing until they are in your hands.

 

5. Replacement cards are available if lost or stolen

 

Once funds have been loaded onto gift cards they are safeguarded and lost/stolen cards can be replaced, whereas paper vouchers are treated like cash. If they are lost then they cannot be replaced. 

 

6. Access our mobile app

 

The Love2shop app makes shopping using a Love2shop Gift Card easy, with features such as:

  • A card balance checker
  • Interactive where to spend lists – using geolocation to identify accepting retailers nearby
  • Option to top up cards in seconds whilst on the move (please note: this is not available on all cards, please check with our team)

 

7. Top up at a discount

 

Love2shop Gift Cards are available with optional top up functionality (please note: this functionality is only available on particular schemes, such as Everyday Benefits).

Using this feature, cardholders can top up their card as often as they wish at a discount. For example, cardholders could top up their card with £100 worth of value but it would only cost them £93 (please note that discount rates vary).

This is a great way to save money on household expenses and everyday treats, with savings on top ups easily adding up to hundreds of pounds each year.

It’s the perfect employee discount card or customer loyalty mechanic.

8. Spend at M&S

 

Marks & Spencer accept Love2shop Gift Cards in-store, but not Love2shop Vouchers. So if you want to give your recipients access to this well loved brand, it’s time to switch to plastic!

 

9. Use online at www.love2shopholidays.co.uk

 

Cardholders can spend the balance of their Love2shop Gift Card to book a holiday online through the Love2shop Holidays website (www.love2shopholidays.co.uk).

Love2shop Holidays Website

Whilst Love2shop Vouchers can be redeemed through the Love2shop Holidays team, recipients must call in to spend their balance. Whereas gift card holders can book directly online as soon as they find the perfect trip away.

 

10. Use online at www.argos.co.uk

argos-logoLove2shop Gift Cards can be spent directly on the Argos website. They are accepted as a form of payment at the online checkout.

For other websites, cardholders can exchange the balance of their gift card for a virtual Mastercard, which is accepted on 50+ retailer websites.

 

Paper vs Plastic: How do your rewards stack up?

 

Feature

 

  

Love2shop Voucher

 

  

Love2shop Gift Card

 
Spend in-store at 95+ retailers  

✔

 

  

✔

 
Available to under 16 year olds  

✔

 

  

X

 
Value printed on the front  

✔

 

  

✔

(Specific card types)
 
Denominations available £5, £10 £5, £10, £20, £25, £30, £50, £100  or load with any value you like (over £5)
Exchange the balance to spend online  

X

 

  

✔

 
Exchange the balance to access additional brands (such as John Lewis, ASOS, Starbucks, Zizzi, B&Q and more)  

X

 

  

✔

 
Themed designs available  

X

 

  

✔

 
Branded wallets/carrier options  

✔

 

  

✔

 
Branded vouchers/cards  

X

 

  

✔

 
Personalised presentation option to individual recipients  

X

 

  

✔

 
Optional ongoing discounts for recipients  

X

 

  

✔

(Specific card types)
 
Online balance checker  

X

 

  

✔

 
Mobile app  

X

 

  

✔

 
Discounts on large corporate orders  

✔

 

  

✔

(Bigger discounts available on gift cards)
 
Low cost delivery option  

X

(Secure postage required)

  

✔

(Cards can be activated upon delivery, removing the need for secure postage)
 
Funds are safeguarded  

X

 

  

✔

 

 
Replacement option for lost or stolen  

X

 

  

✔

 

 

 

Upgrade to Love2shop Gift Cards today

The next time you need to place an order, why not opt for plastic Love2shop Gift Cards instead of paper Love2shop Vouchers? 

We can set you up with access to order as and when you wish, simply by calling 0151 653 1752 or contact us here.

 

rewarding employees - ask these five questions first

5 questions you need to ask yourself before rewarding employees

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It’s import to get rewarding employees right. Rewards aren’t just a nice bonus to make staff feel good. They’re a business tool. That’s not to say you should take the joy out of giving employees rewards, but you should be smart about how you use them.

A poorly timed or a poorly thought-out reward is just your company’s money down the drain. That’s a tragedy when you could be getting so much more out of rewarding employees.

When you think someone deserves a reward, take just a few seconds to ask yourself five questions about the achievement in question.

1. Does it reflect your values?

Rewarding employees for living your values builds engagement with those principles. It’s important to make sure employees are recognised, and sometimes rewarded, for upholding your company values in their work.

By closely linking achievements to company values, staff are more familiar with your company’s purpose. This also creates positive links between staff, your business and your rewards.

Rewarding for behaviour that doesn’t reflect your values has two negative effects. Your employees lose faith that you believe in your own organisation’s values. And they will see that you actually treasure them working outside of those values.

2. Is it notable?

Would your employee, and their colleagues, agree their achievement is notable?

A reward is a waste of cash if the employee doesn’t also see their achievement as noteworthy. That doesn’t improve when other staff see the reward and think the same thing.

Rewarding for behaviour that employees don’t see as notable is jarring. It implies disconnection between you and your staff. Or at least a difference in what your team values and what managers think is important.

3. Is it timely?

To make the most of the combination of rewards and achievement, time is important. It’s vital to issue rewards as close to someone’s achievements as possible.

If you’ve left it too long, it can feel a bit like you’re not paying attention. Or that you’re playing catch-up with your staff’s achievements. And by that time, the emotional impact of your reward will be long gone.

4. Is it positive?

Rewarding employees should be associated with positive behaviour. Like we said, you’re training your staff on how to behave when you reward them. It’s an endorsement of what they did and how they achieved it. What you reward should always be something you’d be proud to talk about in public.

5. Is it repeatable?

Could another employee aspire to make this achievement for themselves?

When you reward employees you show everyone what the organisation thinks is important. Sometimes it’s appropriate to reward a one-off achievement, but tread carefully.

If employees can repeat behaviour that gets rewarded, they’re more likely to try and earn that reward again. If your plan is to build better behaviour with positive feedback, it needs to be something other employees can do.

Your turn

The first four questions are the real quiz. If you can say “yes” with a straight face, it’s high time to break out the rewards. The fifth one you’ll have to play by ear and use your judgement, depending on your specific business.

But make sure you give your rewards a bit of thought before dishing them out. It’s worth it.

Flu shot rewards – Use gift cards and vouchers as incentives to protect vulnerable patients

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Flu season starts in October, every year. But if you have medically vulnerable staff, or staff that interact with vulnerable people, your flu season starts a bit earlier. You need to prepare a flu shot reward to incentivise staff to take up their jabs.

Leave it too late, and you’ll be well into flu season before you try to catch your staff up on their jabs.

Why you should offer flu shot rewards

Cost of flu to medical workforces

Cold and flu alone cost hospital and community health services 325,305 days of work in the winter of 2016-17. In a four-month period between November and February, some trusts saw more than a hundred working days lost just among their nursing and health visitor staff. [1]

Absent staff cost you money when they can’t work. Even worse, many sick employees come in and create sick departments through presenteeism.

Sick departments suffer in performance and increased stress in every business. This is even worse in a medical environment where your staff support vulnerable patients.

There’s a three-pronged crisis caused by the flu:

  • Your staff pass flu among themselves and on to patients
  • Your patients become more difficult to care for when suffering flu
  • A sick and understaffed team struggle to care for patients that need extra attention

Minimising the risk of this problem is as simple as making sure staff get their flue jabs. To make sure they take up the offer, offer them an exciting reward as incentive.

A 2018 report from NICE concluded that incentives prove popular among staff. They also noted that expert testimony support NICE’s recommendations to increase flu jab uptake. That included offering incentives to employees. [2]

Outside a medical environment

flu shot rewards could keep your staff from costly illnessesFlu shot rewards aren’t just useful for medical teams.  You may have employees with immune systems issues. Or a vulnerable condition like asthma, COPD or diabetes. You might also have pregnant staff, or workers over the age of 65.

Flu is dangerous for vulnerable employees, and could put them out of action for a long time. And just like in a medical environment, you don’t want a team beleaguered with flu picking up the slack either.

You want your employees coming into work, and coming in healthy. What you lose with a flu-ridden staff is considerably more than what you’d spend on organising work flu jabs and offering flu shot rewards.

Overcoming natural malaise

We know your staff aren’t callous about your vulnerable patients. Or deliberately spreading their flu microbes. But they are busy as anyone else. A tantalising reward punches through the fog of daily life and your staff a reason to take part in a new scheme.

Rewards light a fire under your employees. Thousands of businesses get their staff motivated by using our rewards every year. We know they work when it comes to getting someone moving. If you want to push people into action, you need to give them a reason to move.

How to manage your flu incentive

flu shot rewards boost vaccine take upOur clients tend to fall into two broad categories. Spread a budget out over your staff as individual rewards, or put all the funds in one place as a lottery. Which one you choose depends on the needs of your staff.

Know your workforce, and consider your budget. When you have less staff, you might generally consider yourself as having a smaller reward budget.

But at the same time, a small team is even more affected by sickness. It’s a balancing act depending on your business’ needs. If you’re unsure about which way to go, get in touch. Our team is always happy to talk.

Plan and promote your flu shot rewards

Name it and promote it. Our other clients have given their anti-flu campaigns funky names like Flu Fighters (get it?).

Make sure you communicate the value of the jab, and the value of the reward. Getting out ahead of the actual jab itself is important. You want staff that see why they should take the flu jab well ahead of time. And be fired about what they can do with their rewards.

The sooner you start planning, the more effective your flu shot reward campaign is likely to be. As ever, if you need anything, you can find us on phone, email or the live chat on this site.

References:

a simple employee engagement definition

A useful employee engagement definition in plain English

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An employee engagement definition can get complicated. As complicated as someone wants it to be, really.

It’s the kind of concept that becomes nebulous and hard to pin down once someone dresses it up too much. Or tries to twist it to fit their own agenda.

We’ve got a simple, workable employee engagement definition. And a bit of detail on why a simple definition matters.

A simple employee engagement definition:

“Emotional and professional commitment from an employee to their employer’s goals.”

What’s in a name?

It’s easy to see how that definition could start to be slathered around so thin it loses meaning. It’s more than morale, but it’s connected to morale.

It’s more than motivation, or loyalty, but connected to both. It’s more than rewards and recognition, but they’re both part of it.

That confusion makes employee engagement an easy concept to run away with.

Just like the word “engagement” itself. A word so overused that it’s close to losing all real meaning.

You can rightfully call everything from a website click to a purchase engagement.

That’s why it matters that you get a clear definition sorted out. The importance of employee engagement is spreading through the wider HR consciousness.

If you want to take it seriously, you need a clear idea of what engagement actually means to your company.

Why we talk about employee engagement

We reflect our clear definition of engagement in our work. What we do helps businesses generate that sense of emotional investment.

We do that with recognition, rewards, benefits and incentives.

How those tools affect employee engagement:

  • Recognition – Recognition improves the relationships between staff, managers, and work. When employee hear their worth in the workplace, they believe it. And people invest themselves in places they feel they’re appreciated.
  • Rewards – Rewards amplify the feeling of satisfaction employees get from their achievements. Non-cash rewards become trophies that inspire and motivate employees in the future.
  • Benefits – Making your workplace an asset to your employees. That includes mental health outcomes like financial support, helplines and childcare vouchers. And it includes physical health benefits like cycle to work schemes and cash off medical care.
  • Incentives – Incentives drive employees to invest in their work. And big-ticket incentive rewards like group travel and VIP experiences create life-long memories for your biggest achievers.

Combined, you can see how these ideas hark back to the definition of employee engagement.

Be similarly strict about engagement when you’re discussion in your workplace. It’s a simple benchmark to measure your success against after your first few employee engagement surveys.

Everyone forgets one important thing about plastic gift cards

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Plastic gift cards can be reloadable!

We want to banish the idea that plastic gift cards are single-use, disposable products.

We stock reloadable gift cards that offer real long-term value. Reloading takes a one-off gift and turns it into a reward mechanism that works for years.

Reload your own gift card

Reloading plastic gift cards is the crux of our Everyday Benefits (EDB) service.

Staff reload their own gift cards at a discount, and make huge savings. Even a casual EDB user will save hundreds of pounds a year.

Beyond discounting gift card top-ups for staff, the card comes with other benefits. That includes:

  • Cinema tickets
  • Theme park tickets
  • Holidays
  • Other gift cards
  • Supermarket card top-ups

Read more about our Everyday Benefits gift cards here.

Reload someone else’s gift card

Reloadable plastic gift cards offer you more than a one-time reward. They give you the chance to think long-term about staff rewards and customer loyalty.

Staff achievements

Topping up Everyday Benefits cards makes rewarding employees easy. You don’t need to order new rewards every time you thank staff for their achievements.

Top up their reloadable gift cards. Then thank them face-to-face, or through your company’s recognition systems, like you would anyway.

This makes it very simple for situations like:

  • Large-scale team achievements
  • Issuing different values of reward across a whole organisation
  • Rewarding staff across multiple sites
  • Needing to reward mobile or remote staff

It also works for rewarding a single employee, too. It doesn’t matter if you’re rewarding long service, reaching milestones, or anything else.

It’s simple and effective when you use a reloadable plastic gift card.

Customer gratitude

Our Member Benefits card is the customer-facing version of the Everyday Benefits card. Rewarding your customers for their positive behaviour has two benefits:

  • Boosting loyalty through rewards
  • Building more positive behaviour in the future

Reward for pure longevity, buying promoted products, referrals, and more. Anything that makes sense for your business and your customers.

The customer doesn’t even need their card on them – you only need to keep their card number in your database to top it up.

You can then email or call them to say thank you after the top-up. Or say it face-to-face when they’re on the premises.

Talk to us

By the way, if any of this sounds like a good idea for your business, get in touch. We’re experts on this, and we always want to talk about it.

We’d love to guide you through setting up a customer or staff reward scheme.

Use the form at the bottom of this page, or get in touch on our contact page.

Drop the idea that a plastic gift card is a one-dimensional product

A reloadable gift card lives many lives. Especially multi-retailer plastic gift cards like ours. One reloadable Love2shop Gift Card is access to fashion , a holiday, a skydiving experience, cinemas and more.

What makes reloadable Love2shop Gift Cards so special

Love2shop Gift Cards are among the most exciting reward products in the UK. Spend them in-store at more than 95 popular stores, or exchange card balance online for our e-gift cards.

The e-gift card exchange on Love2shop.co.uk lets cardholders swap the funds on their gift card for an extra set of brands.

Combined, reloadable Love2shop Gift Cards offer a huge choice of high street retailers, online shopping, holidays, exclusive experiences and more.

Read more about our gift cards here.

service awards should start at year one

Service awards should start at one year. Here’s why:

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Service awards are something we always advocate for. But most companies leave it a few years to get them started.

We see our clients waiting until an employee has five, ten or even 20 years of service before they start recognising their staff. In our opinion, that’s far too late.

Service awards should start at one year for 5 reasons

It’s a small but important investment in the future

A lot of the power of recognition is in demonstrating that you’re interested and invested in your staff.

The first year of an employee’s time at your company is an important period. It’s time of adjustment, learning, and bedding in to a new place. A place you hope will be their home for a long time.

Tracking their first anniversary, and recognising, improves employee perception of their role. That perception endures as the years wear on, so it’s important to take early opportunities to build it.

Service awards are effective

Recognition has proven positive effects on engagement, productivity, motivation, loyalty and more. You can read more about the nitty gritty of that here, but the jist is simple.

When there’s so much evidence of the positive effects of recognition, you’d have to be mad to not jump on your first chance to use it.

It’s often expected

“Employees expect that someone at least remembers they’ve been there a year.”

Employees aren’t going to expect to get a cash-value reward after one year. But they will expect that someone at least remembers they’ve been there a year.

Even if it feels like it’s a small milestone for you, a year is a significant part of someone’s life to spend in one place.

Starting your service award schemes at one year makes that time feel well-spent. It also validates expectations from employees that their first first year get noticed.

You don’t have to pay for service awards

Recognition is as powerful, if not more powerful, than a cash-value item. You don’t have to put your hand in your pocket for an employee with one year under their belt.

Starting your service awards and recognition at one year only costs you a bit of time.

It’s good for your culture

Whenever you recognise someone in public, or hold up an achievement to the rest of your staff, you’re showing your employees something that you value.

In this instance, you’re showing that even the most modest loyalty is worthy of a celebration.

In turn, that’s a declaration to the rest of your staff to value loyalty and celebrate each other. Your leadership figures are the ones who need to take charge of that.

These things matter

Service awards are important. They drive quality relationships between staff, your leadership, and your company culture.

Starting at one year, you capitalise on the benefits of early recognition and set the tone for the future.

money-first recognition isn't what it's cracked up to be

Experts are right to worry about reward-only peer-to-peer schemes

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In a recent interview with BBC’s Wake up to Money, Dr Monica Franco-Santos, Reader at Cranfield School of Management, warned of the potential dangers around reward-only peer-to-peer recognition schemes.

An expert in compensation, Dr Franco-Santos argued that a cash, or cash-value, scheme only offers a temporary boost. Long term, they cause more problems than they solve.

We’re not surprised someone has pointed out there’s a danger to focusing exclusively on cash.

While we think those schemes are interesting, we think it’s a mistake to focus your peer-to-peer recognition scheme just on rewards. Recognition is what really makes a difference to your company.

Recognition is the real quiz

As we said, we’re surprised those companies are prioritising financial rewards over recognition itself.

Our platform, Shout!, puts the recognition before rewards for a good reason. Cash and cash-value rewards can encourage unusual, and even unethical, behaviour.

When only cash-value rewards are at stake, someone will almost inevitably participate in bad faith.

By putting recognition first, you put your company culture and the relationships between employees first.

The doctor’s orders

In her BBC interview, Dr Franco-Santos pointed to six assumptions that would have to be true to make a reward-focused peer-to-peer system reasonable.

We’ll share the expert’s list, and our response, but filtered through our recognition-first approach:

Performance can be measured in an accurate and reliable way

False

However, we’d argue the toss on this one. Recognition isn’t just about performance, it’s about culture and relationships.

There’s hard and soft metrics that need to be embraced. That includes turnover and productivity figures as well as engagement survey results and one-to-ones with staff.

Employees are unbiased

False

But who is? Everyone lives with their own set of pressures that influence our value system.

There’s always a separation between the pressures on a manager and the pressures shared between the team they manage.

Part of the foundation of peer-to-peer recognition is acknowledging that separation, and acknowledging that employees need a way to celebrate positive behaviour among themselves.

Employee pay attention to the “good” things their peers do

True

And our platform is the evidence, even just internally.

I know for a fact I can hop on to our internal deployment of Shout! and see employees recognising each other for achievements, being helpful, and more.

Employees have the knowledge to assess what matters to them, what reflects the company’s values, and highlight positive behaviour.

And, as we pointed out above, they can do that in ways that managers can’t.

Employees appreciate points or money above anything else

False

Definitely not true, but with a twist: employees value a feeling of appreciation almost as much as they value money.

In fact, a lot of employees would move just for a workplace where they feel like they’re an appreciated part of a team, even without a pay rise.

Recognition is what makes those staff feel valued.

Employees are willing to collaborate

True

Every day we see that employees are willing to collaborate.

We can only speak for our business, but being to collaborate and work towards a common goal is a vital element of our business, and we see that reflected in our clients too. In fact, collaboration between our own teams and our clients’ teams is also vital.

Everyone can think of a time in their life where money has poisoned a situation, socially or otherwise.

Focusing on building relationships between your staff members and your company culture is more valuable than any cash-value reward.

Where to buy Love2shop Gift Cards: Three places you can use right now

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If you want to know where to buy Love2shop Gift Cards, this is your guide.

There are three destinations available to you right now: Highstreetvouchers.com, the Love2shop team, and our self-serve platform.

Which outlet is right for you depends on who you’re buying for, and how much you’re planning to spend.

Buy Love2shop Gift Cards to day with:

HighStreetVouchers.com

HighStreetVouchers.com is the only dedicated customer-facing website for Love2shop products.

They accept any order for gift cards (or vouchers) under £10,000, and offer you next-day delivery.

If you need gift cards and you need them tomorrow, that’s the place you need to be.

Love2shop

You can’t do everything through Highstreetvouchers.com, though.

Ordering with them means no access to card customisation options, the expertise of our Business Development team, credit facilities, or our different delivery options.

To access those services, you need to talk to Appreciate.

The Love2shop team are your dedicated in-house client support network.

Part of their role is to help process orders for B2B clients, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Our team offer businesses advice on our products, help with executing reward and incentive schemes, and liaise with our design team to generate branded gift cards.

Crucially, they’re also the only way to secure a discount on a big or ongoing order.

We offer a sliding scale of discounts for any order over £1,000, so if you’re buying gift cards for a business and planning to spend more than £1,000 it’s well worth your time getting touch with our team.

Love2shop Self-Serve

Self-Serve is Love2shop in-house order platform.

Using Self-Serve grants you access to special occasion cards, pro-forma invoices, your purchase history, access to a pre-agreed credit account, any negotiated discounts, and even same-day delivery are available.

Self-Serve is ideal for any business that will buy Love2shop Gift Cards more than once.

The order tracking system makes it easy to monitor how much is being spent on rewards.

And, the administrator functions mean you can let other employees place orders for gift cards on your behalf while keeping tight control of budgets.

To get a Self-Serve account set up, just get in touch with the Love2shop and they’ll have your account set up within a day.

Talk to us

When you need to buy Love2shop Gift Cards, there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from using one of three destinations today.

If you have any questions at all, feel free to get in touch over the phone, email, or through the live chat on this page.

The team would love to speak to you.

How to pick quality employee recognition software you can depend on

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Employee recognition software merits the same careful consideration you would give to finance or sales management software.

Your employees’ engagement is important enough to justify priority on that level. You might feel a little bit overwhelmed by the providers, features and modules competing for your affection.

That’s no cause for panic. Refer to our checklist when you’re comparing and contrasting the field.

12 tips to pick the right employee recognition software

Supplier credibility

By credibility, we mean demonstrating a wider understanding of recognition and the role it plays in engaging employees.

If the supplier’s material is nothing but an unfiltered list of platform features, there’s a decent chance the developer is more enamoured with the software itself than how it actually helps your business and staff.

Ease of use

It’s unlikely your entire company is made up of tech wonks and millennials.

Employee recognition software should rely on familiar user interfaces, so staff will slip in and get to grips with minimal adjustment.

Reward options

Recognition doesn’t have to be led by cash-value rewards, or even use them at all, but your employee recognition software should come with the power to incorporate them.

It gives you an extra string to your bow for truly excellent performances.

Non-financial perks

Not everyone has the budget to indulge staff with cash-value rewards on the back of a recognition platform. That’s where you need a bit of creativity from your supplier.

Ask yourself how the platform rewards top performers without having to use financial rewards.

Peer-to-peer features

We talk all the time on this blog about the benefits of employees recognising each other.

Worthwhile employee recognition software absolutely has to include the ability for employees to recognise one another. Manager-led recognition has its place but peer-to-peer is just as vital.

Public noticeboards

Recognition, especially peer-to-peer recognition, gets a boost from being public.

Your staff’s achievements are held up for their peers to see, and they become little trophies on a shared digital space.

Administrator options

A birds’ eye view of what’s happening on any platform you use is vital.

Keeping track of who is recognising whom, for what, and when, gives managers insights on how your teams are interacting.

That kind of understanding can drive managerial decisions to bring teams together or capitalise on already strong relationships to make projects succeed.

Security

You don’t want a GDPR nightmare to ruin your brand new employee recognition software.

Make sure you know where your data gets stored, what kind of back-ups are in place, and how the supplier will respond to any outages.

Moderation features

While your staff will mean well when interacting with your employee recognition software, even good intentions can bleed into tricky areas.

Take a careful look at what kind of power your managers have to intervene in the software if it’s ever used in bad faith.

Support

Suppliers will do everything they can to idiot-proof their software. But someone always builds a better idiot. At some point, you’ll have a problem and need help.

What happens when, despite the best efforts of all and sundry, the software falls over? You need to ask who will respond, what they’ll do, and what kind of time frame you can expect that to be in.

Live demos

Never, ever buy or licence software based just on screenshots.

Insist on seeing a live demo and getting a chance to interact with the software live before even entertaining the idea of parting with your money.

Transition schedule

Ask about a transition or implementation schedule before you buy.

Not only will it smooth the process if you have it ahead of time, but seeing that a company has navigated implementations and transitions before is a good sign of their competence.

Now it’s up to you

Run through our checklist, but most importantly use your own common sense and intuition.

If it’s too good to be true it often is. HR software is a buyer’s market; you can afford to shop around make sure you’re completely confident before making a decision.