Why you should use mobile cash rewards for end-of-year staff incentives
There’s always a rush to close more business and handle more customer requests towards the end of the year. Your clients are preparing for the holidays, clearing their inboxes and making sure as many projects as possible can be completed to guarantee a guilt-free holiday. But without the right staff incentives, you’re likely to fight a losing battle. There’s a good chance that your staff are also feeling the rush, but fatigue from a taxing year may have forced them into holiday mode already.
It’s no secret that the end of the year makes staff feel less than enthusiastic about KPI and KSOs. It’s also no secret that businesses plan ahead and introduce staff incentives to counteract the decline in productivity.
Staff incentives: there’s a better solution out there
But not all staff rewards programmes are designed to produce the right results. For example, gift card programmes are actually harder to manage than most people are aware. The administrative costs associated with the acquisition of the cards, and the delivery to recipients makes them less user-friendly and more of a burden.
We proposed a more modern and effective way to incentivise your staff. Mobile cash rewards from TuYu make managing and rewarding your staff much simpler and also instant. If you’re wondering how to incentivise your team this year-end, here’s why you should consider using TuYu.
You get more control over your rewards
Gift card rewards programmes are notorious for being difficult to track. Office administrators are forced to rely on spreadsheets and this leads to more time spent on admin than necessary.
TuYu’s self-service portal shows a complete history of all transactions processed through your company’s account. This way, you can quickly and easily tell who you’ve rewards, how much of your budget is available and more.
Rewarding staff is easy and instant
Another challenge that gift card programmes present is the delay between qualifying for and receiving the reward. For example, if Sarah, a sales representative in your Durban office did all she needed to qualify for a R500 reward, but has to wait a week for her gift card to be delivered from your head office in Cape Town, Sarah is not going to be very thrilled about the wait.
Because our mobile application is linked to a user’s personal mobile phone, you can issue Sarah her reward as soon as she qualifies for it. There’s no need to wait for gift cards to be sent from one province to another and Sarah will likely work hard to be rewarded again.
Gift cards are easily lost and forgotten
Most people who receive gift cards like to keep them in a safe place. That safe place, however, is not one that’s often used for much else. Fast forward two weeks into the future and the gift card is a distant memory.
For a business, the reward was part of the budget, and most would be okay with the idea of the gift card never being used by an employee. But it’s a problem. If your staff are not using the gift cards you’ve issued, it shows they may be less inclined to work hard for a gift card next year.
Using TuYu, businesses can track what’s been used by staff. This means that you’ll be able to judge exactly how successful your incentive programme is, beyond simply handing out gift cards.
Users also spend more time on their phones, which means that redeeming mobile cash rewards is simpler and easier to do. In fact, we found our users to have a 92% redemption rate, which is leaps and bounds above that of gift cards.
More convenient
Issuing out gift cards can be a little tricky when it comes to deciding what denominations of cash to include on each card. For example, if you give an employee three cards with R100 each, holding onto three cards is a little inconvenient, but trying to remember which card you used last and having to take all three with on each shopping outing is bit much.
We’ve made our solution accessible to users with smart and feature phones. Best of all, staff only ever need to take their phones with when going shopping, something they’d ordinarily do. Funds also accumulate in one account as opposed to having multiple cards with multiple balances.
Fulfillment costs are lower
Most businesses are unaware of the costs associated with gift card programmes. Gift cards need to be delivered to the corporate who in turn sends them to the recipients. This requires the use of a courier service and the insurance fee should your gift cards go missing.
In a scenario where you’d like to incentivise staff in multiple provinces, the cost of shipping cards back and forth can grow rapidly. In some cases, physical card and fulfilment costs outweigh the value of the reward on the card.
At TuYu, on the other hand, everything we do is digital. Your self-service portal is used to reward staff directly and within seconds. There’s also no hard costs or risks associated with posting valuable vouchers.
Reusable
Gift cards are not designed to be reloaded with funds like mobile wallets are. Using our self-service portal, you can continue to reward staff with ongoing programmes.
Conclusion
Towards the end of every year, companies are looking for ways to enhance employee productivity. Staff incentives help, however older methods of rewarding staff, such as gift cards and vouchers, aren’t as effective anymore. Using TuYu’s mobile cash rewards, businesses are able to save money usually spent on the hard costs of running a gift card programme, easily administer rewards, track redemption rates, and instantly reward staff across the country.