Employee Rewards Programs | Digital Gift Card Incentives for Employees

Why Businesses Use Tango Card for Employee Reward Programs

It can be difficult to find a simple way to send rewards to employees. With Tango Card, you can easily send and track gift cards in one free platform.

Whether you’re starting a new employee rewards program or refreshing one that’s already in place, digital gift cards can bring you closer to your goals.

Why Digital Gift Cards?
How to Build a Reward Program That Drives Employee Engagement
What Other Professionals Are Saying
Simplified, Easy Reporting
Customer Support for You and Your Employees
A Tango Card Solution for Every Business Need

Why Digital Gift Cards?

Gourmet coffee, fleece blankets, chocolate bars with company-branded wrappers—chances are, you’ve considered them as types of employee rewards. But not all your employees drink coffee or eat chocolate, which leaves you wondering how to effectively recognize all members of your team. Simply put, finding a single gift that checks all the boxes for being desirable, budget friendly, and effective in driving engagement is difficult. Here’s how gift cards can make your decision easier.

Employees Like Having a Choice

When it comes to receiving rewards, your employees love having a choice. And the ability to choose is exactly what gift cards provide. They arrive instantly, making recipient satisfaction immediate. On your end, the ability to instantly reach your employees—including those living and working internationally—adds convenience and ease.

Gift Cards Are Budget Friendly

Another benefit comes down to budget. Because 100% of your budget goes to the reward—not to fees—gift cards are a budget-friendly solution. You don’t even need a large budget for your program to be successful. Here at Tango Card, we’ve had success with our own internal peer-to-peer recognition program using $10 digital gift cards.

Gift Cards Offer Digital Advantages

With digital gift cards, there are clear advantages that simplify your rewards program. When you work with us, the need to manually track and log the gift cards you offer to employees is eliminated. You also no longer need to visit retailors directly to purchase gift cards, which eliminates the need to store them at your office.

How to Build an Employee Reward Program That Works

Tango Card’s Director of Employee Experience, Becky Hathaway, recommends keeping these five elements in mind when building or updating an employee recognition gift program.

1: Gain Leadership Buy-in

Gaining leadership buy-in at your company is a crucial first step. Before meeting with your leadership team, establish why you want to create a rewards program. Like many companies, your current goal may be to keep remote employees engaged. For a rewards program to be successful, your leadership must understand that recognition plays a significant role in keeping employees engaged—especially if your company stays remote.

During this step, you’ll also want to discuss cost. Working with Tango Card is free, so from a budget standpoint, the amount you spend on your program is up to you.

2: Set Parameters

When setting parameters, the first step is to establish who you’re rewarding and why. Different programs—whether it’s manager incentivization or peer-to-peer recognition—will require different parameters and budgets. For example, here at Tango Card, we have a $10 limit for our peer-to-peer recognition program, which is built through an integration with TinyPulse. For programs like this, we recommend establishing a limit—whether it’s granting unlimited sending or specifying a quarterly or yearly amount.

3: Set Up Reporting

Before your program launches, you’ll want to set up reporting. Tango Card’s products have built-in reporting, making it easy for HR, payroll, and benefits professionals to pull reports on a regular basis. Here are the most important elements to include in your reports:

• Name of gift card sender
• Name of gift card recipient
• Reason gift card was sent
• Gift card amount
• Date gift card was sent

4: Send Company-wide Communication

Once your plan is approved, the next step is to announce it. Share why you created the program, how it should be used, and where employees can find any supporting resources or tools. For professionals rolling out a plan for the first time, we recommend announcing it in an open forum where questions can be asked directly. You’ll also want to make sure any new team members are aware of your program. We recommend incorporating it into new-hire orientations.

5: Monitor It

After launching your reward program, be sure to monitor progress and look out for trends at least once a week. For example, if you notice an employee receiving lots of rewards, it may indicate they’re a good candidate for a raise or promotion. Though trust is an important part of any successful program, it’s also good to note any red flags, including:

• Employees who frequently send rewards to the same colleagues
• Name of gift card recipient
• Rewards that are sent without a listed reason

Once you consistently see that your program is being used correctly, you can monitor progress on a monthly or quarterly basis.

To learn more about creating a successful employee recognition gift card program at your organization, watch our free webcast.

What Other Professionals Are Saying

We streamline and improve the way employee experience and HR professionals recognize employees. Here’s what other professionals are saying:

“Employee engagement is a significant aspect of our credit union business. Tango Card has allowed me to continue and actually improve employee engagement with my team. The satisfaction numbers from my department have risen year over year.”
—Dave Hunter, Member Loan Center Manager, Washington State Employees Credit Union

“Making it faster to reward our staff as well as giving them so much more flexibility to choose what cards they want has been a great resource for us. We have loved this value.”
—Dan Luthi, Accounting Director, Ignite Spot Outsourced Accounting

“Tango Card helps by reducing time spent on rewards program delivery and increases employee satisfaction due to choices offered.”
—HR Director, health care industry

“Our employees both remote or onsite can all access their rewards immediately—must faster and cleaner process. Our operations team loves the tracking that we have for spending, delivery and budgeting.”
—HR Manager, computer services industry

From saving time and money to improving engagement and employee experiences—here’s why our customers work with us.

Of the surveyed professionals that work with us, 88% have saved time and 68% have saved money.

Simplified and Easy Reporting

When you work with us, there’s no need to maintain spreadsheets or tracking documents. We offer simplified, easy reporting in one free platform. Our built-in reports can be quickly downloaded and organized at a company or department level to meet the different needs of HR, payroll, and benefits professionals.

Reporting and Taxes

You’re probably wondering how gift cards will impact your company’s taxes. Like most items of monetary value, gift cards come with rules and regulations, which we touch on in our gift card taxes article. When it comes to gift cards, tax-compliance professionals appreciate having reports that detail the number of rewards sent, and to which employees. These reports can streamline a company’s ability to gross up.

Consult your tax advisor about specifics that apply to your company and program.

Customer Support for You and Your Employees

Our support team isn’t just available to you, it’s available to your employees too. We’re happy to provide support for all your reward recipients, so you’re not left fielding redemption questions or troubleshooting technical issues.

Tango Card Solutions That Meet Every Business Need

Different businesses need different reward programs, which is why Tango Card offers several solutions. Whether you want to create a reward experience with your company’s branding or integrate a digital gift card catalog into an app, we have a solution that can help you reach your goals.

Ordering Methods

Rewards Genius

Rewards Genius is a free web portal for managing rewards and incentives programs. In this self-serve portal, you can:

• Order Reward Links, in bulk or one at a time, which are immediately delivered to recipients
• Create custom email templates
• Create and fund accounts, check balances, and view funding history
• Manager user access and permission levels
• Review order history and download reports
• Resend rewards with the click of a button

How can you use Reward Genius?

Many professionals use Reward Genius for sales and employee gift incentives. Whether it’s in celebration of a milestone or in honor of an achievement—like signing a new client or crushing a quarterly goal—professionals can use Rewards Genius to drive engagement with gift card incentives for employees. Between shipping, tracking, and endless spreadsheets, traditional incentives have been challenging to organize and manage. That’s why many professionals rely on Reward Genius—it does the tedious work of managing employee gift cards for you in one free platform.

Reward Link

Reward Link is the standard reward offering in Rewards Genius, and for good reason. This gift of choice, which is our most popular option, gives your employees a wide selection of desirable gift cards. With Reward Link, you can instantly send rewards to the inboxes of your employees on an email template that’s branded with your logo and messaging.

How can you use Reward Link?

Many professionals use Reward Link for spot rewards because it offers an easy solution for recognizing employees that go above and beyond their day-to-day responsibilities. Reward Link makes it simple for managers to email gift card incentives to employees—just minutes after they go the extra mile. When the employee opens the email, they click the Reward Link and are directed to the Reward Link catalog, which has 100+ global brands to choose from. Managers can easily customize the email templates with their logo and branding, and also add a personalized message that specifically calls out why the employee is appreciated.

Rewards as a Service (RaaS) API

To directly integrate rewards within your internal systems, your development team may be interested in an API integration. Our API is built to power rewards and incentives in apps and platforms. It contains multiple methods to support simple reward automation or platform-wide implementation. With our API, you can:

Access our catalog of 350+ e-gift cards, prepaid cards, and donations
Have us send your e-gift cards on branded email templates or deliver them within your user interface
Use our catalog, which contains descriptions, disclaimers, reward images, and other brand details

Access order history, track email delivery, and resend rewards

How have companies used Rewards as a Service (RaaS) API?

Companies wanting to leverage HR automation have used our integrations to fuel and encourage peer-to-peer recognition. Everyone loves getting recognized for their work, which makes peer-to-peer recognition ideal for fueling employee engagement. Peer-to-peer recognition is something many HR professionals want to encourage; however, finding the resources to effectively support it can be challenging. That’s where our product integrations shine. For example, our integration with TinyPulse makes it easy for your employees to reward each other with our gift cards. And when integrated with platforms like Microsoft Teams and Slack, your entire company can follow employee recognition in real time.

Sales as a Service (SaaS) Integrations

Send and automate rewards in the systems you’re already using. We can integrate Rewards Genius with your CRM, MAS, and task automator to drive results. We’ve also integrated automations with HRIS platforms using Workato.

When it comes to our solutions, there isn’t a single way to use them. And there’s no right or wrong answers. We offer a variety of solutions because employee experience managers and HR professionals have different business needs that require different employee gift card programs.