Some business owners tend to not see incentive trips as an option when it comes to motivating employees and increasing their capital, but this is a common misconception. Using an exotic incentive trip as a motivational tool can increase your revenue and keep your work force efficient long after the plane ride home.
Of course, with all employee incentives, be they raises, bonuses or incentive trips, cost and ROI are examined to determine the most efficient way to reward employees while stimulating higher productivity. While at first glance the incentive trip may appear to be an extravagant expense, in reality a well-executed incentive trip program can end up paying for itself.
Make the Incentive Trip Worth While
For starters, an incentive trip has to be unique and special to inspire the ranks to pull out all the stops and reach beyond their usual sales or productivity goals. Consider the average demographic of your staff when coming up with a trip; what appeals to boomers will most likely be a snooze for millennials. Try to find a happy medium that all of your employees will want to participate in.
Don’t limit ideas to the destinations only. A memorable incentive trip is the product of various creative elements woven together as a theme. A trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico alone sounds pretty fun, but by adding various excursions, local events, and creative dining experiences—brunch on the water’s edge featuring a fish fry of the local catch—will add to the allure of the proposed trip.
Get Your Staff Excited About Their Reward
To ensure that the increase in productivity will offset the expense involved in offering an incentive trip, execution, promotion, and follow-through are essential. To slap a poster on the wall in the break room and announce the trip at one company meeting is not going to sustain interest in the prize.
To create buzz and energy around the trip, there must be consistent promoting of it through weekly email blasts, mid-management rallying of the troops, and offering the exciting details of the trip as motivation.
The incentive trip needs to be talked up and kept fresh in the minds of the staff for it to culminate in their continued efforts. The trip should include not only leisure time and sight seeing, but also interactive sessions and team-building activities that will further the cost benefits through networking, deepening friendships, and brainstorming that will likely result from the trip.
The incentive trip can be a powerful motivational tool that not only increases productivity while enhancing the work culture, but they can foster unforgettable memories for years to come.
Why Should I Consider an Incentive Trip for My Company?
Let’s compare and contrast a more traditional motivation tool to an incentive trip.
Bonus Checks
Let’s say that you give out those holiday bonuses the way that you have for years. This is a tried and true way to motivate your staff to meet their goals for the year, but it is a little impersonal. People like money though so what is the problem?
The problem you could run into with bonus checks is that your staff will spend them quickly and with the stress of the holidays or life in general this check will go towards forgettable purchases or bills. Everyone grabs their check and goes their separate ways to spend it as they please. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but there is no team building or sense of camaraderie behind it. Actually depending on how you split the bonus checks up it can turn employees against each other, creating a hostile environment and demotivating some of your staff. This can lead to decreases in productivity and possibly a decrease in revenue.
The upside to bonus checks is that they are easy. You go to your billing department, ask how much you have to give out at the end of the year and split that up as you see fit.
Incentive Trips
An incentive trip is something your staff will be able to talk and bond over long after they are back at their desks. This builds trust between employees and creates a more productive, positive work environment. Let’s say you hire in new employees the next year after the incentive trip has been long over. The incentive trip will be talked about by those rewarded the year before and motivate new staff members to meet and exceed sales goals, this will build healthy competition between employees rather than them resenting one another because someone got $500.00 more on their bonus check.
Incentive trips can be a bit pricey, there are inexpensive ways to plan them, but this combined with the planning involved are why bringing on a company such as MTI Events can be a life saver, they take the weight of planning the incentive trip off of your shoulders. MTI Events will work with you to create the perfect trip to show your employees that you appreciate their hard work and dedication.
