Some of you reading this will have had your battles with colleagues about getting this line item into the budget. Some see travel incentives as a frivolous, extraneous expenditure with no real value. But that’s a little crazy. The truth is that travel incentives carry a huge ROI. You’re investing in your people and it’s your people who make the wheels of profit and productivity go around. Your human resources are well worth the investment. To say that people are expendable; that they can easily be replaced, is a short-sighted assertion. You’ve already made an investment in your people, so solidifying the relationship by offering incentives grows it. It helps prevent costly turnover and builds team engagement.
Study after study has definitively shown that travel incentives give back, at more than a 4-1 ratio (Oxford Economics USA, 2009). That’s not chump change. That’s a stunning ROI. To achieve a similar effect, rates of compensation would need to be increased by 8% - 9%. A travel incentive is not an expense, unless you fail to apprehend the full import of the old maxim “You have to spend money to make money”. With travel incentives, spending money most certainly will make you money.
A well-executed travel incentive program has spin off benefits that every business should be keenly interested in. Of great interest is the impact of incentives like these on productivity, morale and retention. Healthy competition generates buzz and excitement and inspires employees to go beyond “getting by at work”. You know your employees have the seeds of greatness within them (or they wouldn’t be working for you). Nurturing those seeds to the point of bearing fruit is what travel incentives can achieve. Morale in any organization picks up dramatically when there’s an experience held out as the brass ring. In an economic culture which increasingly values experiences, offering travel incentives to your top performers is a smart business practice. Travel incentives keep people engaged and turned on to your mission. There is no revenue drainer more voracious than turn over. Travel incentives shore up retention, saving your business valuable capital that might be put to better use elsewhere. When employees don’t feel appreciated, motivated, or challenged, they’re likely to move on. Travel incentives which speak to your employees have been shown to keep them on board. When you keep your brightest and best engaged, happy and on board, you’re moving your organization in the right direction, with all the right people on the bus.
Incentive Travel Group has been creating travel incentive programs for companies like yours for more than 20 years. We’re the travel incentive experts who know our way around the sector, having built strong relationships with vendors all over the USA and beyond. Our approach to travel incentives engages your employees, building inspiring trips, meetings and team-building events that keep your employees motivated and inspired. Contact us. Travel incentives are not an expense. They’re smart business.
