Work incentives are a strategic bet in human resources management. A good incentive policy helps us:
– Motivate employees
– Retain talent
– Promote productivity
– Bilateral benefit (company-employee)
We would like to point out that – in the same way we mentioned when addressing the key elements of team building – incentives should be part of the company’s DNA to be truly useful. That is why it is essential to provide ourselves with an incentive plan to be developed in stages, one that is oriented towards specific objectives.
We may be discussing incentive trips here, but do remember that flextime, the choice of days off and vacation periods, achievement recognition and so on can also be considered incentives, as stated in this post by EAE Business School.
Incentive trips
Before moving forward, we will specify explicitly what we intend when we talk about an incentive trip. We consider an incentive trip one that is organized by a company and is aimed to part or all of its staff, with any of the following purposes:
– Rewarding your team for a job well done. Either for the achievement of some goals or for overcoming a difficult stage for the company.
– Promoting performance improvement. It can also be an effective motivational tool and, therefore, one that improves results in the midterm. We can, for example, announce our team’s goals in the context of an incentive trip.
– Presenting strategic changes. Sometimes, presenting changes outside the usual work context allows us to have a more relaxed atmosphere that will help us receive a more favorable reception for them. Consequently, we will avoid any prejudices that could put the presentation at risk.
– Increasing our teams’ cohesion and sense of belonging. The scenario of an incentive trip will make it possible for our team to get to know each other outside the workplace, as well as to discover common tastes or hobbies that generate links out of the work environment. It will also be useful when potentially having to smooth things over.
So far we have focused on teams composed of “our own” staff, but we must not forget that, sometimes, our company’s “internal” audiences may not be exactly those part of the payroll. Increasingly, firms resort to external personnel (recruiters, salespeople, outsourced employees, etc.). Incentive trips are also a very effective tool in our relationship with these groups, in the same way that they can be with our primary or even potential customers.
Although in this post we are concentrating on our own staff, most of what is described can be adapted to work with all collectives mentioned.
Very soon we will analyze the key aspects of an incentive trip.
If you want us to offer more information, propose a topic for future posts, or if you want to tell us your experience, we encourage you to leave us a comment.