Research confirms employers are positive about the future of incentives
Reward and recognition: the perfect combination for sustainable business success - the latest incentives research by Accor Services - confirms a growing number of employers are embracing reward and recognition to help drive engagement and meet wider business targets and objectives.
An effective and successful reward and recognition strategy can deliver significant, tangible results for an organisation. It can enable employers to link performance management with learning and development opportunities, encourage a high performance culture within the business, support recruitment and retention strategies and enable employers to get more value from their benefits budget.
"The perception and role of reward and recognition in today's organisations is evolving as more employers recognise the potential for rewards and incentives to go beyond the 'traditional' realm of sales targets," comments Colin Hodgson, sales director at Capital Incentives, Accor Services’ specialist incentives division.
Employers are taking every opportunity to reward
When it comes to the type of reward and recognition schemes today's organisations are using, the study confirms that employers really are taking advantage of a range of opportunities to reward, recognise and incentivise their people. And many employers that don’t have a current scheme in place are seriously considering its introduction in the future.
| What incentive and reward schemes do you currently operate or are thinking about implementing? | ||
|---|---|---|
| Currently offer | Considering | |
| Long service award | 62% | 6% |
| Reward and recognition | 61% | 18% |
| Sales incentives | 48% | 9% |
| Suggestion schemes | 34% | 15% |
| Christmas 'thank you' | 28% | 6% |
| Environmental schemes | 16% | 11% |
| Customer / consumer loyalty | 11% | 4% |
| Mystery shopping | 6% | 4% |
| Channel incentive programme | 5% | 3% |
Employers are also using a wide range of tactics to reward their people for their hard work, with vouchers (62%) and cash (52%) being the most popular solutions among employers. These popular rewards are working alongside solutions such as merchandise (14%), charitable donations (12%) and reward cards (10%) in many organisations.
It's interesting that over half of organisations (53%) surveyed have opted to run an annual reward and recognition programme while only 8% have selected to offer the opportunity to reward and recognise their employees on a daily basis.
"It's likely that these annual reward and recognition schemes encompass more traditional methods, such as 'employee of the year'. But it's reassuring to know that employers are choosing to reward their people on a more regular basis - for many an annual 'pat on the back' is simply not good enough anymore - and it's likely that employers who reach their people with more frequent reward and recognition will witness higher participation and engagement levels from their efforts," comments Colin Hodgson.
Successful reward and 'forward thinking' managers
The research also highlights a clear division between organisations that are reliant on ‘forward thinking’ managers who manage and implement the reward and recognition programme themselves compared with more individual and localised schemes that don't integrate reward and recognition across the organisation.
Inevitably perhaps, in the current economic climate, though, many employers are under pressure to deliver increased engagement with incentives and reward with the same – or in some cases, less – budget. Of those we talked with, 59% expected their organisation’s resources allocated to incentives and reward to stay the same in the coming year while only 30% expected them to increase.
