work-incentives

Work Incentives: Incentive Travel Trips Versus Performance Bonuses

work-incentivesWhich would you rather receive: an employer-sponsored, free trip to a beautiful destination that includes a plethora of unique, entertaining events, or the money it would cost to send you on the trip in the form of a bonus check? If you aren’t accustomed to receiving big bonuses, you might be tempted choose the latter, but if sizeable performance bonuses have been a part of your employment history for several years, you might feel inclined to choose the unique trip instead.

This is one reason why thriving companies offer travel trips as work incentives to employees who perform at the top of their game. Often, these employees are considered “top talent” and have reaped the benefits of that status in the form of large, performance-based bonuses. “Money talks,” as the old saying goes, but for top talent, incentive travel trips often talk more convincingly, as it were, serving as ideal work incentives for the four reasons listed below.

  1. More Tangible Than Money

Receiving money is exciting, but only because receiving the things that money can buy is even more exciting. For most companies that offer them, incentive travel trips aren’t a way to economize on compensating top performers. Rather, they are a different way of compensating them — a reward that top performers might spend their generous bonuses on if they had the opportunity to do so. Due to the exceptional uniqueness of the trips, that chance seldom exists.

  1. Nearly Impossible to Recreate

The anatomy of an incentive travel trip is as follows: A company sends qualifying employees on an exciting journey that the company pays for. While on the trip, travelers experience unique forms of entertainment that are selected with the help of an incentive travel trip planner. Bonding with fellow employees while enjoying novel entertainment is a highly rewarding experience on a personal level, and is typically an experience that is almost impossible to create on one’s own.

  1. Improves Employee Relationships

For most companies, incentive travel trips are about more than rewarding top performers with unique travel experiences. The trips also serve to strengthen relationships between employees by having them share an unforgettable experience. When they return to the work after the trip, their strengthened relationships help foster a team environment that exhibits good morale. Simply rewarding employees with bonuses doesn’t promote these qualitative benefits.

  1. Doesn’t Replace Annual Bonuses

Companies that offer incentive travel trips seldom use them to replace annual bonuses. Due to budgetary considerations, bonuses may be smaller than they would be if the trips were not offered, but top performers aren’t left wishing that they had received bonuses instead of a trip to a special destination. Most companies offer incentive travel trips as rewards that extend beyond bonuses to further motivate a company’s most valuable performers to maintain top performance.

Start Planning Your Trip Today
Annual bonuses are great work incentives for rewarding employees for excellent performance, but incentive travel trips in the reward structure can deliver benefits that bonuses alone do not, particularly strong employee relationships that improve morale in the workplace. For assistance planning a trip that promotes these benefits, call us today at (704) 540-1482. We look forward to providing you and your dedicated employees with a work incentive like no other!

invest-in-your-people

Four Simple Strategies for Keeping Top Talent at Your Company

invest-in-your-peopleEvery company wants its work positions to be staffed with the best talent in the field, but motivating top talent to accept a job offer is only half the battle. Once top performers are on the payroll, you have to find a way to keep them there. There are several ways to do this, but four strategies stand out for their time-tested effectiveness at accomplishing the task. Below, we take a look at these four strategies in terms of their usefulness for keeping top talent employed.

  1. Hire Talent in the Proper Work Capacity

If you hire a top performing online marketing specialist as the webmaster for your company’s web pages, he or she might be able to do the job with closed eyes, but therein lies the problem. Instead of desiring “cake jobs”, top performers tend to like challenges in the workplace that let them exhibit their skills and add to them as they go. Lack of job satisfaction among top performers is one of the main reasons why companies fail at keeping top talent employed.

  1. Let Talent Lead When Appropriate

Top talent is identified as such for a reason: Top performing employees are often self-starters who proactively look for ways to increase their performance. Consequently, they often have insightful ideas about improving the execution of business processes, implementing cost saving measures, and more. You may be the boss, but letting your top performers help shape the way your company does business is a great way for keeping top talent where you want it: in-house.

  1. Reward Talent in Memorable Ways

If an employee is already considered top talent when your company hires him or her, you know that the person is almost certainly accustomed to receiving generous bonuses and raises. The individual will expect to receive these rewards from your company, too. So, what can you do to put your organization in a unique light in the eyes of the new hire? One option is offering incentive travel trips to unique destinations that create memories that will never be forgotten.

  1. Encourage Good Work Relationships

When workers are under the gun to meet business goals and experience stress, encouraging good work relationships is easier said than done. Because of their high performance value, top talent often experiences this situation. Consequently, creating good relationships outside the workplace, and then bringing them back into it, is a good option. One way to do this is to send top performers on an incentive travel trip that helps them bond individually and as a team.

Need Solutions for Keeping Top Talent?
If your company is searching for effective ways to keep top talent in the fold, there are several options to choose from, one of which is offering incentive travel trips to top performers. In addition strengthening your employees’ dedication to your company out of gratitude, offering great trips also fosters the benefits of better teamwork and improved workplace morale. For help planning the most rewarding incentive travel trips, give us a call today at (704) 540-1482.

attract-talent

How to Attract and Retain Top Talent: Six Strategies

attract-talentHighly talented business people are similar to exceptionally talented athletes: They often bring the organization that they represent more revenue than it would earn if they weren’t on the payroll. Savvy companies know this and consistently focus on separating the grain from the chaff when it comes to hiring new workers. Once the best workers are hired, however, the focus changes from getting them inside company walls to keeping them there for as long as possible.

Attracting Top Talent

To attract and retain top talent is a single yet dual endeavor. Before a company can show talented employees how great it is to be a part of the organization, it must often draw their attention away from other job opportunities and motivate them to accept the job offer. There are several ways to do this, with the strategies below being three of the most effective ones.

  1. Company Mission

Workers who are considered top talent often earn the consideration as a result more than pure talent. They’re also placed at the top of the talent ladder because they are highly passionate about the work they perform. Consequently, presenting them with a company mission statement that synchronizes with what they hope to accomplish through their job can be quite attractive.

  1. Salary / Benefits

After they’ve been in the workforce for a few years, most top talent job candidates are quite accustomed to receiving salary offers and benefits packages that rank at the top of national averages in terms of financial value. If your company hopes to compete with other companies that are trying to land top talent, it should plan on offering an elite salary / benefits package.

  1. Career Trajectory

Some top talent job candidates won’t hold a position long-term unless their employer offers them a career trajectory that paves the way to elite positions. After all, these types of positions are where their talent would naturally take them. When pitching an offer to a top talent worker for a specific job, be sure to mention other, more advanced positions for which they can qualify.

Retaining Top Talent

Many companies consider retaining top talent to be the hardest part of the how to attract and retain top talent equation. This is because highly talented workers have a reputation for moving from position to position until they finally discover the perfect work opportunity. Below are three time-tested strategies that companies can use to provide this type of employment opportunity.

  1. Performance Bonuses

For workers who have the talent to control their financial destiny at a company, performance bonuses are better motivators than flat bonuses, as they allow workers to truly earn more money from working extra hard. Flat bonuses help control expenses, but performance bonuses can offer something better: A sustained revenue boost from top workers performing their best.

  1. Incentive Travel Trips

Like performance bonuses, incentive travel trips reward workers for working diligently, but instead of offering a bonus check, the trips pay workers’ way to exciting destinations, where they experience elite lodging, dining and leisure activities. All the while, the trips help employees form closer relationships that increase their dedication to the company’s team environment.

  1. Hiring Other Top Talent

Because the financial rewards employees receive for top performance are tied to the financial performance of their employer, one of the best ways to keep top talent employed is to surround it with other top talent. This strategy also helps prevent top workers from feeling as if they need to carry their department on their back to achieve success — a situation that increases stress.

Interested in Incentive Travel Trips?
If your company is searching for effective strategies for retaining top talent, offering incentive travel trips should be at the top of the list. To help companies attract and retain top talent, Incentive Travel Solutions plans and executes elite incentive travel trips, handling all of the trip details so you and your best employees can simply relax and enjoy the special occasion.

To start the trip planning process, contact one of our travel specialists today by calling (704) 540-1482. We will help your company plan trips that its top performers will never forget!

Connemara-Ireland

Destination Matters – Incentive Travel Trip Planning

Destination Matters
Choosing a destination requires matching a client’s goals and objectives with budgets and travelers expectations.   The key to a successful destination search is experience and yes, more experience. The Team at Incentive Travel Solutions has operated incentive trips in 97 countries and over 200 cities around the world. Without an intimate understanding of a destination’s strengths and limitations, an incentive trip may not be successful.

Irish Eyes Are Smiling
In 2005, Incentive Travel Solutions had the pleasure of operating a client incentive trip for 80 of their key distributors and guests. After a lengthy destination search, Ireland was selected as the host country.  With many towns and regions to choose from in Ireland, it was decided to stay three nights in Killarney, two nights in Adare and a night in Ashford Castle.  The trip was a tremendous success primarily because the winners and their guests bonded so well with the local Irish people and the hotel employees. Experience with knowing the client’s personality and history, as well as their attendees for many years, help the ITS planning Team select the perfect destination year after year for this company’s President’s Club Trip.

Papal-Basilica-Saint-Peter in the Vatican.

Incentive Trips Crafted with Imagination & Vision

“I got a guy”… as the saying goes. At Incentive Travel Solutions we have many “guys” and ladies around the world that are critical to our success. Our key destination partnerships are vital to a flawless and memorable incentive travel program.

One such partnership is extremely special. The ITS travel partnership in Italy goes back almost 25 years. The partnership has become a friendship, and we are proud to share this relationship as well as all of our travel relationships with you, our clients and their special guests.

In 2014, our partners in Italy offered Incentive Travel Solutions and our clients a special event. Imagine your guests gathering for an evening out in Rome.  Imagine passing by the St. Peter’s Cathedral, one of the most recognizable churches throughout the world. Then, imagine turning into St. Peter’s square with your guests as they stare out the window, anxious to take pictures of this beautiful basilica. Now imagine, a private tour of the Vatican and Sistine Chapel without the thousands of visitors.   And, following the private tour, imagine a reception and dinner in the gardens of the Vatican. This dream can now be a reality thanks to the Incentive Travel Solutions planning Team and our special partnerships in Italy.

An incentive trip starts with an imagination and a vision. Turning that vision into a reality takes years of experience and dedication. Incentive Travel Solutions Team looks forward to sharing our vision and experience with you and your guests.