Reposted from Meetings & Incentive Travel - click here for link
Peering into the looking glass for incentive travel trends, one key area stands out amongst the rest as a clear and distinct focal point – incentive travel design. The industry has greatly capitalized on driving operational cost efficiencies and achieving flawless execution. But, it’s of even greater importance that we ensure our strategies are leading us down the best paths of participant engagement if we’re going to achieve today’s more aggressive business objectives. This requires a more people-centered set of design practices that provide for approaches that are more connected to and aligned with participant stakeholders. Here are five elements to consider as you begin incentive travel design discussions for future programs:
1. Participant-Driven Design
Participants having a stronger hand in helping co-create incentive travel design will continue to rise. While we’ve tended to ask participants in the past what they thought about program experiences, we’re realizing more and more that we also need to ask them what they think as well - beforehand. It’s this forward looking view that helps organizations unlock the greater potential value that exists for better motivating incentive travel participants. This practice will be the linking pin for those organizations that are looking to move performance outcomes from good to better.
2. Beyond Generational Diversity
Today’s participants are more diverse than ever. This is commonly thought of as “generational differences”, but incentive travel design decisions have to go beyond this as a sole consideration point. For instance, experiential, educational and cultural diversity are other considerations that simple generational segmentations don’t consider. These and other forms of diversity are influencing how we think and act at both the organizational and participant level. The growing engagement of incentive travel participant stakeholders in conversations during the design stage will help lead to improved decisions, stronger motivational appeal, and better business outcomes.
3. Maintaining Motivational Engagement
There have been a number of consolidations – organizationally and incentive travel specific - the past few years, plus a shift to more open-ended incentive program structures. These are a few examples that are resulting in more participation and more earners on programs. So, what about the ability to effectively network, interact between peers, management, leadership, etc.? That doesn’t have to diminish, and organizations are looking for what their best options are from the participants’ viewpoint. These are resulting in program waves, where two or more groups follow one another at a destination to maintain cost and operational efficiencies but also retain high levels of engagement with more manageable attendee levels. In addition, organizations are also creating tiered performance thresholds; of which, keep earners engaged even after they achieve minimum program goals so that they have the opportunity to further plus-up their reward and recognition experience even further.
4. Family Friendly Incentive Travel
About 70 percent of American children live in households where both parents are in the workforce. Now, add to that that the average American only has 13 days off per year. Sure, we now have more mobility thanks to technology, but nearly half of American workers are now bringing work home with them regularly. Incentive travel family participants are struggling to create some degree of work/life balance. Program design considerations with family friendly guest policy features will create a significant shift for incentive travel strategies over the next few years. As such, organizations need to avoid making broad assumptions and gain a clearer perspective on how they can be not only more accommodating, but friendlier to participants with a family. What’s the potential for distraction from agendas? Would participants’ without children mind? Do we help pay for, subsidize or create buy-in rate options? These and other questions need to be identified and answered to secure the longer-term relevancy of your program’s design.
5. Redesigning Qualification Structures
So, the waters of open-ended versus closed-ended qualification structures will be tested once again, but there’s more to it. Here’s the thing, this approach to rewarding and recognizing performance comes with higher performance standards for achievement. A limiting factor is that closed-ended incentive travel qualification structures are often meaningful to only a discrete number within the participant base – top performing “A-players”. Breakthrough performance will require new thinking about how to engage the broader participant audience. This will bring in deeper discussions on qualification structures (open vs. closed) as well as the potential returns for added, more targeted incentive travel program tiers – think of these as programs based upon what levels of performance participants achieve. These added programs might involve different features, or be totally separate designs to provide a stairway of motivated performance.
Understanding what’s important from the participants’ viewpoint has to do more with what views are shared between the organization and their program participants – past, present and future. This doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it has to involve active and on-going efforts to clearly understand and gain insights on participants’ needs, wants and preferences. Every organization is unique, so too are their incentive travel participants. Running a one-size-fits-all design approach can be a gamble and operational hazard in the short, mid and long-term.
Peering into the looking glass for incentive travel trends, one key area stands out amongst the rest as a clear and distinct focal point – incentive travel design. The industry has greatly capitalized on driving operational cost efficiencies and achieving flawless execution. But, it’s of even greater importance that we ensure our strategies are leading us down the best paths of participant engagement if we’re going to achieve today’s more aggressive business objectives. This requires a more people-centered set of design practices that provide for approaches that are more connected to and aligned with participant stakeholders. Here are five elements to consider as you begin incentive travel design discussions for future programs:
1. Participant-Driven Design
Participants having a stronger hand in helping co-create incentive travel design will continue to rise. While we’ve tended to ask participants in the past what they thought about program experiences, we’re realizing more and more that we also need to ask them what they think as well - beforehand. It’s this forward looking view that helps organizations unlock the greater potential value that exists for better motivating incentive travel participants. This practice will be the linking pin for those organizations that are looking to move performance outcomes from good to better.
2. Beyond Generational Diversity
Today’s participants are more diverse than ever. This is commonly thought of as “generational differences”, but incentive travel design decisions have to go beyond this as a sole consideration point. For instance, experiential, educational and cultural diversity are other considerations that simple generational segmentations don’t consider. These and other forms of diversity are influencing how we think and act at both the organizational and participant level. The growing engagement of incentive travel participant stakeholders in conversations during the design stage will help lead to improved decisions, stronger motivational appeal, and better business outcomes.
3. Maintaining Motivational Engagement
There have been a number of consolidations – organizationally and incentive travel specific - the past few years, plus a shift to more open-ended incentive program structures. These are a few examples that are resulting in more participation and more earners on programs. So, what about the ability to effectively network, interact between peers, management, leadership, etc.? That doesn’t have to diminish, and organizations are looking for what their best options are from the participants’ viewpoint. These are resulting in program waves, where two or more groups follow one another at a destination to maintain cost and operational efficiencies but also retain high levels of engagement with more manageable attendee levels. In addition, organizations are also creating tiered performance thresholds; of which, keep earners engaged even after they achieve minimum program goals so that they have the opportunity to further plus-up their reward and recognition experience even further.
4. Family Friendly Incentive Travel
About 70 percent of American children live in households where both parents are in the workforce. Now, add to that that the average American only has 13 days off per year. Sure, we now have more mobility thanks to technology, but nearly half of American workers are now bringing work home with them regularly. Incentive travel family participants are struggling to create some degree of work/life balance. Program design considerations with family friendly guest policy features will create a significant shift for incentive travel strategies over the next few years. As such, organizations need to avoid making broad assumptions and gain a clearer perspective on how they can be not only more accommodating, but friendlier to participants with a family. What’s the potential for distraction from agendas? Would participants’ without children mind? Do we help pay for, subsidize or create buy-in rate options? These and other questions need to be identified and answered to secure the longer-term relevancy of your program’s design.
5. Redesigning Qualification Structures
So, the waters of open-ended versus closed-ended qualification structures will be tested once again, but there’s more to it. Here’s the thing, this approach to rewarding and recognizing performance comes with higher performance standards for achievement. A limiting factor is that closed-ended incentive travel qualification structures are often meaningful to only a discrete number within the participant base – top performing “A-players”. Breakthrough performance will require new thinking about how to engage the broader participant audience. This will bring in deeper discussions on qualification structures (open vs. closed) as well as the potential returns for added, more targeted incentive travel program tiers – think of these as programs based upon what levels of performance participants achieve. These added programs might involve different features, or be totally separate designs to provide a stairway of motivated performance.
Understanding what’s important from the participants’ viewpoint has to do more with what views are shared between the organization and their program participants – past, present and future. This doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it has to involve active and on-going efforts to clearly understand and gain insights on participants’ needs, wants and preferences. Every organization is unique, so too are their incentive travel participants. Running a one-size-fits-all design approach can be a gamble and operational hazard in the short, mid and long-term.
