Work & Fun: How Can a CEO Deliver This Winning Combination?

July 14, 2015 / in Press and News

From permitting beer drinking in the workplace to allowing employees to work from home, employee-friendly CEOs have tried about everything to make work feel less like work and more like fun. While most employees are gracious enough to accept whatever concessions a CEO throws their way, the fact remains: Some types of rewards are more effective than others at combining work and fun in a manner in which the latter doesn’t detract from the former.

Incentive-Based Trips Are a Great Option

Incentive-based trips are exactly what they sound like: travel opportunities that employees receive when they meet the requirements to receive them. At most companies, incentive-based trips are tied to hitting a sales goal. For example, a CEO might offer an incentive-based trip to his or her sales team if they exceed last year’s sales goals by 20 percent, or offer the same trip opportunity to an employee who reduced operating costs by a similar margin.

While incentive-based trips are effective because productivity, such as performing within the workplace, offering employees an incentive-based trip makes perfect sense from a business perspective. But what exactly makes them so effective? Here are four important reasons to consider offering an incentive-based trip.

1. The Reward is Tangible

A reward for hard work, there is nothing subjective about an incentive-based trip. Employees know that, if they meet the stated goal, they will be golfing in Ireland, snorkeling in Key West, soaking up spa treatments in Malibu, or enjoying a similarly fun type of trip. As they work toward the goal, they can continually envision the reward to help them stay motivated to succeed.

2. Employees Know What to Expect

Employees at thriving companies know they’ll receive raises and bonuses for working hard. However, exactly what those raises and bonuses amount to is often unknown, until employees see it at year’s end on paper. An incentive-based trip doesn’t involve any guesswork. Employees know what they will receive, which can make them more motivated to receive it.

3. It Encourages Business Productivity

One of the problems of combining work activities and fun activities in the same environment is that the fun aspect can act as a counteraction to productivity. Often, it’s better to take the “fun” in a reward for productivity and combine it on activities with work processes. Ultimately, the goal is to boost productivity in a capacity that increases the bottom line. Making an incentive-based trip the light at the end of the yearly work tunnel helps promote productivity.

4. Can Be Highly Cost Effective

An incentive-based trip can be a cost effective way to reward employees. For example, say you have a sales team of 25 people that would receive raises and bonuses totaling $1 million at year’s end. Instead of offering raises and bonuses, you decide to offer a group trip that would cost $250,000 — which equals roughly $10,000 more than a yearly award that adds six figures to your company’s bottom line by using a trip as a performance-based reward.

Contact Us Today

If you’re a CEO who would like to add more fun to the work environment, offering employees an incentive-based trip is a good option for the reasons above. However, to make the trip a success, you may need a service such as Incentive Travel Solutions to plan incentive-based trips. If so, the experienced professionals at Incentive Travel Solutions are here to help.

We have assisted many businesses and organizations with planning captivating trips to desirable destinations worldwide. From helping choose a destination, to anticipating the departure of prizes, to handling web-based registration processes, we can facilitate almost any aspect of an incentive-based trip. Simply put, we handle the logistics while you focus on business.

For more information about our services, call us today at (704) 540-1482, or fill out our contact form. We look forward to helping you plan an amazing trip to remember!