Employee Incentives News: A new way to offer incentives to reduce business costs

Does your business reward frugality? Would you expect to receive credits, points or thanks for opting to stay at a lower star rated hotel, or to travel by public transport over a taxi? It’s an area not all business are tackling, and it may be an unwise decision. Showing that you are a responsible company is more attractive to new employees. You may think employees want to work somewhere that allows employees to whizz around in taxis and eat out with no restrictions, but in fact, this shows a level of inefficiency and also unfairness based on job role. Why should some people have all the perks?

One company tackling this is Rocketrip, a system that allows employees to work to a budget for trips and business travel, gaining rewards for saving the business funds.

It works well because Rocketrip works seamlessly with travelers’ preferred booking sites or your existing travel solutions and the rewards are vast – savers can redeem their Rocketrip Points on our rewards store for cash cards, gift cards, travel perks, charitable donations, and more.

Founded in 2013, they estimate that they save businesses over $200 per trip. According to techcrunch, Rocketrip previously raised over $8 million in funding from Y Combinator, CrunchFund and others and raised an additional $9 million in funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from existing investors, Canaan Partners and Genacast Ventures in 2016.

That’s some spend!

Speaking to the NYTimes, Rocketrip founder, Dan Ruch, said of the concept:

“I came up with the concept in 2012, but it wasn’t really my idea,” he said. “We stumbled onto Google’s approach,” which has been in place at least a decade. The Google method includes drawing up a budget for airfare and hotels before every trip. If employees come in under budget, they earn credits that can be redeemed for travel upgrades in the future. The approach is different from “gamified” booking tools that encourage certain behavior, like using a preferred carrier, but generally, do not let employees share in the savings.

Rocketrip, like Google, allows travelers to keep half of what they save. Instead of travel upgrades, it offers gift cards to Amazon, Best Buy and other retailers through a so-called rewards store.

It’s incentivized behavioral change and either the most radical concept in corporate travel, or the most obvious.”

“There’s such an enormous amount of inefficiency in business travel,” he said. “If your company’s policy allows business class on flights over six hours, it is not expected behavior to fly coach. If your policy allows five-star hotels, it is not expected behavior to stay at a three-star hotel or to stay with a friend.”

Incentive and Motivation offers the latest news in employee benefits, rewards, incentive programmes and recognition. Discover the best employee engagement platform, learn about communicating your incentives or the latest tech in the HR space. Popular posts:

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