Gift Cards still top for employee rewards | Incentive&Motivation

Employee Benefits News: Gift Cards still top for employee rewards

With 84% all U.S. businesses now using non-cash awards, it is critical to understand how to create effective programs.

Designing for Successes: Effective Design Patterns for Employee and Sales Programs’ from the IRF has detailed some patterns in effective program design used by top-performing companies.

Top trends and strategies employed by successful employee recognition and reward programs include:

•     Top performing companies are two times more likely to have a consolidated program or single employee program across the company.
•     Non-cash rewards are an effective motivator for engaging employees who take on non-core job roles.
•     The top objectives of employee programs are improving morale (84%), improving productivity (58%), and improving customer satisfaction (48%).
•     The most prevalent types of awards in employee programs are gift cards (71% of businesses), merchandise (38%), award points (36%), and travel (30%).

With 60% of all U.S. businesses using non-cash sales rewards, spending conservatively $23 billion annually on these awards, effective design of sales incentive programs includes:

•     The top objectives for sales rewards and incentive programs are increasing overall sales (80%), improving morale (76%), and improving productivity (58%).
•     Individualized sales quotas are used by 80% of top performing organizations.
•     Incentive programs are most successful when they are designed to reflect and enhance the organization’s corporate culture.
•     Over 80% of U.S. firms use more than one award type. On average, businesses use more than seven types of awards for sales incentives.
•     The three performance metrics most often used to evaluate the success of sales incentive programs are product sales in dollars (66%), net new customers (49%), and product sales in units (37%).

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