Member Article

How to Personalise Your Incentive Travel Programme

Time and time again, incentive travel has proven to be a powerful employee motivator. Shown to support increased productivity, alongside other desirable traits such as happiness, sense of appreciation and trust, incentive travel as a reward scheme is fast becoming one of the most popular programmes for businesses.

However, as we start to see interest in incentive travel skyrocket, it’s important to remember that as with any reward scheme, the key to successful rollout within your business is dynamic optimisation.

By thoughtfully introducing incentive travel, you can see the greatest rewards.

Your company is unique. Thinking about how travel incentives can be used to fit your unique company means you can maximise ROI. Employees react positively to incentive schemes that genuinely interest them, but not all types of travel programmes are going to do that. So how do you create an attractive reward scheme that aligns with your business and the desires of your employees?

The best thing to do is to personalise the experience. Insights from successful personalised reward schemes demonstrate just how effective this approach to travel incentives can be. Provide a travel incentive programme that works to satisfy the personal desires of your employees and you’ll reap the rewards. Here are some expert tips that can help you achieve this outcome.

Get Employees Involved

It’s an obvious but important step to take when planning incentive travel schemes. If you want to personalise the experience and provide something of real value to your employees, find out what they want.

Acquiring this kind of information is simple. You can run meetings, send out surveys and feedback forms, or, if your company is small enough, just chat to employees about what they’d like to get out of your travel incentive programme. Involving staff allows you to build a full understanding of what your employees consider to be incentivising and enriching.

Select the Right Destination

When it comes to travel incentives, the destination is almost always the most important factor. Pick the right location and you’ll really excite your employees with the proposition of travel — which in turn creates the motivational factor required to push for the reward — and boost productivity.

Selecting the right location will also ensure you engage employees while they are enjoying the experience itself, meaning you’ll see better returns in terms of appreciation, increased trust and personal value; all those incredible advantages that travel incentives can provide when done properly.

How do you pick the right location? It’s all about weighing up attractive opportunities against your restrictions.

Of course, you have to consider budget, resources and time available. But if you let these entirely dictate your location, you may end up somewhere none of your employees wants to visit. Conversely, if you go for broke and splash out on the most lavish and exciting of destinations, you could discover your expenses vastly outweigh the compensation gained through harder-working employees.

The way to manage this situation is to consider how personalising your travel location can help you find more budget-friendly options your employees will still love to visit. Take into account their likes and dislikes and then target your destination based around those ideas. Personalising can help you find the unique middle grounds between the generic low and high-cost areas, leading you somewhere you may not have thought of before — and providing true value for your incentive travel efforts.

Tailor Your Activities

Enjoyable activities are a key ingredient in incentive travel. They make travel even more engaging, exciting and memorable. But as with the destination, getting the best results is all about offering your employees the right kind of activities. Sign up all your timid and introverted staff for an evening of lively salsa dancing in a wild bar on the island of Cuba and you’ll have a host of miserable and anxious employees dreading their experience — not anticipating it as they should.

Finding the right activities is all about involving employees in their travel incentive programme and personalising it to fit what they want to do. The best way to optimise your trip for activities is to pick a location, research what activities are available and let people vote on what they want to do. You may not please absolutely everyone, but this personalised touch ensures you’ll align your plans with the majority of travellers.

Provide and Encourage Personal Mobility

While you want to provide structure, sometimes, a personalised experience can simply centre about a bit of freedom — freedom for your employees to choose what they want to do and how they want to do it. Providing them with the opportunity to do their own thing can be an important element when looking to secure an attractive and beneficial travel incentive scheme.

Success in this area is easy to achieve. Leave space available during the travel experience for personal time — such as an afternoon of free time. Offering financial support during this period can also be a major bonus and a much-appreciated addition — a personal budget may allow staff to do something they wouldn’t have been able to do without it.

This sort of freedom ensures that even if planned activities aren’t to everyone’s tastes, people have the chance to do something that suits them — whether it’s going off jungle trekking, lounging by the pool or exploring the local culture.

It’s up to them, which means it cannot be any more personalised.

Consider the Small Things

When it comes to personalising an experience, the little things make a big difference. Small gestures can create a unique journey for your employees, keep them engaged and give them a sense your business has genuinely tailored the trip to the individual.

Personalised gifts and messages — such as a team t-shirt with their name on it or a recorded message from the CEO of the company played in their room — are good places to start. Other ideas might include serving up their favourite meals or drinks or adding perks that you know they’ll enjoy.

They might not seem significant, but these small additions transform your travel scheme from a generic package experience to something that feels personal and handcrafted. It encourages the crucial feelings of inclusion and appreciation towards your business that help you get the most out of your programme.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Banks Sadler .