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Featured Research
2011 Incentive Research Foundation Survey Finds New Trends
Incentive Research Foundation Survey Finds New Trends Read more
2011 IRF/CMI Merchandise Poll
After one of the most difficult economic periods in recent history, the road to recovery appears imminent for those providing or running merchandise incentive programs. Or at least that appears to be the case, according to the most recent Corporate Incentive Trends survey conducted in a joint effort between CMI Magazine and the Incentive Research Foundation. Read more
2012 Trends in Rewards & Recognition
Important Research For Incentive Program Practitioners and Planners Read more
Critical Findings for Recognition Travel Programs
Recogntion Travel, Employee Motivation, Incentive Program, Sales Motivation Read more
Driving Our Future: The Top 11 Incentive Trends for 2011
The incentive industry has seen extraordinary changes since the 1980s. In this paper the IRF explores the economic, governmental, motivational and technological trends that are shaping the face of incentives. They include: Cautious Optimism, the New Normal, Global, Government Involvement, Necessity, Experience, Non-Cash Recognition, Social Influencers, Social Media, Virtual and Gaming. Read more
Energizing Workplace Wellness Programs: The Role of Incentives and Recognition
The IRF examines whether workplace wellness programs can play a significant role in reducing the largely preventable conditions brought on by the poor health choices that escalate U.S. health care costs, threatening to consume as much as 25 percent of GDP by 2025. The study produces mutliple references showing rewards are an essential element of wellness program design Read more
Incentive Research Foundation Survey Says: Economy Impacting Incentive Trends
What a difference less than a year can make. Unlike the start of 2011, the Incentive Research Foundation’s (IRF) latest survey of incentive industry trends finds planners struggling with the effects of an economy caught in a slow recovery. Read more
Incentive Research Foundation Vertical Market Study
The study will validate important information in the industry profile study in six vertical markets: electronic computer component/manufacturing, pharmaceutical preparation/manufacturing, new car dealers, telecommunications re-sellers, commercial banking, and insurance agencies and brokerages. Read more
Incentives, Motivation and Workplace Performance: Research and Best Practices
This landmark study is the most comprehensive analysis ever done on the effectiveness of the incentive industry and the relationship between incentives, motivation, and performance in the workplace. The findings identify the powerful impact incentives have on increasing work performance and introduces a new, diagnostic and prescriptive model, Performance Improvement by Incentives (PIBI), that provides guidance on the step-by-step procedures for the design and implementation of incentive programs. The study included the most comprehensive review of published research ever undertaken on the subject of incentive. Read more
It's In the Cards: An In-Depth Look at PrePaid Cards in Incentive, Rewards & Recognition Programs
Prepaid Gift Card usage by consumers and by organizations in their incentive, reward and recognition programs has soared over the past decade. While gift certificates have been in use for generations, their colloquial image barely resembles the sophisticated “gift card industry” that thrives today. Read more
Measuring the ROI of Sales Incentive Programs
A series of cases involving companies that implemented sales incentive programs are explored. It is the aspect of causality borne from stringent application of the scientific method that makes this report on ROI measurement unique. Read more
Motivating Today's Workforce: The Future of Incentive Program Design
This paper synthesizes input from incentive experts, secondary research and related resources to identify evolving knowledge about the use of incentives and recognition to motivate today’s work force. Read more
Motivation in the Hospitality Industry
The paper represents a study on employee motivation and performance and shows the link between employee motivation and turnover. Read more
President's Corner - March 2012
The rate of change in the business climate mirrors our recent weather experience. This rapid movement provides the same challenges in seeking to pin down trends and predict the next economic event. Yet this same fast pace of change can also pave the way for new opportunities in the management of people, especially in their reward and recognition programs. These programs when properly designed can be quickly recalibrated to meet employee needs with greater ease and precision than could be done in the past with conventional compensation structures. Read more
Pulse Study: Spring 2011 Research Brief
For over four years the Incentive Research Foundation has been capturing and cataloging changes in travel and merchandise travel trends. The tumultuous nature of these past four years for providers and managers of recognition and incentive programs has been highly reflected in the data. Interestingly, in the spring of 2011, many of these trends have begun to stabilize providing a more solid picture of what is often deemed “the new normal”. The general outlook for both merchandise and travel have moved from negative or flat, to slightly positive with an underlying current of normalization and optimization. An overview of these trends is outlined below. Read more
Rewards and Recognition as a Vital Compensation Component
With companies looking for new ways to boost sales and improve their competitive edge in a post-recession economy, comes a new study by the Aberdeen Group and distributed by theIRF that underscores the importance of “Rewards and Recognition as a Vital Compensation Component” and the competitive advantage companies gain when they go outside their organization for assistance in their design and implementation. By examining “Best-in-Class” trends for sales force compensation, the new study finds that top performing companies are twice as likely to use non cash rewards and recognition programs from an external partner. What makes this finding significant is the documented fact that annual corporate revenue year over year for those same companies is 6.6 percent higher than all other companies. Read more
The "Evidence-Based" Case for Incentives (2009)
The white paper was written by Rodger Stotz, Chief Research Officer of The Incentive Research Foundation. The public response to stories like AIG and Wells Fargo has been emotional in nature with little effort to sort out the facts. The white paper stresses the importance of focusing on the "evidence-based facts" of incentive travel, motivational meetings, and events and to understand how they have improved business performance and the positive role they play in driving employment in the hospitality industry. Read more
The Benefits of Tangible Non-Monetary Incentives
The paper suggests how psychological processes can increase the perceived value of tangible non-monetary incentive awards over and above cash-based awards having the same market value. Read more
The Economics of Engagement
Talent management describes a wide range of activities, and not all positive. Most employers have already frozen or restrained hiring and many have downsized their workforce. While both are at times necessary, it is our contention that the largest opportunity for corporate performance improvement lies in engaging the workforce to drive better customer engagement, better revenue and higher profits. Employers that can improve employee engagement during the downtown will reap immediate and longterm benefits as described in this paper. Read more
The Market For Incentive Travel, Motivational Meetings and Special Events (2008)
The report focuses on the market for incentive travel, motivational meetings, and special events and includes, among other facts, statistics on the size of the market, usage, annual expenditures, budgets, and profiles of each segment of the market. Read more
The Use of Awards in Organizations
The Incentive Research Foundation (IRF) and Incentive Federation has just released more results of its comprehensive survey of 170 recognition and rewards administrators that delineates current practices for reward and recognition programs. In an executive briefing of the results, The Use of Reward and Recognition Awards in Organizations, the survey quantifies: Current usage of awards by type --cash, travel, merchandise and pre-paid cards The basis for selecting certain types of awards The targeted value of awards by type How award values are determined The evaluation of awards for achieving objectives Read more
The Value and ROI of Employee Recognition
The study links recognition to improved job performance and increased business value – the current state and future needs. The study shows that recognition is highly correlated to improved employee engagement with both the employee's work and organization. It includes four case studies of real-world award programs. Read more
Time for Blood: The Effect of Paid Leave Legislation on Altruistic Behavior
Organizations and public agencies that promote pro-social activities constantly struggle to attract and encourage more contributions. In this paper, we study the effects of an explicit reward in the context of blood donation. Specifically, we analyze the effects of a legislative provision that grants a one-day paid leave of absence to blood donors who are employees in Italy, using a unique dataset with the complete donation histories of the blood donors in an Italian town. The across-donor variation in employment status, and within-donor changes over time are the sources of variation that we employ to study whether the paid-day-off incentive affects the frequency of their donations. Our analysis indicates that the day-off privilege leads donors who are employees to make, on aver- age, one extra donation per year, which represents an increase of around 40%. We also …find that the provision has persistent effects, with donors maintaining higher donation frequencies even when they cease to be eligible for the incentive. We discuss the implications of our findings for policies aimed at reducing the shortages in the supply of blood and, more generally, for organizations that try to motivate voluntary contributors. Read more
Volunteerism and its Role in the Incentive Travel Market: Perception and Use by Intermediaries and Companies Residing in Germany
The international incentive travel industry currently faces a trend to integrate social legacy initiatives during incentive trips. This is firstly determined by the pressure for companies to operate in a social responsible way. Secondly, increasing workforce changes have an impact on this trend. The aim of this research paper is to investigate the trend of volunteerism as an element of incentive travel in Germany. Read more
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