The newly released 2022 Incentive Travel Index (ITI) reports that, overall, the incentive travel industry is strong....
US organizations invest more in sales training than they do for any other employee group. Selective incentives are an effective tool to encourage participation in training and earning of certifications.
A growing body of research demonstrates that promoting employee health and well-being can have a positive impact on company performance.
The IRF partnered with researchers at the University of South Carolina and Hong Kong Polytechnic University to conduct a series of experiments studying the relationship between employee satisfaction and engagement and turnover in the hospitality industry.
Today’s workforce seems to desire more from work than in the past, including better conditions, better leadership, more flexibility, and greater purpose. Incentives professionals should work with leaders across the organization to identify barriers to full engagement and productivity, then use rewards to address them.
We discuss the neurochemical activity that takes place when a reward taps emotion and becomes memorable. We also look at how these neurochemicals can lead to changes that alter long-term habits and behaviors.
The September 2022 report from the Labor Department’s inflation report predicts additional interest hikes to come; hikes that may very well depress spending and demand sufficiently to spark a recession. No matter the industry, firms should maintain their efforts to create a better employee experience – including more flexibility, balance, purposeful work, DE&I initiatives, and…
A recent IRF survey revealed that recognition was not considered an effective motivator by many respondents. Allan Schweyer, IRF’s Chief Academic Advisor, took a deep dive into the research to gain a better understanding of this surprising data. What he found was that recognition needs to be meaningful to have the intended motivational impact.
When confronted with the myth that extrinsic rewards crowd out intrinsic motivation, reference academic research, motivational theory, and empirical evidence to set the record straight. In a recent interview with an industry veteran about motivating the remote workforce, we got to talking about the widespread assumption that extrinsic rewards ‘crowd out’ natural motivation among workers.…
Non-Cash Rewards in a Period of High Inflation: Scope Sensitivity and General Evaluability Theory Firms should review and optimize their incentives and rewards programs to address the unique workforce challenges they face in 2022. Inflation in the United States has reached an annual rate of 8.5%, heights not seen since the early 1980s.[i] Though wages…
Of the few dozen business books critiqued in Academic Research in Action thus far in 2022, The Voltage Effect by University of Chicago economist John A. List counts among the most insightful. List comes from the hard-nosed “Chicago School,” that includes Milton Friedman. Friedman’s free market theories underpinned economic policy under Ronald Reagan and Margaret…
March 2022 The Covid-19 pandemic initially drove mass layoffs, vaulting the US unemployment rate to almost 15% at its peak in April 2020, the highest in more than 70 years.[1] In Covid’s continuing wake, however, the jobless rate has dropped precipitously, to just over 2% for degreed workers and 4% overall.[2] This and unprecedented churn…
February 2022 After two years of pandemic-driven disruption, many of us have become amateur students of epidemiology. The manner in which contagions diffuse – or do not – should concern leaders across every industry, but not just to combat Covid-19. The spread of social contagions will play a critical role in late-stage and post-pandemic recovery.…