The study explores trends in attendee preferences, factors in destination selection, and how incentive travel...
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.…
January 2022 In 1999, behavioral economist Richard Thaler published his groundbreaking mental accounting theory. In it, Thaler describes how people tend to code and organize their money and expenses, in effect, putting different value on the same amounts of money depending on how they classify it (e.g, ‘fun’ money versus money to pay the bills).…
Throughout their 2020 book, Lessons from the Titans, Wall Street veterans Scott Davis, Rob Wertheimer, and Carter Copeland cite incentives as one of three prime managerial levers that signal what’s important, shape employee actions and behaviors, and build the culture: “Where the top of the organization influences culture is on actions and incentive” How much…
Through much of 2021, the IRF and researchers from the University of Waterloo and the University of Central Florida collected data and conducted interviews in an exploration of the psychology behind employee points-based reward programs. These programs have proliferated inside organizations almost in tandem with their popularity in the consumer space. We analyzed survey results…
October 2021 Behavioral science is less a discrete arena of study, and more an interdisciplinary approach to gaining a better understanding of why people do what they do – and, by extension, how to influence their thoughts, actions, and choices. Sound familiar? While the science remains ill-defined – and, for most, a little mysterious –…
the important role incentive program designers have in helping firms reward and recognize workers in ways that lead to better-functioning teams.
