The influence of employee reward schemes on increased job satisfaction and workplace productivity is well documented. Perks and benefits can drive your staff to excel; inspiring them to maximise their performance to qualify for rewards. Rewards schemes can also make your team feel appreciated and valued, which can support the development of loyalty and a sense of worth within your company.

Put simply; there are a lot of reasons to incorporate reward schemes into your company culture.

When it comes to the deployment of rewards, there are many types of incentive structures available. Common programs include personal recognition — such as employee of the month — and financial bonus schemes for hitting objectives. For businesses that want to get the most out of their employees, development of the right incentives is crucial.

The greater the reward, the more powerful the incentive, and the better the results. Small rewards like a gift voucher for onboarding new clients might encourage workers to recommend friends and family, for example. But it’s not going to get them onto aggressive marketing strategies in the same way that offering them a new car would.

The problem is, giving a car away to employees is not an affordable practice. However, the comparison illustrates how the right kind of reward scheme can push your employees to go the extra mile. Give people what they want, and they’ll work harder to achieve it. What this means is you need to find a balance between affordable rewards that offer results, and rewards employees will work harder for.

Which brings us onto the subject of this article: travel reward schemes.

The modern worker is about more than just money. 80% of people claim they don’t feel rewarded or appreciated in their job, and this isn’t because they think they are underpaid. Instead, they feel they don’t have the opportunities to get more out of their work. Feedback shows that what employees really want is fulfilment and meaning in their professional lives. Beyond a stable salary, they want to be part of a company culture that promotes their sense of self and gives them more than a paycheck at the end of every month.

How do we use this information to build a reward scheme for your business?

It turns out the same modern worker is also very travel-focused. Travel and tourism have increased in Western culture by as much as 170% in recent decades, with many citing travel as their top personal goal for improving their current lifestyle. According to LiveStrong, 13 of the 20 most popular bucket list items related to travel.

What we can start to understand from this information is how valuable travel can be as a reward structure for your business. The data available tells us:

• Rewards are more effective if they are more appealing to your workforce
• People want rewards at work through fulfilling schemes
• Cash-in hand opportunities do not satisfy this demand
• Travelling more has been identified as a core desire for many individuals.

When looking to explore reward schemes and structures, travel incentives are, without a doubt, your best option. Travel helps tick all the boxes people are looking for in developing their personal and professional lives while being affordable as a cost-per-employee.

Because travel is so important to people, they’ll be more driven to exceed in their work, so they achieve the targets required to access the reward structure. What this means for your business is that long-term integration of travel incentives means long-term rises in productivity, as workers repeatedly work to hit the bar required for access to the reward scheme. This is especially true if you build engaging and exciting trips.

Trips that create amazing memories can become part of office culture for years to come, which in turn continues to drive your employees. Those who missed out want to be part of the reward scheme the next time around — and those who travelled want to ensure they get to experience it all over again.

But while travel incentives are great for employees, are they really going to offer businesses what they need out of their reward strategies?

No other type of reward structure is so delicately refined, offering the perfect balance between commercial investment and personal fulfilment. Travel incentives are the reward scheme you need to enhance productivity and grow your business. Great travel experiences inspire positivity and proven to have an impact on better mental health. Overall improvements to mental health — unsurprisingly — benefit business practice. Not only do travel incentives make your employees happier, but they also help your business through new avenues of team building and community creation. On travel incentive schemes, workers have an opportunity to get to know each other in new ways, as well as other colleagues they may not get a chance to interact within the normal workplace setting. Improved connectivity results in enhanced communication across the workplace, an important driver of productivity. Manage your incentive travel correctly, and it can also become an educational and learning resource for employees, helping them to develop new and essential skills.

All this demonstrates that the rewards of a travel incentive scheme go far beyond a typical incentive program. Give an employee a basic cash reward and they might be a little happier, but they won’t see the personal gains that travel offers. From a business perspective, cash prizes also don’t offer the powerful acquisition of benefits, like improved employee communication and boosts to mental health.

Travel incentive really is a win-win situation.

As you might have guessed, getting the most out of an incentive program is often about making smart choices. Experience is the best tool for success. If you lack experience in incentive travel, travel management solution providers can help businesses achieve this success by offering their expertise.