Incentives: what exactly are we talking about?
Employee motivation sits at the heart of any growth strategy. People often talk about team building, team offsites, company parties and incentive events. The last of these has one core aim: to strengthen motivation and cohesion across everyone you work with, internally and externally. Here’s what a corporate incentive really is.
A company’s growth depends first and foremost on its people. Motivating them and rallying them around a shared goal remains the best way to secure strong output and, with it, healthy profitability. A sense of belonging lifts team performance, because people support one another.
“Incentive” means motivation. As a major company event, its purpose is to strengthen cohesion across the whole team. It takes place outside the working environment and comes in many forms. External and internal partners take part in a range of playful, enjoyable activities throughout the event. What sets it apart is its lighter, more playful tone and its focus on reward.
During an incentive, sociable group activities take centre stage. These might be sporting challenges, group games or even trips away. What matters most is making your people feel valued. Through the choice of activities and the programme itself, the event should deliver truly memorable experiences.
Challenges and rewards at the heart of the incentive
Broadly speaking, an incentive event is about organising and hosting challenges between colleagues. It can be aimed at employees, clients or suppliers alike. In every case, rewards are the key to making this motivational approach work.
An incentive is a technique designed to boost team motivation and performance. Often delivered by an events agency, this kind of event is run with clear objectives. Those objectives shift depending on the context and the audience. An HR incentive focuses on motivating the company’s employees. The event then becomes a practical, effective tool for retaining talent. For external partners, it leans more on gifts and rewards as a thank-you.
In every case, the goal is above all to strengthen relationships and put your partners first. Success therefore rests on solid organisation and a well-judged choice of activities.
Why run an incentive for your company?
Plenty of studies have shown the importance of a positive atmosphere at work. The more pleasant the working environment, the more productive people are. An HR incentive becomes one of the most effective management tools for motivating your teams.
With clients, suppliers and other external partners, it’s a chance to get to know one another better, so collaboration runs smoothly. In short, the programme strengthens team spirit while highlighting what each person brings. All of which feeds directly into how well the business performs.
To keep external partners engaged
Once little more than a promise of reward for a team’s efforts, incentives were reserved for senior executives. Today they involve everyone a company works with. For external partners, the event acts as a tool for engagement and long-term loyalty to the company.
Rewards and thank-yous create a real sense of being valued. External partners feel they truly belong. Through the programme, they see the company recognising their contribution. It’s an excellent way to nurture their desire to keep working with you — and to do even better.
To strengthen team cohesion
When the event is aimed at employees, we talk about an internal incentive. The chosen activities combine motivation and reward for the company’s staff. Seen as an excellent management tool, it helps lift the performance of every team member.
Promotions and formal recognition are increasingly rare these days. Leaders and managers who want to motivate their people can, however, put internal incentive programmes in place. A powerful driver of motivation within the company, they improve performance and employee motivation alike.
Which activities make a corporate incentive work?
Running an incentive programme has proven benefits. Even so, you need the right programme, with original activities, to hit your target. There are three main reasons for organising this kind of event:
- The motivation of employees and business partners (building a team, creating cohesion between members, developing team spirit, and so on)
- The loyalty of all external partners (clients, suppliers, consultants, etc.),
- Strengthening the company’s image to attract and recruit new talent.
To make an incentive event a success, you need to choose activities that match your company’s needs and objectives.
The most common activities for an HR or internal incentive
In the case of an HR incentive, the main aim is to boost motivation to increase output, and therefore profit, while building cohesion. The programme set by management can target a single department or the entire workforce.
For a sales department, sales challenges remain as relevant as ever. They’re excellent for energising sales teams and lifting overall performance. You could, for example, set up a shared project such as a reward scheme for the top salesperson of the month. Sporting events, trips away and creative workshops are all great ideas for HR incentives.
The most popular options for an external incentive
To strengthen the engagement of external partners, nothing beats rewards and gifts to recognise teamwork. It’s a well-established fact: partners who champion your brand appreciate client gifts. A referral scheme with financial benefits is also highly effective for bringing people together and creating a good working atmosphere. Business trips and incentive travel are also very popular with clients. Corporate gifts and gift vouchers sit closer to financial bonuses. Because they can be used so freely, they make excellent rewards for external partners.
To support you with your incentive project, you can also call on the Arcane Experience team, who offer a bespoke service to build team cohesion within your company. Experts in designing event games that bring people together, Arcane Experience has been creating and delivering playful experiences for companies since 2015 all over the world, to build cohesion within teams. A unique experience where everyone has to work together.
So, ready to strengthen your team and build collective spirit?
