Incentive - March 2008 - (Page 8)

IN THE NEWS Take It Off at the Office PAGE 11 Workplace incentives to lose weight work, says study just published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine Trashing Short-Termism PAGE 12 Manage and incentivize for the long term, Carlson Marketing’s Peppers & Rogers argue in their latest book Latin America’s Incentive Market A new study by a veteran incentive house in Argentina shows many of the same trends facing the U.S. incentive business BY LEO JAKOBSON I n late 2006 and again in late 2007, AV Business & Communication, a Buenos Aires–based full-service incentive and marketing company, sent out surveys to executives of companies based in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Colombia and Mexico, asking about the incentive programs they run for internal employees and for channel partners. The surveys, especially when compared, offer an interesting insight into the state of the Latin American incentive market and where it is heading. Each year, 2,000 surveys were sent to executives ranging from directors and CEOs to incentive chiefs to marketing and human resources managers of companies throughout Latin America. Some 250 were returned each year by executives from firms in more than two dozen industries. They were not limited to AV Business & Communication’s clients. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the trends found in the Latin American market mirror those seen in the larger and more mature U.S. incentive market. Most basically, more companies are running internal incentive programs, and the vast majority of those programs target their sales forces. But, between 2006 and 2007, the number of programs targeted at two major non-sales employee categories—back office and production workers—doubled. In addition, the number of respondents who say they are running programs that aim to improve employee or client loyalty increased more than 50 percent over that period, the number of companies outsourcing their program management to an incentive house nearly doubled and outsourced award fulfillment increased in every category. Completing the similarity with American programs, the element of those incentive programs that respondents say needs most improvement is measurement of return-on-investment. “There is a trend, according to our professional experience, that internal staff incentives are critical to reduce turnover and to increase employee loyalty with their companies,” says Alejandro Verzoub, director of AV Business & Communication, a 15-year-old firm that has won two of the Society of Incentive & Travel Executives’ SITE Crystal Awards. “Companies in South America are following international trends,” he says. “In Argentina in particular, most of the retention problems are continued on page 10 Cash on the Decline The fall in cash as an award in the AV Business & Communication survey (left) is a bit hard to measure, as the question changed between 2006 and 2007. With that said, the trend is clear. Travel and merchandise both increased substantially, while gift certificates exploded. If you compare the 2006 respondents who rated each category on a 1-to-4 scale compared to the 2007 respondents who selected one category as most used, you get this: 2006 Cash Travel Merchandise catalog Gift Certificate: 2007 13% . . . . . . .5% 13% . . . . . . .23% 11% . . . . . . .28% 4% . . . . . . . . .23% As for what was the most effective award, all categories decreased in favor of “combination of awards,” which grew substantially, with more than half of the 2007 survey’s respondents selecting it. 8| Incentive | March 2008 | incentivemag.com http://incentivemag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Incentive - March 2008

Incentive - March 2008 Contents Editor’s Note: Delivering on Diversity In The News Cover Story: Leveraging Diversity in the Workplace Incentive Interview: Paul Levesque on Why Awards Fail Case Study: AEIS’ Max!-imum Incentive Program Mine Employees’ Creativity with Innovation Incentives Incentive Must-Reads The Third Annual Gift Card Roundtable My Turn: Motivation or Bribery? Everybody Get Together In Her Shoes: Why Bosses Should Be Flexible Incentive Primer: Passport Problem-Solving potentials Here and Now Is CES Electronics Heaven? China and Crystal: More Than a Pretty Face Travel News Florida: What’s New on the Beach? Smooth Sailing for Incentive Cruising Come To Hawaii And Take It Fast Last Word: But Enough About You

Incentive - March 2008

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