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Firms Find Rewarding Workers Can Boost Bottom Line

Firms Find Rewarding Workers Can Boost Bottom Line

Incentive Travel Used To Build Teamwork, Positive Business Culture

BY MIKE ALLEN

Top-selling brokers at Grubb & Ellis/ BRE Commercial, a San Diego-based commercial real estate brokerage, know logging long hours will earn them more than fatter commission checks.

The company regularly rewards brokers who meet pre-ordained sales goals with paid trips to tropical resorts, usually in Hawaii and Mexico, as part of its ongoing incentive travel program.

“We brought 42 brokers and their families to the Grand Wailea Hotel in Maui this year,” said CEO John Frager. “The trips build a real camaraderie within the company and promote a positive culture.”

About half of Grubb & Ellis’s brokers qualified for this year’s trip, which was for four nights at the four-star hotel. In addition to paying for airfare, rooms, and food, the company also picked up the tab on a golf outing for the group. In all, the price tag for some 100 guests came to about $160,000, Frager said.

Travel incentive programs have been around for decades and are used in a wide variety of industries as a motivational tool to spur employees to reach for goals beyond what they might do on their own.

Making Memories

Joe da Rosa, chairman and CEO of San Diego-based Balboa Travel, which operates a unit specializing in incentive travel, said all-expense paid trips to Maui aren’t cheap, but most companies doing it realize the benefits add to the bottom line in the form of increased sales by more motivated employees.

“Good incentive programs are self-liquidating. They pay for themselves,” da Rosa said. “The additional dollars generated by the participants are substantially greater than the cost of the incentives.”

Perhaps the most elaborate event staged by Balboa Travel took place about two years ago in Hawaii.

The client, a major telecom corporation that da Rosa declined to reveal, was recognizing some 800 of its employees and spouses.

The event called “Field of Dreams” began about dusk with what da Rosa described as “an old-time carnival,” complete with carnies, games, and food. After about an hour at the carnival, guests began hearing a gradually rising voice coming over speakers proclaiming, “If you build it, they will come.”

“Then, all of a sudden, we switched on the lights that were set up around a baseball diamond that was built in the middle of nearby field, just like in the movie (‘A Field of Dreams’),” he said.

To make the event even more memorable, the company’s executives were on the field along with a lineup made up of retired Major League players including Hall of Famers Bob Feller, Ferguson Jenkins, Gaylord Perry, and Steve Carlton. Among the other top baseball stars imported for the event were the late Tug McGraw, Tommy Davis, Steve Yeager, Vida Blue, Jim “Mudcat” Grant, and Bert Campaneris.

Da Rosa said the cost for doing that event alone was “in the low six figures,” but underscores a key element in a successful travel incentive program: doing something that will remain in the minds of participants long after the trip is over.

“Unlike merchandise or cash, travel incentives create lasting memories in the minds of the participants that really turn them on,” da Rosa said.

Workers who make the trips share their experiences with co-workers back at the office, which often inspires those who weren’t rewarded to try harder so they’ll get to go next year, said da Rosa.

Friendly Competition

At Rollins Inc., the Atlanta-based parent company of Orkin, the nation’s largest pest control firm, incentive travel has been a part of the corporate culture for 30 years.

Part of the allure surrounding the trips is making the announcement on where the next year’s trip is to the current year’s winners while they are at the location.

“It makes it a lot more exciting when you tell them a secret that nobody else knows,” said Martha Craft, Rollins’ director of public relations. “The winners then go back to their offices and tell everyone, ‘Guess where it’ll be next year?'”

Rollins lets all its employees know the prescribed sales goals to earn the trip, and makes periodic reports on the company’s internal Web site so workers can track who’s making their numbers. It’s the most-visited section of the company’s site, Craft said.

Last year, the company took about 225 of the firm’s best salespeople and other top performers in non-sales positions along with spouses to Washington, D.C., for a four-night stay at the historic Mayflower Hotel. In September, the company is bringing a similar-sized group to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico.

“The favorite locations have been warm-weather beach resorts, but we’ve also gone to Lake Tahoe and Montreal, which aren’t necessarily warm places,” Craft said.

Besides airfare, hotel, per diem meal money and tours, the very top performers are given $500 spending money. The trips include one morning of business meetings where the employees hear presentations from top executives on the firm’s past performance and expectations for the future.

Craft said the total cost for last year’s trip was about $1 million, but it’s money well spent.

The excitement the trip generates among employees helps propel the company’s growing sales figures, which reached $677 million last year, Craft said.

While travel incentive programs may work well for some companies, they aren’t universally applauded.

The auto industry has long used the concept to reward the best-selling dealerships, but to qualify for the trips, the dealers also have to foot part of the bill for the excursions. Some of the criteria used to determine who goes and who doesn’t isn’t always fair, said John Hine Jr., the owner of John Hine Pontiac, Mazda, Dodge in San Diego.

“Certain programs are effective and other programs aren’t as effective,” Hine said. Given the choice, he would opt out of travel incentive programs.

An aspect that’s part of many incentive travel programs is bringing along the top CEO or chairman of the board to interact with the group in a relaxed setting that reinforces the team spirit many companies try to elicit from their workers.

“Our CEO goes along every year,” said Molly Olds of Denver-based McData Inc., a data storage company. “It allows them to spend some quality, one-on-one time that lets them see the top executives in a different light.”

Employees attending past trips noted the chance to casually chat with their chairman was a huge perk that made the trip so much more meaningful, said Craft.

“We don’t bring in any big speakers, or celebrities to make speeches. Gary Rollins (the company’s chairman) is the biggest celebrity to our people,” she said.

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