The age old management dilemma asks..."How can I reasonably incentivize my employees to produce more, help them work harder and make the company more efficient?"

You've done your due diligence...offering competitive salaries, benefits and perks. Yet, there is still room for employee improvement.

A landmark study on the $27 billion dollar incentive industry entitled Incentives, Motivation and Workplace Performance: Research and Best Practices, showed that tangible incentives dramatically increase work performance by an average of 22%. The research was sponsored by the International Society for Performance Improvement. Other findings which employers will find especially useful in these times of uncertainty include:

* Incentive programs aimed at individual workers increase performance by 27 percent; when directed at teams, the increase is 45 percent.

* Incentive programs have an equal, positive impact on both quality and quantity goals.

* Long term incentive programs are more powerful than short term programs (44 percent gain versus 20 percent).

* Incentive programs structured with employee input work best; however, only 23 percent of incentive systems were selected with employee input.

CASH or VACATIONS - Which is Better?

More often than not, the answer to incentives is cash. Why? Because it's easy, you have immediate access to it, all you have to do is write a check. It's well spent money, right? Is it taken for granted...do employees expect cash incentives as an extension of their salary?

Incentive Travel could be the answer. Travel has a much higher perceived value, it has a tangible feel, something someone will brag about! Cash is spent frivolously and virtually creates no memories. A week on a Caribbean Cruise will go a long way, so will a week in Hawaii or and All-Inclusive trip to Jamaica.

You can motivate your employees with virtually anything, but the bottom line is two-fold...how cost effective is it, and how much value and residual effect will it have?

Try motivating your employees today with travel. Start small and offer three trips to Las Vegas for the top producers in your company, see how far the motivation will go. Your employees will talk about the trip before they go to Vegas, chances are they'll call the office while they're in Vegas to tell everyone what a good time they're having and when they return they'll have pictures galore to share with everyone. This will turn into a natural motivator and everyone will want to produce and travel!

Great employees deliver loyalty in spades, simply because they know that along with the benefits to their company, goes their personal salary and bonus. A network of discouraged or under-performing employees affects the entire team in subtle but profound ways. Investing in incentive programs that are innovative, motivational and personal brings big-payoffs in both the short and long term.

Relationships take time to build, need to be nurtured and must be genuine in order to have lasting impact on the results you are looking for. Travel, as an incentive, is the most sought after rewards to use when recognizing employees who go 'above and beyond'.