“Camaraderie” is a word that gets tossed around in business environments a lot. Managers want to build it; employees generally cringe at managers’ attempts to build it. Camaraderie happens naturally and never as quickly as some would like.
Camaraderie can’t be planned, but events that foster it can. I was thinking about this as I talked with longtime employees of Microsoft and Mutual of Omaha about their use of incentive travel for this issue’s cover story. Both companies have sponsored multiple incentive travel programs every year for more than a decade. It has become part of their corporate culture.
It’s a safe bet that the thousands of individuals who have participated over the years on these trips don’t cringe when they think of their experiences. It’s also a safe bet that their memories are predominantly of the people they shared the experience with and the bonds they developed.
We are excited in this issue to report on the findings of a survey of Sales & Marketing Managementreaders that was sponsored by this publication and the SITE Foundation, an entity focused on raising awareness of the effectiveness of incentive travel. We reached out to users and non-users of incentive travel alike.
We learned that cost and ROI are the primary reasons why non-users do not incorporate incentive travel into their sales management strategy. Both of those hurdles can be overcome if a business develops its incentive travel programs smartly. If you can’t tackle that internally, there are a number of highly regarded incentive travel management companies that will show you how.
What struck me as I spoke with these companies’ representatives was their unwavering belief in the so-called softer and fuzzier benefits of incentive travel, which includes camaraderie and employee retention. Users talk at length about the value of bringing top performers together to celebrate — a value that is mostly measured anecdotally, not in dollars.
It may always be difficult to tie low employee turnover, high morale and other characteristics of strong companies directly to incentive travel programs, in whole or in part. In this regard, the best companies make a leap of faith. When talking about camaraderie and nebulous concepts like “building a corporate culture,” faith is inevitably a key component.
