Editor’s Note: I’ve written about the effectiveness of non-cash incentives and rewards for 35 years. (I know, it doesn’t seem possible to me, either.) Some truisms about cash vs. non-cash rewards remain strong selling points for the latter.
- Cash bonuses get blended with pay and do little to engender employee loyalty.
- Non-cash rewards often cost less than their perceived
- Workers say they just want more money, but studies show non-cash recognition programs, when done well, are more
- Rewarding top performance with merchandise and travel reinforces company culture of valuing employees.
- You can’t brag about a bonus, but you can show off that gas grill you earned without compunction or share photos of that once-in-a-lifetime incentive trip that you and your spouse were treated to.
It’s true that the more things change in the world of non-cash incentives, the more many of the basic tenets stay the same. However, every business strategy must evolve. We asked some veterans of the non-cash reward and recognition industry to share the most significant changes about rewarding top performance with merchandise and travel. Here’s what we heard back. (The response from Pádraic Gilligan of SoolNua is taken from a post on Padraicino, his incentive travel blog. Reading the full post is highly recommended.)
Nevermind AI, There’s Another Acronym to Be Conscious Of
Everywhere you look, industries that designed themselves around certain assumptions about human bodies and appetites are suddenly confronting a world where those assumptions might not hold.
Have we, in incentive travel, given even five minutes of serious thought to what happens when a significant portion of our participants are on GLP-1 medications? If you don’t recognize the term, you absolutely recognize the brand names: Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro. These medications are already beginning to reshape behavior, appetite and expectation in ways that touch directly on how we design and deliver incentive programs. And we’d be foolish not to pay attention.
Imagine a cohort where 20%, 30%, perhaps eventually 50% of participants are experiencing fundamentally altered relationships with food and alcohol, not so much through willpower or discipline, but through pharmaceutical intervention that directly modulates appetite signals in the brain. What happens to the incentive program when the centerpiece experience no longer centers people in the way it once did?
We’re in the business of creating peak experiences around travel, cuisine, celebration and reward. If the appetite mechanisms that make those experiences compelling are being chemically recalibrated for millions of people, that’s not background noise. That’s a structural shift. There’s another angle here that makes me uneasy, and it’s worth naming directly. If GLP-1 medications become widespread, particularly in corporate and professional contexts, they risk creating a new kind of conformity, a pharmaceutical smoothing of human difference that could make incentive travel participants more homogenous, not less.
One of the things that makes great incentive programs work is the collision of different people, different appetites, different ways of being in the world. Some people live to eat. Others couldn’t care less. Some drink with gusto. Others abstain entirely. The best programs create space for all of that, tension and all.
But if everyone’s on the same medication, operating from the same chemically modulated baseline, do we lose something essential? Does the program flatten? Does the experience become less textured, less human?
I don’t know the answer. But I know it’s a question we should be asking.
Our industry has always prided itself on being responsive to human need, on designing around how people actually are rather than how we wish they’d be. And if GLP-1 represents a genuine shift in how millions of people experience appetite, satiety, food and celebration, then we owe it to ourselves and to our clients to engage with that reality seriously.
Padraic Gilligan, co-founder, SoolNua
People Want Personalized Memories
Award redemptions show a fascinating shift toward personalization and meaningful awards. Dining gift cards surpassed online-only retailers (Amazon), according to the IRF Outlook for 2026. Amazon cards, which had been No. 1, typically disappear on commodity purchases, but now winners prefer memorable experiences at a favorite restaurant. It’s what the incentive industry has said is best, and now, winners are self-selecting experiential awards.
Mike May, Executive Chairman, Brightspot
Personalizing Is Humanizing – and It’s Essential
In an era where technology can sometimes create uncertainty about job security, incentives serve as tangible recognition of the irreplaceable human contributions within a company. To maximize the effectiveness of their incentive programs, companies should look to increasing the level of personalization being offered in both experiences and other rewards to further ensure employees feel truly seen and valued by the company. By understanding individual preferences, organizations can ensure that their incentive strategies recognize critical human contributions in the age of AI and add to the sense of belonging.
Stephanie Harris, President, Incentive Research Foundation
Avoid the Rush
Merchandise trends continue moving toward experience-driven, data-powered and personalized strategies, with sustainability and well-being playing key supporting roles. Experiential rewards (49%) emerged as the top-ranked development in a recent study. Close behind are data-driven/AI selection (47%) and personalization and customization (44%), reflecting the growing importance of analytics and unique product tailoring for engagement.
Jeffrey Brenner, director, Seiko Watch of America and past president of the Incentive Marketing Association
It’s Not the Why As Much As It’s the How
Non-cash rewards are much better understood and accepted as part of business strategy. It’s not as much about convincing senior leadership to have a program, but rather how that program is funded, what outcomes will be targeted and measured, and what kind of program is most meaningful to that specific audience. Businesses need help designing a program that achieves their goals within their unique business realities.
Susan Adams, Vice President of Client Strategy & Engagement, Next Level Performance
