Cash Isn’t Always King

What Business & HR Leaders Should Know About Why Travel Incentives Retain Top Talent Best.

Most business leaders and HR leaders will likely know the statistics that every disengaged employee costs the global economy a share of 483 billion dollars a year in lost productivity. In a world where replacing the average employee has been shown to cost 50-200% of their annual salary, just imagine what that figure could look like for the top talent in your organisation. This might be a particularly scary thought if you have new and emerging talent on lower salary bandings providing high value who you are hoping to grow within the company.

The UK battle for talent & skills

It’s no secret that the UK market faces an intense war for talent driven by skills mismatches, an aging workforce, and rising operational costs. We are also experiencing economic uncertainty that makes people ‘stay put’ in mid-level and senior roles, and all this has contributed to create a market where over 70% of UK employers are currently struggling to find skilled staff due to structural gaps, rather than a lack of job seekers. That’s a dangerous market to be in when 51% of employees are found to be actively seeking new opportunities, and a whopping 42% of turnover is preventable with the right engagement.

The changing picture of cash rewards

Cash seems to be the default answer. Job postings with salaries above £100k have surged by 23.6% year on year whilst hiring in the lower salary bands remains steady. It’s also been all over the news that the move towards transparency on salaries for job postings will benefit job seekers, and some private-sector employers are aggressively using these transparent salary ranges already in a bid to try and attract top talent faster to contested jobs, with nearly half (49.7%) of UK job postings now publishing explicit pay ranges to capture desirable candidates who know their scarcity and demand upfront clarity. Companies are also increasingly resorting to using ‘temp-to-perm’ strategies to attract and test specialised talent with premium day rates before attempting to then lock them into a fixed salary banding structure. But are they missing a trick?

What do top performers actually want?

The IRF 2025 Top Performers Study analysed 600 companies across technology, financial services, and manufacturing and automotive sectors to identify what the top 22.5% of companies with superior growth, performance and talent retention are doing differently with rewards for their people. They found that an enormous 93% of top performing companies are offering regular incentive travel programmes, and they are typically outpacing their close competitors by 8 percentage points in the rankings. Not only that, but among the top performing companies, executive support for reward and recognition programmes is deeply embedded, with 99% of these companies reporting strong executive backing for year-on-year rewards. Top-performing companies also invest nearly £3k more per salesperson in incentive travel than comparator companies – and their revenue figures reflect it (IRF Top Performers study).

Why is an investment in incentive travel worth it?

That £3k per person might sound like a huge investment, but when studies have found that every £1 invested in incentive travel generates an extra 12.5 x sales and 3.8x return in profit for business who channel their cash into unforgettable experiences, it begs the question why incentive travel is not a more prominent feature in the discussions about the war on talent that are everywhere in the UK market today. Incentives make sense for business bottom line, and the memories of a ‘money can’t buy’ experience orchestrated by experienced partners who can simply ‘make the impossible happen’ provide an anticipation benefit and a lasting memory that cash simply can’t echo. This is backed up by the fact that a recent study by the National Institutes of Health found that organisations who offer strong incentive programmes reduce turnover likelihood by 26% and increase desired retention by 14%.

Our Approach

The Incentive Research Foundation found that 45% of companies surveyed planned to grow their travel-based incentive programmes in 2026. And for those that aren’t… it might be time to ask yourselves whether your talent retention strategy requires a smarter investment of cash in overseas incentives for you to stay ahead of the curve.

Want to chat about how a corporate incentive programme designed and run by us and our worldwide network of proven partners can help you?

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