An Incentive for EVERY LIFESTYLE - Brief Article

HR Magazine, July, 2001

For every person whose reach exceeds his or her grasp, there is a lifestyle incentive and award that will inspire and motivate. For the man who lusts after his brother's wide-screen television set... For the woman who envies her sister's grandfather clock... It's only human nature to covet thy neighbor's six-burner gas grill with stainless steel cooking grates. And it's in answer to this basic instinct of wanting what one does not have--and perhaps is unattainable--that lifestyle incentives and awards exist and continue to motivate employees.

Cash, as a motivator, is an unemotional award. Its value is concrete, and while it could be used to purchase a lifestyle award, most likely it will be charged against a burgeoning pile of bills or deposited into a leaky checking account where it soon ceases to exist. And with the demise of the cash award goes the memory of its origin.

Desire for a lifestyle award is emotional, almost palpable for some people. It's the camcorder on a dog-eared catalog page that is the perfect thing for when the baby arrives. It's the urgency of desire for a set of fine-boned china for the holidays, when your everyday consists of plastic plates. It's the deep unsatisfied need to be rewarded for working hard by choosing a set of suitcases capable of withstanding an airport's most sadistic baggage handler.

It's this hunger for what is just past our reach that a lifestyle incentive feeds and nurtures. A lifestyle award evens out the playing field, and what has previously been unattainable is now within grasp. When the objective is motivation, the importance if hope based on desire should never be underestimated. It's the core of the lifestyle incentive; it's the heartbeat of the incentive industry.