U.S. businesses make significant investments in their total rewards packages, which include base compensation, variable compensation, benefits, non-cash rewards, incentive travel and recognition. Driving Growth Through Total Rewards, a new study produced jointly by the Incentive Research Foundation (IRF) and Insperity, a human resources solutions provider, examines how top-performing companies design and manage total rewards packages to maximize employee performance.

Driving Growth Through Total Rewards explores organizational performance, culture and talent strategy, key outcomes driven by individual components of total rewards, and communication. The study then provides industry-specific analysis for professional services, health, retail, finance, technology and manufacturing industries.

Key insights include:

  • Top-performing companies use base compensation to recruit and retain the best talent. Benefits like paid time off, health insurance and wellbeing are also key to retention.
  • Gift cards and incentive travel are used more frequently by top-performing companies.
  • Top-performing companies tend to reward fewer employees with non-cash rewards, but the average per-employee spend is higher than standard-performing companies.
  • Non-cash rewards and recognition help to reinforce the behaviors that drive the business forward.
  • Top-performing companies provide more frequent communication about the total rewards available to employees during recruiting, onboarding and annual reviews.
  • To ensure non-cash rewards are directed towards key business outcomes, top-performing companies allow each department to determine the budget spending for non-cash rewards and recognition.

“The IRF has an extensive selection of research examining the effectiveness of non-cash rewards. Driving Growth Through Total Rewards enables us to look at these non-cash rewards in a broader context,” says Stephanie Harris, the president of IRF. “The insights presented in this study will help human resources and incentive professionals alike deliver impactful and meaningful outcomes from their use of rewards.”

To download the full study and white paper, please visit theirf.org/research_post/total-rewards-top-performer-study.