Beyond Rewards: Rethinking Incentive Events for 2025

In today’s corporate events landscape, employees’ priorities are constantly changing. So when it comes to incentivising your teams, there simply isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach that will guarantee success. That’s why brands need to go beyond just simple reward schemes, and craft bespoke and adaptable incentive strategies driven by impactful and inclusive event experiences that can evolve alongside changing workforce priorities. 

But why exactly should brands look to modernise and future-proof their corporate events incentive strategies? What long-term results will it unlock for their business? 

What are the benefits of incentives? 

The benefits of incentives can be split into hard benefits, and soft benefits. Hard benefits are defined as being the trackable impact of incentive schemes on your business, such as driving sales, revenue and profit. On the other hand you have soft benefits, which include: 

• Creating employee culture 
• Building strong relationships in the team 
• Driving employee engagement 
• Fostering a sense of purpose 

Despite their ‘soft’ label, the conversation around these benefits have changed, with many industry leaders now deeming them as more significant than hard benefits, owing to their long-lasting effects on a business. As such, brands are using incentive events to harness these soft benefit ROIs, with a staggering 90% of global companies using ‘non cash incentives’ to retain talent. 

But what strategies can brands deploy to access these benefits for their businesses? 

Let’s take a look at a tried and tested process for creating incentive success.

Techniques to Revolutionise your Incentive Schemes in 2025

Step 1: Map Out Your Goals & Align with Your Purpose 

Consider exactly what it is that you want to achieve from this event. From this central purpose, you can then begin to assign clear goals and KPIs to your incentive, and ensure that the design of the event experience itself ladders back to that core goal you’re trying to achieve. 

Step 2: Understand Your People 

Crafting the kind of inclusive experience that will incentivise your people starts with understanding what makes your teams tick. Compile as much data as you can about your teams, in terms of what they value, the kind of content they want to interact with, and how they want to be communicated with. Without hard data and evidence to back up your incentive strategy, you run the risk of creating an incentive offering that sparks indifference, rather than action. 

Step 3: Build the Buzz 

You need an expertly designed communication strategy to keep your employee engagement high. Craft a targeted and personalised email campaign to your attendees, packed with tantalising information about the impactful experiences that await them on their trip. 

Step 4: Personalised and Seamless: Nail Your Execution

To create the kind of unforgettable experience that will be talked about for years to come, and create long-term results for your business, your attendees need to feel truly valued and appreciated at every stage of their event journey. A slick and seamless logistical plan to your event, punctuated with those wow-factor moments, is essential to building a winning incentive experience. 

Top Tip!

To elevate the incentive even further, brands can add personalised touches to already impactful experiences, such as tailored room drops, branded event swag, and personalised daily itineraries. 

Ready to rethink your approach to incentive events? 

Now is the time to start thinking ahead to plan your future incentive strategy, perfectly designed to drive employee engagement. 

Get in touch with the First Event team to discuss how we can bring our incentive expertise to craft a bespoke strategy, designed to transform your employee culture.