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Maritz and the Unconference
June 09, 2008
By Jennifer Juergens
The top brass of leading incentive house Maritz Inc. were joined by 90 of their best clients at "Connections," the St. Louis– based firm's fourth annual Incentive Industry Summit.
Held May 13-16 at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, the "unconference," as Maritz referred to it, began with a kickoff cocktail reception at the Bellagio that included a gauntlet of about 200 employees applauding guests as if they had just made the final touchdown in the Super Bowl. Christine Duffy, president of Maritz Travel, and David Weinberger, author of Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, spoke on future tech trends.
During sessions, clients from Comcast, Sun Microsystems, Aramark, and AT&T, among others, co- presented seminars with folks from Maritz in unconference-like settings (living room style, for example). Seminars included family- friendly incentives, using meetings in incentives, non-cash rewards and sales force effectiveness. Another, "Is your reward and recognition investment paying off?" showed the group ways Maritz surveys participants before a program to make the incentive more meaningful.
Questions include: "Is R&R important to winners?" "Is bringing along spouses a must?" "Is recognition from the higher-ups on the trip meaningful?" Answers to such questions reveal what type of employee you have: experience seekers, career builders, tangible award seekers or personal choice seekers. The survey tool, Motivation Insight, has been administered to six clients so far.
Tim O'Neill of Maritz and Lory Fraraccio-Kenney, manager of sales planning for AT&T operations, talked about reward programs that would encourage frequent play. Fraraccio-Kenney spoke about the AT&T Signature Success Program—and about its success. At another session, about incorporating meetings and incentives, planners for Bayer and Cisco spoke about their best practices. Steve Maritz, the company's chairman and CEO, closed the event with some choice words: "We can talk together and turn these ideas into something we can try in the marketplace. And next year, we can see how those ideas worked."
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