CHICAGO (Sept. 29, 2009)--The Motivation Show announced today a change to the exhibit and conference schedule in 2010 designed to reduce exhibiting costs while maintaining a full three-day program of education, exhibits, and networking for attendees. The preliminary schedule will include a dedicated “Education Day” on Tuesday, October 12, from 9 a.m. through 5 p.m., followed by two full days of exhibits on Wednesday, October 13 and Thursday, October 14, also from 9 a.m. through 5 p.m. “Our new three-day Show schedule for 2010 is intended to expand our education and networking offering, while maintaining a full 16-hour exhibit schedule at a reduced cost to our exhibitors, “ said Peter Erickson, Managing Director of The Motivation Show.

2010 Preliminary Show Schedule:

Tuesday, October 12, Conference Sessions, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
(plus Keynote Luncheon, Evening Networking Event)

Wednesday, October 13, Exhibit Hours, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
(plus Conference Sessions, Keynote Luncheon, Evening Networking Event)

Thursday, October 14, Exhibit Hours, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
(plus Conference Sessions, Keynote Luncheon)

Increases education offering to attract new attendees The Tuesday Education Day will allow The Motivation Show to expand its highly successful Engineering Engagement Conference to include more sessions that do not conflict with exhibit hours. The conference has grown to include more than 70 seminars, two morning keynotes, and two luncheon keynotes. “Having a dedicated education day next year will help us design a more concentrated education offering for those attendees looking to improve their professional skills,” said Donna Oldenburg, Conference Director of The Motivation Show. “Our research indicates that a higher percentage of conference attendees are “first time” visitors to the show, and they tend to stay longer than exhibit hall only attendees. So our goal in 2010 will be to provide an education program that attracts more new and qualified attendees to The Motivation Show.”

Reduces exhibiting costs to improve ROI The new two-day exhibit schedule will mean one less travel day for exhibit booth staff and one less night in a hotel. Instead of three nights, most exhibit staff will be able to reduce their stay to just two nights, resulting in a 33 percent savings in hotel and meal costs. This new two-day exhibit schedule (Wednesday-Thursday) will also reduce exhibiting costs by adding an additional straight time (ST) day for exhibitor installation (Monday and Tuesday) resulting in reduced drayage costs. Additional savings include:

Eliminating inbound overtime charges (OT) for material handling and double time charges (DT) for other building services by closing the exhibit hall on Saturday-Sunday
Providing exhibitors with two full installation days at straight time rates by having all advance warehouse freight delivered prior to Monday morning at 8 a.m.
Reducing daily costs from three days to two days for cleaning and other services
Providing straight time dismantling rates until 8:30 p.m. for carpenters, decorators and riggers, following the close of the show at 5 p.m. on Thursday.

“The new 2010 schedule will result in significant savings to help our exhibitors control their costs and improve their show return on investment,” said Nancy Petitti, Show Director for The Motivation Show. “The exhibit space rate will not be increased in 2010 in an effort to hold down overall exhibiting costs.”

Moving to the new state-of-the-art McCormick West Building Next year will also bring a change in venue as the show moves to the new McCormick West. This state-of-the-art exhibition facility includes a 2,100 car parking garage, more than 60 Wi-Fi enabled meeting rooms and six restaurants and cafes for show attendees.

PLAN TO ATTEND…

the world’s premiere event for incentives, recognition awards, and motivational meetings and events. Check out Who Registered for 2009.

Special features this year include:

ENGINEERING ENGAGEMENT: Connecting Employee Engagement, Customer Loyalty, and Financial Results in Challenging Times – more than 70 professional seminars on the latest trends, topics, and best practices from some of America’s leading organizations. More.

Keynote Luncheons – three outstanding luncheon presentations at 11:45am featuring leading business authors and thought learders addressing the topics of engagement and leadership. More.

Morning Keynotes – two FREE programs on Tuesday and Wednesday morning at 8:45am, before the exhibit hall opens, addressing the topics of employee engagement and reward effectiveness. More.

Special Events – networking receptions, education breakfasts, award programs, power lunches, etc, from the industry’s leading trade associations. More.

Hosted Buyer Program (IT&ME) – for active buyers of meeting, incentive, conference, convention, or other group travel programs (including corporate buyers, incentive and meeting planners, and other travel resellers). Apply now.

Preferred Buyer Program (NPIS) – for active buyers of merchandise incentives and awards, promotional products, gift cards and business gifts (including corporate buyers, agencies, promotional consultants, catalog buyers, and other merchandise resellers). Apply now.

Associate Program – for organizations who assist corporate end-users with the design and delivery of incentive and recognition programs that use merchandise, travel, meeting, and event services. Apply now.

New Products – the “best of the best” new products and services at the Innovative Products Gallery near the entrance to the exhibit hall in booth 1712. More.
Exhibit Hall – a thousand leading suppliers of merchandise and travel from around the world gathered to help you design incentive and recognition programs, and motivational meetings and events, that reward loyalty and performance. More.

Check back at this web site throughout the summer for updates and information on new programs and special events.

Historically, incentive programs, unlike other sales and marketing strategies, have endured economic downturns. In fact, according to a review of past Incentive Federation and industry studies, the incentive industry grew following the recession that occurred in the late 1980s, and following the dot-com collapse in the late 1990s.
The Incentive Performance Center (IPC) has produced a white paper that explores why incentive programs tend to thrive during times of economic stress, despite the initial hit when bad times set in. It helps explain why saavy companies turn to incentive programs to drive business growth even while cutting budgets for other business development functions.

For more information, go to www.incentivecentral.org.

With competition high and employee retention and customer loyalty at all-time lows, the need for companies to create emotional engagement with employees, channel partners, and customers has never been greater. That’s the message delivered in a recent white paper, “Going One-on-One: The New Rules of Engagement,” sponsored by the Incentive Performance Center (IPC).

Drawing on interviews with some of the leading experts on engagement, including Don Peppers of the Peppers & Rogers Group, Mark Schumann of Towers Perrin, Alex Edmans of the Wharton School, and Allan Schweyer of the Human Capital Institute, the white paper offers a working definition of engagement and talks about some of the prerequisites of engagement in organizations, including:

A clear and promising direction.
Clear development opportunities.
Confidence in the organization.
Teamwork and collaboration.
Meaningful objectives and expectations.
A system of measurement.
The necessary skills and tools.
A system of reinforcement.

The paper has an important message for brands as well. To build customer loyalty, customers will have to step up their efforts to fulfill the brand promise. “And to ensure that you are fulfilling the brand promise and meeting customer expectations,” the white paper argues, “companies will have to have employees who are engaged and enthusiastic about their work, have the right training, have the right tools and information, and have the authority to take action.” The IPC white paper offers some suggestions on how companies can begin to move in that direction.

To see a copy of the complete white paper from IPC, click here.
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Organizations with formal employee engagement programs will distance themselves from their competition particularly in the areas of recruitment, retention and bottom-line financial results. That is according to a recent International Roundtable hosted by Globoforce on the topic of employee engagement.

Nearly 70 HR professionals and business leaders in attendance were polled on a variety of issues. Significant findings include:

81 percent of participants said they believe that recognition programs are integral to recruiting top talent. Participants also agree that these programs can act as a strong competitive differentiator when attracting candidates.
84 percent of participants agree that a well-executed employee engagement programs will improve a company's financial bottom line
59 percent of participants said that employee engagement is an increasingly hot topic of discussion in the C-suite, gaining an all-important executive "mind share" within their companies.
90 percent of participants say a strategic recognition programs which is strongly aligned with the company's mission and values can play an important role in a successful engagement strategy.

The survey also exposed several risks in not adopting formal engagement programs. Some 62 percent confirm that fallout from disengaged employees leads to poor quality of work and decreased productivity, while 22 percent say disengagement puts companies at risk to lose talent to a competitor.

For more information, go to www.globoforce.com.
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Employees, business partners and even consumers can no longer be "managed" as they were in the past if companies wish to survive long term. In a comprehensive report, Pulling Together: The Increased Role and Impact of People in Organizations, the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement reveals that people must be engaged, motivated, respected and rewarded so that their activities can best contribute to an organization's overall objectives.

The study looks at a number of forces affecting the workplace-workforce demographics, technological developments, and the increasing complexity of job demands and corresponding talent requirements-and suggests that unless companies so something about it they will be faced with a debilitating labor shortage.

"In today's economy, people are now, more than ever before, the source of competitive advantage," says Frank Mulhern, of Northwestern University, lead author of the report and co-founder of the Forum. "When People Performance Management is the primary focus of an organization, competitive advantage becomes human capital management; employees become partners, not expenses and compensation and incentives become total rewards management, "adds Mulhern.

For a copy of the report, go to www.performanceforum.org.
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A Towers Perrin survey of more than 90,000 employees worldwide, concludes that organizations are facing an "engagement gap," meaning they are not getting the discretionary effort they need from their people to drive performance and growth agendas.

"Globally only 21 percent of employees are engaged, meaning they are freely giving their time, energy, creativity and knowledge to their work. That's a disturbingly small number when you think about the impact people have on a business and its customers," says Julie Gebauer, Towers Perrin Managing Director. "Worse yet, fully 38 percent are either wholly or partly disengaged, meaning they might not know the right things to do to add value to the company, or they might be doing just the minimum to get by. Play those percentages out across a large workforce and it's easy to see the implications for performance," she adds.

The study found that companies with the highest levels of employee engagement achieve better financial results and are more successful in retaining their most valued employees than companies with lower levels of engagement. In a regression analysis of company financial results against engagement data, the study found that firms with the highest percentage of engaged employees collectively increased operating income 19 percent and earnings per share 28 percent year-to-year. The companies with the lowest levels of engaged employees showed year-to-year declines of 33 percent in operating income and 11 percent in earnings per share.

For more information, click here.

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