Your client has noticed that public opinion regarding incentives is not good. She is worried that her company will be seen as wasteful and she will be seen as a spendthrift. In some companies that assessment may be accurate, but in some cases it may be way off. If you have a client who is worried for no good reason, perhaps you can convince her that canceling the program isn’t only not necessary, it can be detrimental to the business’s bottom line.

One reason is that the employee may have been expecting it, and perhaps working with a goal like that in mind. Bob may have noticed that last year Joe got a trip to New Zealand for being the top producing sales person, and he just broke Joe’s sales record. If Bob doesn’t get an incentive gift, he’s not only going to ask, “Why bother?” but he may also end up working for the competition.

Another reason is because others are watching. If Bob and Joe are retail partners and the same thing happens, other retail partners will see that and also ask, “Why bother?” Driving sales down is a negative return on investment, and sales is the only thing that makes money.

So the real reason not to cancel is because the top ROI a client can get on a canceled trip is zero. Zip, zilch, nada. That’s if she’s lucky. If she’s not, she will have a possible attrition of good sales people, or less participation from retail partners, and general malaise of employee attitude.