Would you value incentives in lieu of wages?

I should perhaps begin by saying that companies aren't forgoing wages to give staff a trip to Alton Towers or something, but what they are doing is using incentives to motivate staff in these troubled financial times when salary increases are a little bit harder to come by.

That's the finding of the 2009 salary survey conducted by the CMI (in conjunction with the good folks at CELRE).  The survey was a comprehensive investigation into the state of the nations salaries with data collected from around 45,000 people.  Some of the incentives uncovered included:

• Increases in holiday allowance
• Redeployment to other business areas
• Time off in lieu of work
• Greater training support

The crux of the research was that staff turnover is costly in terms of performance and moral and companies are doing all they can to retain talented employees whenever possible rather than having to rebuild teams from scratch when the economy recovers.

These findings correlate nicely with another employment survey I came across today via TechCrunch.  They were covering a survey conducted by Glassdoor.com, a recruitment company, into employee confidence.  Amongst their findings were the following nuggets:

• 70 percent would be willing to take on more projects and responsibities to keep their jobs
• 62 percent would be willing to work longer hours to keep their jobs
• 34 percent would take an unpaid leave of absence to save their jobs longterm

All of which ties in very much with the results of our own salary survey and shows that employers are generally in tune with what employees find important.  It would be fantastic to hear about how your company is handling the downturn?  Are they employing any of the methods highlighted above? 

ps, forgot to mention, you can get a copy of the report at a discounted rate if you're a CMI member.  Have a look here for details.