Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at Evanta’s 2019 CISO Executive Summit in St. Louis. My talk was titled “AI in 2020: What’s Real, What’s Fake and What’s Next?”

We have overcome so many challenges in addressing employee engagement. Time was, HR and engagement leaders had to convince the organization of the importance of investing in rewards and recognition, then engagement — and today, holistic solutions have appeared from the possibilities of technological advancement to bring engagement, wellness, rewards, and so many other aspects of workforce management together in one unified platform. It’s a different time.

For the past decade, I’ve been an entrepreneur running creative agencies who never planned to work at corporate again, until last fall when it seemed the perfect time to work at corporate again.

The Incentive Research Foundation (IRF) released its annual trends report, and as is always the case with IRF offerings, it includes plenty of pertinent and interesting information. The 10 trends with implications for incentive travel and reward and recognition programs include: 

At Maritz Motivation, we are making a commitment to AI. This is not a “here today, gone tomorrow” trend. It’s going to become an invaluable tool which transforms industries. Loyalty is one of those industries. In fact, loyalty presents some unique opportunities, which makes it ripe for AI functionality.