The Incentive Research Foundation today released its latest top performer study, The IRF 2025 Top Performer Study: Automotive & Manufacturing Industries. The white paper examines how top performing automotive and manufacturing companies are leveraging non-cash rewards and recognition.

The study provides benchmarks and best practices employed by top performing automotive and manufacturing companies to influence performance, shape culture, strengthen partnerships, and retain top talent using non-cash rewards. It also presents the data by program type, including employee, sales, and channel.

Six hundred participants took part in the study, 149 of whom are full-time employees with significant influence over incentive reward and recognition programs at companies generating at least $100 million in annual revenue in the sectors.

To be considered a top performer for this study, companies met benchmarks in revenue growth, achievement of performance goals, customer trends, and employee attraction, and retention. Of the 159 automotive and manufacturing companies reviewed, 24% of participating firms qualified as top-performing companies.

Key insights specific to the automotive and manufacturing industries include:

• Nearly 80% of Top Performers rate executive support for their reward and recognition programs as excellent, more than 20 percentage points higher than the Comparator group.
• Participant flexibility is key, with 74% top performing companies prioritizing flexibility in merchandise and gift programs and 57% for incentive travel rewards
• Particularly within sales and employee reward programs, high-achieving companies are 25-30% more likely to use incremental targets for creating clear, achievable steps that encourage steady progress.
• Top performing companies’ average spend on a sales incentive trip is nearly $2,000 more than comparators. For non-travel sales rewards, top performers spend nearly $2,500 more than comparators.

To download the white paper, visit the The IRF 2025 Top Performer Study: Automotive & Manufacturing Industries web page.

The full Top Performer Series will include Top 10 Things Top Performing Companies Do Differently and industry reports for the Financial Services, Manufacturing / Automotive, and Technology industries.

The IRF 2025 Top Performer Study: Automotive & Manufacturing Industries was supported by IRF Research Advocacy Partner, Maritz.