What is the greatest change you've faced during the past year?
A constant flurry of meetings accompanied Fairfield Communities, Inc.'s acquisition of Vacation Break, USA in the last part of 1997. "I was planning meetings all the time," says Sharon Ferguson, director of community relations at the Little Rock, AK-based land development and vacation leisure products company.
Complicating matters was the fact that the new company was based in Florida, making schedules and travel more difficult to coordinate. "We added 600 employees," says Ferguson, "and that affected every department in the company."
Now Ferguson faces another challenge--incorporating the new employees into the company's incentive trip structure. "Of the 600 new employees, about 250 are salespeople. Over the past five years, we've seen a 20 to 25 percent growth annually of incentive trip qualifiers, which made it easy for me to estimate the number of winners each year. This year it will be more difficult to figure out attendance levels."--Irene Korn