Many of us love contests—and they can be a highly effective way to motivate employees in businesses of all sizes. That’s why so many companies offer vacations as incentives to their sales teams. And with trends like gamification being used to put a new spin on workplace contests, workplace competitions are increasingly popular and creative.
That said, contests can also backfire. If you put everyone’s score in a contest on a leaderboard, for instance, the people who have racked up the fewest points may feel isolated or even worse humiliated. That can lead them to become disengaged at work—leading to lower productivity. Research by Globoforce, a provider of social recognition solutions, found that while 86% of employees said a recognition program would motivate them, 79% said they would not work harder if the recognition were displayed on some type of leaderboard.
As a result, if you are planning a contest, you need to consider the decision carefully. Here are some questions to ask yourself.
How competitive is your team?
Some people thrive on friendly rivalry and love going head-to-head with their opponents. Others are more collaborative and find that contests that pit them against the co-workers in adjoining cubicles can be stressful and erode the supportive relationships they’ve built with colleagues.
Knowing how your team feels can be helpful before you embark on a contest. Do an informal, one-on-one poll of individual team members to see what they think of the idea. Even if they are not excited about a contest that pits employees against each other to hit sales and performance benchmarks, they may welcome a competition to meet other types of goals.
When the company Nextjump wanted to inspire more of its employees to work out and stay healthy—a concern among many companies that want to keep health care costs in check—it created the Fitness Challenge. The company was divided into five teams, with peer-nominated captains. Every week, the teams competed to inspire the greatest number of members to work out. The winning team won WOWPoints, a virtual currency that could be redeemed for purchases at an online retail mall or transferred to a health savings account. Nextjump, which has an onsite gym, found that the program increased gym attendance to 80%.
Is the prize right?
When planning a contest, also ask your team what type of prizes would be most motivating. Even though you might think a monetary bonus will always be welcome, it could be that if you’ve been putting in long hours, your team would prefer another type of prize, like getting an extra day off so they can take a four-day weekend.
Bear in mind that some employees may not want to win a cash prize because they will have to pay income taxes on it. But there are other reasons they may not want to win cash, as well. Some value opportunities for personal and career development more. Research by the Incentive Research Foundation in 2016 found that 65% of employees would rather receive an experiential award they like, such as travel, than cash, if the experiential reward includes elements such as unique opportunities to network.
What do you want to reinforce?
Contests can be great for inspiring a team to meet an easily measurable goal—like hitting a revenue benchmark or signing up a certain number of new customers—because you’re keeping score. If you’re trying to reinforce the firm’s cultural values, which can be harder to quantify, make sure it’s possible to tailor a contest to that goal. For instance, if your firm prizes outstanding customer service, and you want to set up a contest where different business units compete against each other to wow your clientele, you will need to set up an objective system to measure their performance, such as customer satisfaction surveys. Achievement of more intangible goals might be harder to track and measure in a contest, in which case you’ll need to consider other types of incentives to motivate your team.
How much time will it take you to run the contest?
Some contests can be time-consuming to manage, so it’s important to consider whether your business will have a high return on investment when it comes to improving your culture. Even if you don’t manage the contest personally, one of your employees will have to promote the contest, keep track of results, share them and administer rewards on paid company time. Making sure that you can devote the proper resources to the contest ahead of time can go a long way to make sure it’s a hit that truly fuels your culture.