Award Acts As A Catalyst In Motivating Team Members

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Award acts as a catalyst in motivating team members. What is preferred team award or individual award?

Rewards and recognitions are an important part of team motivation. They are formal and effective ways of recognizing and promoting individuals and the team as a whole. Although rewards and recognition help to build a strong and motivating team, they can also demoralize the team, in absence of established method or criteria for handing them out. For example, if you have consistent outstanding performers on the team, you could kill morale by consistently rewarding the same set of people repeatedly. The solution to this problem is go for team awards. This is a win-win because all team members are recognized for their contributions and you can appropriately link the reward to the performance. Team members should be rewarded for going above and beyond the call of duty. Perhaps they have gone out of the way by significant amount of overtime to meet a project goal. This should be rewarded and formally recognized by the top management as nothing is better than recognizing and respecting.

Some believe that the annual individual performance reviews is not a good idea. Along that vein typical individual awards are usually not a good idea.

You get what you reward or encourage. If you want folks to perform as a team, you reward the team – if you want them to perform as individuals, you reward individuals. When two or more individuals are competing with each other, team performance can suffer. Consider individual preferences and cultural differences while selecting the award for your team members. Some people appreciate an honest thanks in a very small gathering with minimum publicity, and others just won’t accept individual rewards as their culture do not allow it.

Team awards are recommended, if granted from top management but individual awards are granted, if nominated from within.
Some believes that performance reviews, as some in administration will overlook, downplay, or ignore the employee effort that falls outside of the employee’s “official” job description.

Some tips how to recognize and motivate your team-

  1. Make it a win-win competition where most of the performers can win- example all the employees who lie in the range of meet expectations, are invited for a small pizza party.
  2. Make the challenge light-hearted and objective driven. Ensure that your team members should not feel low because they could not keep pace with other outstanding performers.
  3. It is enthusiasm and spirit of every individual which matters rather than winning it at any cost. Such a positive motivation may result in more dedication and better results.
  4. If the competition is healthy and motivating then result of the competition takes lesser priority.

The price of the award really don’t matter, what matters is how it was given –the recognition. So ensure that there is a small presentation meeting in a meeting room or cafeteria.

Some tips for the presentation ceremony:

  1. Prepare a small speech for the occasion so that your team don’t lose the interest.
  2. Appreciation in front of a large audience, can really do miracles so it is good idea to read few appreciation mails from top management loudly.
  3. Respect the feeling and concern of every individual, as there are people whose contribution is high but goes unnoticed.
  4. Success is a result of hard work, proper coordination and exceptionally good team work, so start with praising the entire team.
  5. Don’t try to position the employees against each other.
  6. Give weightage to dedication and effort – let them know what they were judged on.

Both team and individual awards are important depending upon the nature of the project and above all a simple thanks to all the contributors is what is required most.

About Aditi Malhotra

Aditi Malhotra is the Content Marketing Manager at Whizlabs. Having a Master in Journalism and Mass Communication, she helps businesses stop playing around with Content Marketing and start seeing tangible ROI. A writer by day and a reader by night, she is a fine blend of both reality and fantasy. Apart from her professional commitments, she is also endearing to publish a book authored by her very soon.

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