Prize, awards and reward may seem like interchangeable words, but in the workplace, they serve very different functions. Understanding how to use prizes, awards and rewards can transform how you approach employee motivation.
The Role of Prizes In Employee Productivity
A prize is usually a reward that is given to someone in a contest, competition, or game of chance. In the workplace, a prize can serve to motivate employees toward a specific one-time outcome. Prizes are usually given to one individual, regardless of whether other employees also achieved similar results.
For example, employers might offer a prize for the employee who gets the most desired outcome during a period of time. Or, managers can offer a prize where employees are entered for each qualifying action.
The winning employee’s name is drawn from the pool of entries. Prizes serve to provide additional motivation over shorter periods of time. Contests usually focus on very specific actions or results. When the contest is over, employees generally return to regular work habits and productivity levels.
Prizes generally do not make long-term changes in employee behavior, but they can have a place in the workforce. Prizes can help motivate employees to wrap up a quarter or year with a big bang. It can help motivate employees through natural or recurring seasonal slumps in sales or productivity.
Prizes can also help to jumpstart a new year, help to motivate employees to promote a new product or service, and get the momentum going when needed. Prizes should be good enough that employees get a little dreamy over them, but they don’t need to always be expensive.
Some of the most effective prizes include extra PTO, a casual day, or a coveted spot at the office.
Prize: A thing given as a reward to the winner in a competition.
The Role Of Rewards In Employee Results
Rewards are gifts or benefits given for specific actions. Unlike a prize, rewards will give everyone who performs the actions or obtains the results the benefit. For example, a reward would benefit every employee who received a certain score on a customer review. Rewards often function as a carrot. In this way, money as a motivator is often used as a reward. If an employee performs a certain way, then they receive the reward.
Rewards are a great way to motivate employees toward a specific outcome. Managers usually use rewards to drive employees toward desired results. Rewards are good motivators over short periods of time.
During the time that employees earn rewards for specific outcomes, they will often stay motivated if the reward is beneficial and desired by most or all of the employees.
Rewards are often seen as a fair way to reward employees for a great job because it’s fair to everyone who achieves a desired outcome and it doesn’t create undue competition or single out specific individuals.
Another example of a reward is the traditional service award. Every employee who has achieved a set length of service is typically given a reward, regardless of their individual performance.
Rewards have less to do with achievement than with actions or efforts.
- Reward: a thing given in recognition for one’s service or effort.
- Rewards are often used to entice employees to certain actions.
Employee Engagement Issues Created By Prizes and Rewards
Although prizes and rewards are great for short-term pushes and contests, they rarely serve to motivate and engage employees long term. In fact, consistent rewards and contests can encourage employees to feel more entitled and to feel resentment when a current contest isn’t in place.
And, they often steal from employees’ intrinsic motivation and internal award centers by placing the focus on the promised reward. Prizes as rewards are generally used to control the outcome of an employee’s efforts.
Employers often see employee performance decrease to worse levels than before a series of contests because employees hold back on performance until a new contest is announced.
This is often called “sandbagging.” Sandbagging occurs when employees have success but don’t record or report on their success until after the start of a new contest or reward period.
These types of attitudes and results countermine the effectiveness of the contest and are counter productive.
Awards Create The Highest Level of Employee Engagement
In the English language, there is some overlap between reward and awards. Many employers may use the words interchangeably. Instead, how you implement your award system is much more important than using the words reward and award correctly.
The biggest difference between rewards, prizes and awards is that awards provide gifts or benefits for employee long-term performance and are not promised to employees at the onset of performance. While rewards and prizes usually focus on specific actions or results within a specific timeframe, awards are often longer-term and more of a “thank you!”
Employee awards generally focus on high performance of the employee overall. Instead of focusing on only one habit or result, awards can be given for overall engagement and consistent dependability. Awards are usually given as a thank you and a celebration now that we had completed a difficult project, won that huge account, or had a great string of successes.
A bonus that is based on an employee’s performance would be considered an award, as long as its not promised beforehand. A bonus given to all employees, or promised in compensation for a specific behavior, would be considered a reward. Awards are usually given to employees when they do something outstanding or show great skills or leadership abilities.
- Award: a prize or other mark of recognition given in honor of an achievement of excellence
- Awards are often used to celebrate an accomplishment, or to say “thank you!”
- Awards are not promised beforehand or used as enticement
Incorporating Awards into a Corporate Culture For Maximum Engagement
Employers can use awards as the main foundation to their recognition programs to increase results. But, the employers who include employees in recognition and award giving exponentially increase the effectiveness of their recognition program. When all employees are allowed to recognize and give awards for outstanding performance, employee engagement increases.
Peer-to-peer recognition becomes a powerful tool that inspires employee motivation because peers can recognize each other as they exemplify corporate standards of excellence. Team Members often have a front-row seat to an employee’s hard choices, integrity, and challenges overcome.
As a result, incorporating peer recognition into the corporate culture means that many of the hidden, but critically important actions of employees are better recognized and encouraged.
Three of the biggest benefits to involving employees in recognition include:
- More eyes and ears and time to recognize great performance
- Recognition becomes more consistent
- Corporate culture encourages greater team comadre as team members express gratitude and recognize others on their team.
Conclusion
Recognizing employees for their performance, efforts, and work have a more profound effect on employee motivation than rewards, which unilaterally reward employees who reach specific benchmarks.
About Thanks
Thanks is a leading provider of a recognition-based platform that increases communication, builds teamwork, and makes recognition a part of company culture. Fast, easy and simple Thanks makes it easy to bring data-driven employee recognition to your entire organization. O.C. Tanner purchased the Thanks platform in 2019 to fulfill the recognition needs of smaller businesses.
Thanks customers benefit from the same decades of research in employee motivation and company culture that O.C. Tanner enterprise clients enjoy, but in a product that is geared for fast, easy and simple deployment. Whether you’re starting a recognition program or improving and expanding on what you already have, Thanks has everything you need to engage your people with effective, scalable recognition.