Everyone loves a little friendly competition. Even in the workplace, healthy competition has many benefits. Workplace competition can make employees more productive and engaged in their work. It can also promote more teamwork and give employees the opportunity to interact with each other in a more exciting manner than usual. It is important, however, to foster this kind of competition the right way. It is very possible you will have people in the office who are very competitive and thrive in these environments. However, you will also have those who cringe even at the thought of a contest.
A few examples of healthy competition would be seeing which team can retain the most revenue, or who can make the most phone calls throughout the day. You can even have a contest for the team that can come up with the best business expansion idea. Here are some ways to help promote healthy competition in the workplace and avoid disenfranchising employees.
Creating a competition between individual employees can produce adverse effects. One major problem with this model is that it can promote a dog-eat-dog situation where everyone is looking to be the top player. However, the competition is team-oriented, it can foster a much healthier environment which encourages collaboration. When companies create teams, they should ensure a balance, with team members of various strengths and tenure. This method will create effective teams and allow employees to learn from each other as the competition continues.
Keep the Company Goals At The Forefront
Getting your employees excited about competition is great, but you want to be sure that the excitement doesn’t overshadow the overarching reason for the competition. At the end of the day, you want the competition to help employees hit goals and achieve overall success within the business, so you want to make this a focus of the contest. Companies should make sure that day-to-day business operations continue seamlessly during the competition, and that the competition itself isn’t interfering. If this is happening, a company should make adjustments when necessary if things are not going as planned.
Everyone loves an incentive and recognition for doing a great job. With that said, companies should include a reasonable prize at the end which motivates employees to optimize their performance. This award can be something as small as a team trophy for bragging rights around the office. It can also be something a little more enticing such as an extra day off during the year or the chance to leave early on the next four Fridays. These options will keep your employees motivated to work even harder, and it will garner great results for the company overall.