Reward Excellent Teamwork
Because teams make up so much of corporate responsibilities, rewarding them for hard work should be part of the motivation process. Rewards can also develop synergies within teams. Success and acceptance associated with rewards can help build trust among team members.
Goal
To incentivize teams to produce excellent work while building trust and synergies among the workforce.
What is Reward Excellent Teamwork?
Team-based rewards are incentives and performance-based compensation that is given to teams (rather than individuals) for meeting or exceeding assigned tasks. Generally, they are used to maximize work output and productivity. Rewards provided to teams can be categorized as monetary or non-monetary. Monetary team-based rewards include one-time cash bonuses, permanently increased base salary, and variable pay (i.e., earning a specified percentage of base salary). Non-monetary team-based rewards include achievement awards, time off work, and special dinners.
How does Rewarding Excellent Teamwork improve employee engagement and culture?
Team-based structures are increasingly more common in the workplace setting. More and more, teams are asked to complete projects. Providing rewards for team success motivates employees to cooperate and engage for a common goal. It can help foster a shared purpose and provide synergy within the team-based model. Generally speaking, team members feel more comfortable when performance criteria are based on objective standards.
What are the benefits?
Greater synergy within organization
Common goals and shared purpose
Enhancement of capabilities and responsiveness
Completed tasks
Purpose fulfillment
How do you Reward Excellent Teamwork?
Offering team-based rewards has pros and cons. It is important to consider the risks of team-based rewards, which can include competitiveness, a lack of trust among team members and perhaps some people not pulling their weight. However, by creating the right incentives for the team/tasks at hand, these pitfalls can be avoided. Understand the nature of the team and what rewards work best (e.g. pay, discretionary, profit-sharing etc.)
Action
Reward Team Based Excellence
Identify your team’s needs: Make sure you have identified if the teams at your workplace would benefit from a rewards system and how that can be implemented.
Create the system: Whether it is goal-based, merit-based or some other objectives, having that set at the beginning will establish a level of understanding of what the teams are required to reach for.
Create the reward: Monetary compensation is generally (and probably) the reward most workers are looking for. However, there are other discretionary or profit sharing rewards that can be offered.
Communicate: Give clear direction to managers and those in charge of the teams to provide information and answer questions about goals and rewards to frontline workers.
Avoid competitive behaviour: Ensure all teams understand the importance of trust and cooperation to prevent destructive competitive behaviour.
Reference Material
Team-Based Rewards Structures and Their Impact on Team Trust
Last updated