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Challenges in Running Contests for your Workforce

Competition between employees is an inevitable part of work life, much like in sports. Workplace competition has become so popular that many Fortune 500 companies have embraced it.Healthy competition at work through contests will bring the best out of your employees and drive them to put in extra effort and achieve greater results. However, many companies hesitate to run contests. Competitions that hand out bonuses or public recognition will excite the top performers. Employees who are not at the top may fear being laid off, losing their income, or being humiliated in public.How can you have healthy contests and drive effective results? This blog talks about what you can do to make sure they go as planned.

Contests Should Be Exciting- A recent Harvard Business Review study found that contests where people stood to win something brought about high levels of excitement. Healthy competition is essentially based on incentives, including bonuses. For instance, the top performer, like the man of the match in cricket gets a cash prize, a voucher, or a gift. This could inspire others with high potential to work harder and win this prize. It’s not as simple though. Contests work for some, but not for all.

Competition Doesn’t Work for Everyone- Only a certain section of the workforce shows keen interest in competition. A quarter of employees have known to wilt under the pressure of contests and disengage. Another quarter doesn’t show much interest in contests at all. This means that only 50% benefit from it. In this case, competition may not really be a positive motivator for every member of your team.

Healthy Competition Isn’t Always the Norm- Not all your employees thrive in a highly competitive environment. When job roles are competitive, employees who don’t work well under high-pressure contests should not be forced to remain in them. If your team isn’t keen on contests, you should not try to force them to compete.

Winning Contests Should Not be the Ultimate Objective- Winning and losing is part of sport and should be part of work life as well. Perpetually focusing on competition is unhealthy and has negative implications. Remember that competition and cash rewards aren’t always the biggest drivers for your employees. They start looking beyond these rewards for deeper motivators that make them feel like important contributors.

Benefits of Running Contests

Contests, when run well can motivate individuals to put in efforts well above those predicted by traditional decision-making. When contests provide additional non-monetary incentives such as public recognition for winning, they can motivate the achievers to gain greater visibility within their organization.

Setting up contests that reward high achievers can become the key to enhancing engagement and productivity at work. Creating a sense of healthy competition among employees is important and can lead to key benefits. However, contests also have their negatives.

Negative Effects of Contests

Most contests reward the high achievers, and these high achievers make up a mere 10% of the workforce. When 90% of the workforce isn’t recognized, it could cause them a great deal of fear and anxiety; fear that they’ll disappoint their boss, co-workers and other negative emotions. Take, for instance, a cricket team where only three out of the eleven players are recognized and held in great esteem. This could demotivate the other players, lead to friction within the team and eventually hamper the performance of the team.

Setting up contests that reward high achievers can become the key to enhancing engagement and productivity at work. Creating a sense of healthy competition among employees is important and can lead to key benefits. However, contests also have their negatives.

Focus on the Wrong Things

Contests can create an environment where employees begin to focus more on their competitors than on their own work. Much like a star batsman focused solely on improving his batting average over his closest competitor.

Your employees might also try to imitate their competitors and try to stay ahead of them, instead of focusing on bringing their best to the table.

Setting up contests that reward high achievers can become the key to enhancing engagement and productivity at work. Creating a sense of healthy competition among employees is important and can lead to key benefits. However, contests also have their negatives.

Keep Your Teams Living & Breathing Ambition

RyzeUp helps your organization bridge the gap between sales, planning, and execution. We make work fun using strategic weekly tournaments (like the IPL), having scoreboards, and giving out incentives, and rewards (monetary and non-monetary). RyzeUp uses the latest innovative avenues to improve individual performance, build team spirit and make work more fun. We use insights to bridge the visibility gap between planning and execution. RyzeUp designs contests in such a way that the star achievers, who form 10% of the team help the other 90% to improve their performances. We also monitor performances as the action happens and take corrective measures on the spot.

Get in touch with us to help your teams live and breathe ambition through contests that are fun and healthy.

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Who is a Top Performer?

High-performing employees are instrumental in helping organizations achieve their objectives. High performers are skilled, responsible, accountable, and extremely productive. They are invaluable to the companies they work for as they constantly set new standards and raise the bar. Top performers are highly driven and don’t settle for anything less than excellence. Think of someone like Kevin Durant, the best basketball player in the world who continues to set the bar high with each game.

When you’re looking to grow your business, you need higher-than-average contributions. You need to identify those who offer a little extra and nurture them. When your employees go beyond the call of duty and exhibit traits of creative thinking, strong communication, and leadership potential, they will help elevate the status of your enterprise.

Popular sports leagues and tournaments encourage and incentivize the top performers. In the IPL, the top performer in each match becomes the MVP (Most Valuable Player). Organizations can create a similar system by awarding the MVP to an employee who has outperformed his or her peers.

If you don’t notice and encourage the professional development of your top performers, they will leave your organization for better opportunities. Here are the typical characteristics of high performers:

Self-Motivation – Top performers are masters at compartmentalizing and focusing their time and energy on achieving their targets and ambitions. Like champion athletes, (think Novak Djokovic or Rafael Nadal) they assess their strengths and weaknesses and make strategic plans to thrive. They base their workplace decisions on whether their actions will get them closer to the goals of the organization as well as their own.

Highly Skilled – A top performer doesn’t just have excellent technical skills, but strong interpersonal communication skills as well. Much like professional athletes, top performers are extremely capable and skilled in all these areas. Problem-solving abilities, building a good rapport with others, flexibility, and an innate understanding of the needs of the industry are key factors setting these employees apart.

Seek Professional Growth – Professional growth can occur in many different forms. Upskilling, taking up professional courses, research programs, and additional responsibilities are a few examples. High performers are constantly on the lookout for these opportunities as they enable them to improve their skill set and give them the confidence to function effectively at work. Think of your top performers as all-rounders in cricket. All-rounders possess all the vital skills that make them indispensable to a team.

Conclusion

There are many talented sportsmen, but only a few make it to the top. Nurturing and encouraging these performers are vital to ensuring high performances on a consistent basis. Developing strategies and ideas on retaining your talent at the workplace become equally, if not more important. Ensure that your top performers are in it for the long haul.

RyzeUp explores innovative avenues to keep your teams and employees motivated. Our employee engagement solutions turn your day-to-day business operations into a sporting context to keep things interesting, challenging, and intuitive. Find new ways to keep your work environment fresh and engaging and encourage your top performers to reach greater heights. Explore RyzeUp today!

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The Power of Second Week Sales in Retail

As business leaders, it’s essential to stay on top of your sales teams to know whether they’re on track to achieve their monthly targets or not. Good sales performance is highly valued in any form of retail and is essential for business growth. Your sales team needs to achieve their sales targets by planning their month right.

Consistency is the name of the game when you’re looking to match or exceed your retail sales targets. Like in a T20 game, where the opening batsmen focus on scoring as many runs as they can in the first six overs, your sales team will focus on meeting close to half their monthly targets in the first week of every month.

Smart sales teams can meet or exceed their targets consistently. They have a well-defined business plan which lets them meet 80% of their targets by the second week of each month and complete their monthly targets within the third week. How can they go about doing this? They can achieve their sales goals by introducing a spirit of fun and competition.

Successful salespeople follow these handy tips that help them power through sales:

Doing an Effective Sales Pipeline Audit

It’s important to focus on opportunities that are likely to convert. Like a batsman who picks the right scoring areas guaranteed to fetch him runs.

Once these leads are qualified, smart sales teams set up practical timelines for conversion and identify potential barriers to the sale. They then have the freedom to experiment with various sales tactics and suggest new strategies to gain the interest of prospects. RyzeUp adds an element of fun to this, by turning weekly sales goals into sports tournaments.

Final Thoughts

At RyzeUp, we help you crush your sales targets in advance using a fun, competitive platform which will drive you to accelerate sales. Set and evaluate your sales performance based on tangible metrics mapped to a scoring system. Improve efficiency of team performance by fostering a healthy, competitive spirit through weekly, fortnightly and monthly contests. Transform your work environment into fun-filled experiences for your sales teams and make them perform like never before. Get in touch with us today.

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