Create More Winners in Your Organization

We have come across many organization that have instituted 'Best Employee' or 'Best Sales Person' awards . These awards are normally given during the Annual Day Celebrations, where the Award Winning Employee is invited to go on stage, a citation is read and the award given by the CEO.

The wisdom behind this is, the Award will serve as an inspiration for other employees to emulate in the succeeding years.

Ummm.......in concept this looks alright. Till we look at the flip side. Most organizations, who have instituted this award, have more than 100 employees, if not hundreds. For the sake of argument, let us stick to 100. When, on an Annual Day, you single out one best employee amongst the 100, you assume you are creating one winner. But in effect, you are creating 99 losers. And you don't want that to happen.

A better way is to institute a series of awards based on various aspects of a job and give it away to a lot of people. For example, apart from the Best Employee, you can have Best Salesperson, Best Secretary, Best Driver, Most Punctual Employee, Employee who had the Best Attendance record, Best Communicator, Most Co-operative Employee, Most Organized Employee, Employee with the Most Initiative, Most Improved Employee, Employee with the Best Safety Record, Best New Comer...................the list can be endless. All it requires is a bit of creativity.

You might say this devalues the Award. It does not. What it does is, it creates, say, 25 winners than one winner.

Is it not worth it? Will it not boost the morale of the Staff? Will it not have an impact on the Organizational Culture?

Just think about this if you are the head of an Organization or even the Head of a Department.