Friday, March 11, 2011

You get what you reward

What do you want to achieve and how do you want to achieve that goal? In a Project were you need team members to work together closely you should strive to increase team work. You can do that by rewarding team work either with monetary or non-monetary rewards. Check this link to get some ideas.
Be very careful what rewards you use (single contributor or team rewards)  because if you use the wrong rewards in a situation you can create quite a mess.  For example if you hand out a MVP reward in the project mentioned above you will actively discourage team work and instead encourage single contributors to go after the reward. Your team might not share information or in the worst case share incorrect information in order to get the reward.  One very important thing to keep in mind is really mean it when you reward single contributors or teams. Don't hand out "fake" rewards just because it is in the HR playbook. Employee's are not stupid and very much appreciate a honest reward.