We just had two of the people working here being given awards for great contribution to the project. If I were one of the permies working here I'd be really annoyed – a lot of people have given a hell of a lot of effort, and they've basically been told that their best efforts are second rate.

I'm whole-heartedly against this kind of 'recognition'. What do you lot think?

Depends if your the one receiving the award or not 🙂

if it's a team project you reward the team.

(you may choose to give a select few a salary raise later but the team gets the public recognition).

I got a 'diamond award' earlier this year… team project, but only a couple of us worked our arses off (36 hour stints, sleeping in the office etc. when the fit hit the shan).

Those of us who did, got recognised with awards.

seemed fair enough.

Dave

In life there always has to be a best and a worst at things. Get over it.

Reward the team for sure unless only a few doing something special. Sometimes companies like to give one-off rewards to help negate the need for a payrise….

It's more annoying when someone else gets a promotion with the main reason cited as a project for which you did the vast majority of the work for.

Yeah you can have pay rises in performance reviews when they come up, that's fine – it's private, and there's a discussion involved.

Loads of people have worked like absolute hell on this project. My point is that the two who got awarded were not 'the best' and the others were not 'the worst'.

Team effort.

That's a fair point then. I didn't realise that from your original post.

I'd also say that there are two factors in play in situations like this.

i) what people actually do
ii) how well people represent what they do

Both factors are in play when people come to assess how well individuals have performed. People that don't engage in PR'ing their work might end up with a worse result than people that are strong in the PR bit, but weak on the actual delivery.

Sorry for mis-understanding.

If done fairly and reflects the feeling on the ground, it's a good thing.

If done badly, it's worse for morale than doing nothing.

Do it well or don't do it at all…

I think you should just remind yourself that you are a contractor, and one of the major advantages to this is that you don't have to get involved in the office politics nonsense.

In life there always has to be a best and a worst at things. Get over it.

Not true. Our performance management has been engineered so that it is next to impossible to get anything other than a '3' (out of 5). Essentially it's so the bonus pot distribution is more predictable.

Mediocrity is the new black 🙁

We were nominated for (and eventually won) a team award for outstanding contribution to criminal justice last year.

It didn't seem to cut any ice with our heroically inept senior management who proceeded to press ahead with yet another pointless reorganisation. One year later and just over half of us have resigned, transferred or retired.

I said life, not work. But I know what you mean as I'm currently running a team of 60 design engineers in an environment where we don't have a forced distribution curve for performance ratings, whilst at the same time being asked to to hit a distribution curve for performance ratings in every rating period

I think you should just remind yourself that you are a contractor, and one of the major advantages to this is that you don't have to get involved in the office politics nonsense.

Yes indeed… Plus my workload is less because I am a consultant for specific software that's used here. I feel bad for some folk on the project, that's all.

It is utterly barmy – why would any adult require special recognition for doing their job properly. Even at our secondary school they only gave 'merit points' to kids in the first couple of years – after that we were expected to do well, not be given an award for doing so.

I would laugh in the face of such utterly pointless awards as you don't need them. If you have done your job to the best of your ability that should be enough for you. If, at the next salary review, you get your hard work recognised then well done – you deserve it. If not, I would question whether the job is right for you. ('You' in a global sense as you aren't permanent, I was just referring to the third person).

It sounds like a cockwad place to be working IMO.

awards are a very handy way of getting yourself a good performance rating… they are something you can point at to give concrete evidence that what you did was outstanding.

shouldn't be needed, but given our shite ratings system, every little helps.

Dave

Surely that sort of scoring should be carried out during an annual performance review, not at some poncy awards event?

We have recognition awards where I work but I don't nominate any of my team as I think they're divisive. I do kind of agree with team awards for big projects that exceed targets but we normally just have a piss-up on expenses within the project team.

our performance reviews are every 12 months. if you do something good in february, it is tough to get people to remember.

if you get a performance award, however…

Dave

employyee awards where you can both be a winner and a looser at the same time
Pointless

I am consistently de-motivated by the failure of my employers to accord suitable recognition to my mediocrity. 🙂

Real recognition is in the quiet words of thanks and appreciation for the otherwise unnoticed professionalism of your staff.

special recognition rewards are also known as the 'there, there, never mind' awards given to those who didn't get a pay rise in the last pay review, aren't up for promotion anytime soon, had a bit of a whinge in a recent appraisal, are showing signs that they may want to leave, etc.
.
they are just another retention/ motivation tool

they are just another retention/ motivation tool

given that fact that with the current financial climate pay rises will be slimmer it'll probably be more commonplace. TBH a bit of recognition is always nice, even if it's just someone saying "thank you" and actually meaning it.

I work in IT, so my experience of any sort of reward scheme is "well done, you get to keep your job." If you're really good, and really, really lucky, then fewer people ring up bitching.

Not that I'm bitter and cynical or anything. Oh, wait.

I don't think they work as a motivation tool. 99/100 people on the project failed to get recognition. That's not exactly motivational.

If the team is really cohesive and some members went 'the extra mile' and were recognised for it, then no one would complain.

We just had our company's 10th B'day party with awards for outstanding effort and no one seemed bitter at all – nice to get some recognition for those who have bust a gut.