Lord B

I am planning to start a competition for my "customer relationship management" staff -- where if they reach $10,000 in profits in next 6 months, I will get them a Motorcycle / Scooter of their choice or give them equivalent amount of cash.

To make things interesting, I am extending this contest. But there I have to make a choice -- should I be fostering individual performance or team work...

There are two things I can do --

a. Give them a reward of a iPhone / Equivalent Cash if they reach $15,000 in Profits and get 95% Positive Feedback from all of their accounts individually.

b. Give them a reward of a iPhone / Equivalent Cash if they reach $30k in Profits Combined and get 95% Positive Feedback from all their accounts individually.

If you were to do something like this, will you reward a team performance or individual performance.

It might also help to know that the total number of full-time employees on roll are 5.

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DaveEMG

Truthfully, it really depends on your team, and you'll probably have the best idea of whether or not your emps are there for the individual effort or if they work well enough to rely on each other to make a goal happen.

Individual
Pro's: Ensures that the top performers will get an extra bonus for their efforts.
Con's: Can create a negatively competitive environment, especially if one or more employees feels like they're at a natural disadvantage for one reason or another.

Group / Team
Pro's: Can mobilize the entire team, creating leaders out of top performers that want to see that bonus / reward by assisting the weaker elements. Can create a better group dynamic.
Con's: Failure to reach the goal can be catastrophic on the team, and force your top performers to resent the poorer players in your group.

In my experience, if you can frame it right, the teamwork / team goal is the better choice, because it forces the future leaders of your organization to the surface. However, set the goal high but not so high that they can't reach it - a team failure is extremely bad for morale.

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kamesh

For me its always a team effort in an organisation, every one contributes for an individual success as well.

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emp

I would strongly advice against the individual price though, as especially if you set a team price, everyone will help everyone else, so even the "best perfomer" might be just the lucky one who closed the deal, who got contacted after a redesign, etc...

I remember being in a team where one person would get recommended for the team effort. Bad feelings for the rest of the team, he was not feeling too good with that either but was too timid to speak up against it. Not good.
The pointy haired boss? He never noticed.

::emp::

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Skittled

Haha sounds like an essay I've written just recently for uni...

Surveys (don't have a source but could dig it out) suggest employees of western (individualistic) background would be happy with 10-15% of their remuneration based on team performance. (Less collective (i.e. eastern, to overgeneralise), feel it should be more like 30%+). So, if you get the balance wrong... too much and people are more likely to get very sensitive to the amount of work others put in. Too little, and it can get competitive.

So, depends on what the work is, specifically, and how much each employee supports others. The more they rely on each other for support, opinions, advice, covering each other when they're at lunch, etc, the more it should be collective rewards.

If you go individual, just make sure they don't scramble over each other to get to their own goals, pulling the others down at the same time. If you go collective, someone will most likely 'social loaf' (see wikipedia).

Could you go halfway? Some individual rewards (i.e. iphone), and some collective (i.e. cash to all)?

...is this ongoing, or a one-time offer for the next 6 mths?
Let us know how it goes!