Tips for Creating Healthy Competition Between Your Employees

It is natural for humans to want to compete, share, and collaborate. Companies that have effectively developed a thriving work environment can capitalize on this societal urge. They do so by encouraging healthy workplace competitiveness.

All businesses recognize the value of cooperation and encourage their staff to collaborate. Another way to promote teamwork at work is to engage in healthy rivalry.



According to research, healthy rivalry among employees drives them to work more. Furthermore, competition improves psychological capacities by challenging the mind and body to perform higher.

What is healthy competition?

Healthy workplace rivalry emphasizes personal performance, while team achievement is the ultimate aim. A growth mentality develops a competitive spirit, fostering a positive attitude.

10 Ways to create healthy competition between your employees

Here's how you foster a healthy competitive atmosphere without jeopardizing employee well-being.

Participate in team fitness challenges to stay active.

Lighthearted team exercise challenges, such as a lunge or push-up contests, will keep the competitive spirit alive. Form cross-company teams so that employees may get to know coworkers from other departments. Give the winning team prizes like points in your wellness program or gift cards to keep the rivalry going. At Limeade, we're crazy about planking and wall-sit competitions, and we're not afraid to get competitive with enormous stakes. A sprint to 1,500 minutes of planking was our most recent challenge!

Maintain a lighthearted atmosphere.

Encourage competition outside of the workplace to foster camaraderie’s, such as bowling, company-sponsored dodgeball, or park soccer. Alternatively, keep it at work and play some of our favorite lunchtime activities like Jenga, ping-pong, or chair races. Try to ignore the "office chatter" and concentrate on each other.

Congratulations to the staff for their efforts

When competition is relevant, and employees feel valued, it is most effective. With creative rewards or handwritten thank-you letters, show your appreciation for your employees' hard work. To recognize peers, implement a team incentive structure.

Employees are more productive, committed and feel appreciated when given and received credit. Employees who are recognized are three times more engaged and less likely to leave than those who are not.

Rewards that aren't monetary

Humans are beings who thrive in a competitive environment. Some people have more than others. Even those who choose to remain on the sidelines are likely to be motivated by a bit called "rewards."

People are motivated to put forth more effort and attain specific goals when they are rewarded. And businesses are well aware of this. As a result, the current craze of paying employees with cash incentives is quickly gaining traction worldwide.

It is where the problem originates. While we support recognizing good work, we believe that monetary rewards should be avoided. Cash-based incentives are more likely to cause internal conflict and rivalry. People are more inclined to be envious or threatened by a teammate who has received monetary compensation.

Instead of monetary rewards, companies should focus on non-monetary incentives. Employees are more likely to share their joy with their peers when rewarded for exceptional performance with a free vacation.

Furthermore, non-monetary incentives are more likely to foster healthy intrinsic competitiveness, better for the overall workplace culture.

Sessions for Brainstorming

Brainstorming sessions are excellent mood stabilizers because they bring everyone down to the same level: their ideas. The worth of someone's ideas is provided to them regardless of their job title or department.

Everyone who attends benefits from these sessions since they expose them to new ideas and viewpoints from their colleagues. It's a fantastic way to share new innovative ideas and engage in open dialogue. Additionally, give some incentive that is unanimously picked as the winner to foster healthy competition.

Make a culture of open communication a priority.

Healthy workplace competition necessitates open communication. People should be free to express themselves, engage in constructive debate, and share their thoughts.

The goal of office competition is to bring people together, and having an open-door policy allows employees to learn from each other. It also raises awareness and encourages workplace learning.

Focus the competition on a clear and beneficial need.

When it comes to implementing healthy competition at work, it's critical to focus on a specific need that benefits both your company and your employees. The results of an open-ended tournament can also be open-ended. For example, defining a sales contest as "being the top salesperson in the organization" is less effective against reporting it as "the first salesperson to close 100 sales would earn a bonus". Whatever the competition, assigning a quantitative and measurable criterion for performance will assist both the employees and the organization gain value.

It's also a good idea to explain how the competition helps the firm and its employees and how it relates to your company's goals and objectives. You can promote a competitive aspect while unifying personnel behind a single goal by framing the competition in this way. As a result, there's less of a chance of employees developing a lone-wolf attitude, which can lead to hostility in a match.

Don't just look at the results; look at the process as well.

Whatever happens in the end, it's crucial to focus on the value that the competition provided - whether it was teaching new skills, uniting individuals from other areas, or producing positive results for the organization. Competition can genuinely bring people together to achieve a common objective in this way.

To do so, hold debrief sessions after each intense rivalry to review what employees learned, collect user feedback and critical learnings, and provide views into how the competition and the employees' hard work ultimately influenced the organization. It's also crucial to revisit issues that didn't work out in a match. There are significant lessons to be learned from failure that can be taken into account and implemented to make future competitions more successful.

Provide valuable feedback

The competition should include feedback. While competition increases the quantity of work produced, feedback controls its quality. Every organization should have a method to provide honest and fair feedback. Employees want to enhance their performance, but they can only do so if they clearly understand what has to be improved.

Participation and diversity

It may seem negligible, but diversity and inclusion are critical factors in determining whether your workplace fosters a healthy or detrimental competitive culture.

The primary goal of a healthy competitive workplace is to provide everyone with an equal opportunity to achieve. That will be futile if there are no procedures in place to ensure inclusion, mainly if there are signs of job discrimination.

The value of diversity should be at the center of an organization's ideals. Regardless of sex, gender, or age, everyone should be afforded the same chances and respect. Consider the long-term metrics of how each person perceives their job in the organization to create healthy competition.

Are they capable of dealing with serious issues? Do they believe their contributions are undervalued and underappreciated? Is it possible that their voices aren't being heard?

There are several ways in which a person in your company may feel discriminated against. If that's the case, you should take care of it as quickly as possible.

Benefits of creating Healthy Competition between your employees

Healthy workplace rivalry motivates employees to reach their best potential.

Enables staff to establish challenging goals for themselves.

At work, competition isn't just about competing with others; it's also about competing with oneself. As a result, an organization with a competitive work environment raises the performance bar and challenges people to meet it regularly, establishing a habit of pushing for more significant goals.

Collaboration is improved.

Team activities are an excellent method to instill rivalry among employees. Clayton Homes, a large home building company in the United States, held a competitive event for their sales force.

Teams of salespeople had to compete, and points were awarded depending on the number of cold calls, customer appointments, and sales. Employees felt more united as a result of this program, and the company's revenues increased as well.

It promotes creativity.

Employees are more likely to create new ideas to win in a competitive environment that evokes excitement. Employees said they would use creative ways, such as inventing new technology processes, in a healthy competitive atmosphere, according to a survey done by HBR.

Things to Avoid in Workplace Competition 

While leaders must understand how they can promote healthy workplace rivalry, they also need to be aware of a few significant pitfalls to avoid. When it comes to boosting workplace rivalry, there are a few things to avoid.

Don't let important things go between the cracks.

When it comes to workplace competition, one of the most prominent issues managers face is keeping employees focused on the broad picture and continuing to work for the organization's benefit rather than their own individual goals.

• All duties are specific to your company's needs.
• The right things are targeted rather than starting a rivalry over insignificant activities.
• Whether it's closing the most sales or reaching pre-determined criteria for employee happiness within your own company, competitions are targeted and particular.

The human resources department, for example, at Outback Team Building & Training, works relentlessly to ensure that our workers are pleased with their work. Every month, use Office vibe to send an anonymous survey to our employees to get vital input on what's working well and what could be better. Also, ask our employees how likely they are to recommend Outback Team Building & Training as a beautiful place to work on a scale of one to ten. This information is then used to determine our Net Promoter Score. Aim for a score of at least 70, which is a pretty high standard to fulfill.

Workplace competition should not hurt morale.

When employees are forced to compete for requirements such as resources, finances, or time with personnel from various departments, competition quickly becomes negative. If you want to encourage workplace competition, make sure you give your employees the resources they need to succeed, whether that's mentorship, technology, or support and direction.

Allowing competition to spiral into a toxic culture is not a good idea.

It's critical to ensure that workplace competitiveness doesn't devolve into a culture of harassment or excessive working hours. The last thing you want is for your team to work themselves to exhaustion in the name of victory. To maintain things on a fair playing field, set boundaries for competitions, including cut-off hours for what qualifies. Don't dissuade people from working hard, but make sure there are protections in place to prevent things from spiraling out of control.

Animosity

An unchecked office rivalry can turn toxic. People may intimidate and harbor animosity toward one another, turning an excellent workplace competition into something unfriendly. Make sure you set up checkpoints to deter bad behavior and promote sportsmanship.

Don't Push It

It's critical to recognize that workplace competition isn't for everyone. Because every workgroup consists of a diverse mix of people, it's very likely that it won't work out and will become a source of disagreement. Understanding the personality characteristics of each of your employees is one approach to determine not whether the competition will be successful. We use DiSC tests at Outback to better understand each of the team members' personalities, which are divided into four categories: leadership, influence, social competence, and consistency. Using this information, we can effectively measure how a competitive climate might resonate with our staff.

We've also got you covered if your workgroup isn't competitive, but you're looking for a more interactive team-building exercise to help enhance communication and camaraderie.

It is not for everyone.

Not every employee thrives in a competitive setting. Individuals should not be forced to compete by a firm. While workplace competition can benefit the sales team, it may not be ideal for the IT maintenance team.

Conclusion

Its primary goal is to determine the advantages of healthy workplace rivalry. The overall goal is to increase topline revenue, gain clients, and increase sales.

Creating a competitive atmosphere is to open channels of communication, promote innovation, and create a fluid organizational culture. Long-term success can be achieved when workplace competition fosters the correct culture.

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Written and Published By The Strategic Advisor Board Team
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