According to some experts, competition can be a positive thing inside the workplace, encouraging employees to problem solve and be more innovative and creative. Yet others claim that unmonitored competition can lead to a toxic workplace where workers are constantly stressed, fatigued, backstabbing one another, and so on.
So, are competitive employees essentially good or essentially bad for your workplace? The answer is: It depends. And should you train and develop your employees to be more competitive or foster competition at all? The answer is: Yes … but there are some things you’ll want to keep in mind first.
You Should Offer Financial Incentives Wisely
When employees compete against one another to attain a financial incentive or bonus, be prepared for some, if not a majority, of your employees to lose all motivation and not work as hard.
While your top performers will work harder to stay at the top and receive a bonus, your other employees will lose motivation to compete if the incentive is not within their reach. Most of your employees will probably even start to experience anxiety if they’re never able to attain a bonus and will feel as if they’re constantly failing.
What’s more, research has discovered that employees who experience anxiety during competitions are far less likely to be creative and problem solve and are more inclined to cheat, steal, or partake in other unethical behaviors.
Communication Is Key to Your Efforts
Additional research also reveals that the way leaders communicate about competition matters a lot to whether employees want to compete, and whether competitive behavior goes awry and gets ugly.
Leaders need to focus on the positive consequences and outcomes of competitions when they’re talking about them with their teams and must emphasize things like badges, recognition, rewards, etc., while avoiding things like singling out low performers and emphasizing bad consequences associated with competition (i.e., not getting a bonus or recognition).
Traditional Competition Can Further Gender Gaps
Statistics reveal that men are more inclined to compete than women because they tend to be overconfident in their abilities. So, women will be less inclined to participate in traditional competition, where the winner, or top few performers, takes all.
Competition that is more team-focused and centered on beating a team’s goal or average, an internal milestone, or a personal average, etc., tends to foster more equitable and healthy competition for all genders.
Try to Utilize Game Theory and Cooperation
Cooperative competition rooted in game theory yields some of the best results. With cooperative game theory competitive models, employees will push one another to be more productive and produce better work.
Furthermore, they won’t have to work in silos and only look out for themselves or become unethical, and they will always have the welfare of their organizations top of mind as they work together.
If you’re interested in training your employees to be more competitive, consider the information outlined above before you get started.