Ways to make your Employees Competetive in 2022

Whether you’re going to sustain in the long run or not, matters a lot on how competitive your employees are in the disruptive market. Competitive employees serve as an asset for the organizations. Studies have suggested that employees that are skilled with the latest technologies are more motivated and put in more effort, and achieve results more efficiently. 

If executed in the correct manner, competition in the organization can be one of the biggest sources of motivation for your employees. Healthy competition amongst the employees is known to be effectively pushing employees to achieve their goals. No wonder improving employee engagement and culture has been a hot topic for the last few years. 

Competitive employees show more eagerness plus enthusiasm for establishing goals and eventually achieving them. They are a reflection of healthy competition in the organization. This is why it is very important to know the correct ways for encouraging healthy competition in your organization. 

Continue reading further because by the end of this post you will get complete knowledge about the reasons for your employees not being competitive enough. In addition to this, we have listed a few easy ways through which you can foster healthy competition in your organization. 

How to encourage healthy competition in the organization 

It is human nature to have a desire to compete and collaborate. Organizations that have a thriving work environment tap into this social desire and for any organization to thrive, it is crucial to have healthy competition and inspire employees to boost each other’s performance. Here’s how to easily cultivate healthy competition in the organization: 

• Reward the best performers

Nothing demotivates an employee more than a feeling that their excellence is not appreciated. However, if you reward all of your employees in the same manner, why would they work harder to stand out from the crowd? This is why appreciating the best performers of your organization through rewards is the key to unlocking healthy competition. Naturally, some of your employees will be more competitive than others. However, even the employees that usually are satisfied staying at the sidelines are bound to become motivated through rewards. Employees push themselves to increase their effort for achieving specific goals. This will ensure an utmost improvement in the employee experience and culture, thereby resulting in making your employees competitive. 

• Set stretch goals

The competition that results in achieving “the personal best” instead of defeating others is known to be highly motivating and avoids the drawbacks of one-on-one competition. In an ideal healthy competitive organization, your employees should be competing against their prior efforts. Raising the bar frequently and allocating loftier targets will ensure that your employees perform at their best. Therefore, you should always promote a ‘compete with yourself’ culture in your organization. For instance, the sales representatives attempt to increase their sales numbers every month. This culture will be beneficial for teams as well.

• Find opportunities for team games 

The majority of us must have participated in some type of sports activity at some point in our lives. Be it a lemon and spoon race or a pick-up basketball game teach us how to enjoy while competing, how to remain graceful in victory, and how to lose with honor. Divide people into different teams and hold various types of competition that will bring people together and show a positive sense of competition. Team competitions are healthier and promote collaboration, which is a crucial part of all workplaces today. The beauty of such competitions is that they won’t garner jealousy and will instead show how healthy competition can push everyone beyond their limits. 

Why are your employees not competitive enough? 

#1 No rewards

Reward programs are known to be a remarkable way to make your employees competitive, boost their productivity and motivation. Studies suggest that 82% of Americans feel that their managers don’t appreciate and recognize their efforts. It also suggested that 40% of these people feel that their ability to compete can increase if they were rewarded more often. Logically speaking, why would your employees enhance their ability to compete and work when they won’t earn ‘extra rewards’ for the same? Reward your employee for a job done well and see them getting inspired to expand their abilities to work effectively even if the culture is highly competitive. 

#2 Lack of training

Employees in all sectors believe that additional training has become vital for them to remain competitive in the industry. Owing to the ever-changing and fast-paced business world, training programs have become the need of the hour to give the employees a competitive advantage. A survey conducted by an international workplace where it was found that 9 out of 10 employees fear that their current skill set will become outdated within the next five years. One-third of these respondents believed that the training provided to them by their organizations currently is not adequate to meet their future needs. The “Fortune 100 best companies to work for” suggested that these companies regard employee training as their top strategic priority. 

#3 You being a boss and not a leader

Leading by example may sound extremely cliché, however, you have to lead impactfully if you want your employees to be competitive. However, you have to ensure that you don’t do so by being a boss, and your impact in the organization is that of a leader. Only when you set the bar, you can expect your employees to match it, or even better, raise that bar. To work as a leader, you should inspire, influence, and mentor your team members as much as possible. You should be the most competitive worker in that room and then you can expect your employees to become competitive. By serving as a leadership figure, rather than a dictator, you can make your employees highly competitive. 

#4 Not getting praised publicly 

One of the under-appreciated benefits of technological advancement is that is it has vastly helped organizations to enhance the human side of their business. Employees are now able to communicate and collaborate easily. Likewise, it has made public praising of the employees extremely easy. Platforms such as Facebook Workplace are vastly used for giving public praise to the employees, which makes them motivated and competitive in nature. Public praising also fosters relationships between teams and makes everyone strive for getting public praise as well, thereby taking competitiveness in the organization to another level altogether. It may sound mainstream, but public praise electrifies the competitiveness in the employees like no other thing can. 

Having competitive employees gives your organization a competitive advantage. Competitive employees bring a bag full of benefits to your workplace. This is why it is necessary for you to take the relevant steps needed to make your employees and organization competitive. Make improving the employee experience and culture a top priority and you will be surprised how competitive your employees become, thereby contributing to long-term benefits for your organization. 

For more guidance and assistance related to improving the employee engagement and culture of your organization, contact us today.