What motivates you more - individual rewards or team rewards?

Question

There is a school of thought which says that any sort of individual rewarding promotes competition among team members at the expense of the team losing sight of the overall team focus/goal. Toppers crop up.. Putting other people down so that you look better. You don't wanna help someone who might just pass you by with what you taught them by at the next appraisal/perf. review. The team breaks down slowly.

Although it sounds right.. I am curious as to how traditional organizations that have this in their DNA so to speak can adapt to this.

• So answer this question personally.
• Also chime with the method used at your workplace.

The question is not about programming per se.. so if you're offended - vote it down to depths unknown.
I think the major problems nowadays are non-technical (I'm DUI of peopleware.) I found a few similar questions tagged management so hence the post.

Answer 1

If I'm working with people who I know are competent and have a purpose there, I prefer team rewards, because of the shared success. However, I've been placed with far too many people who don't belong, and in those cases, individual reward is highly preferred.

Answer 2

At our workplace our 20-person development team is split into 4 groups. Rewards are normally given to one of these sub-teams if based on short term performance (long term performance usually means pay rises or promotions).

I think this encourages our little teams to egg each other on, get our code reviews done by each other quickly, and generally be helpful when we have tricky issues.

Answer 3

Individual rewards are always preferred. You never know about the motivation of others, so I'd like to have my success in my own hand. If the team is well-crafted in terms of motivation, teamworking and hand-selected individuals that match together, it won't affect the team success.

Answer 4

I kind of mirror what tj9991 said. If you're in a good team, you probably wont give a crap, you will see each other working hard and helping each other out.

On the other hand, if you're in a poor team, then you will want whatever you deserve (which in most cases this will be more than everyone else, since you obviously view them as "worse" than you)..

Therefore, I would say team rewards are always good in a well-managed team. If you have a team that isn't bonded well, then go for individual.. But if thats the case, then you may have bigger problems on your hands.

Answer 5

As an employee, I prefer individual rewards because I can control them to a greater extent.

As a manager, I prefer team rewards because it gives everyone an incentive to not let down the other members of the team in addition to whatever personal self-serving motivation they already have innately. And a team that is getting large chunks of things done is definitely good (and satisfying) for me.

Answer 6

Depending on the scenario, I'd say individual is generally more effective. A good manager should be monitoring closely enough to see where ineffective behaviour is being caused and controlling it. Overall, it would make most sense that the team as a whole is treated as an individual at the level above, so if your team is improving more than others, the teams manager should have a bigger bucket or rewards to share among the team. That way, the team has an incentive to work together, as well as to work well individually.

I'd also highly recommend the manager tools discussion on annual reviews and compensation for lots more discussion around this topic.

Answer 7

I don't like rewards at all in workplaces (except the salary I get). If you give rewards, then someone is not receiving it and that is bad for motivation. But if rewards should be given, it should be to the whole group (or company if its a small one). I think the negative side of reward giving is bigger than the positive in the long run.

Answer 8

i think, both types of reward has contribute their own benefit..if the staff has been given individual reward, it will enhance the individual performance as well as they will increase their efforts towards their task. while in team rewards,the benefit will be given to the team's performance. the team need to have high cooperation in order to compete with other teams in your organization. thus it will ehnhance a large no of individual (people in teams) to highly compete with other individual (other team) in their organization..