Aibu to think "Employee Awards" are divisive?

[eternallychaotic]

I work in the HE sector, so monetary reward is modest. My employer has introduced an "Employee Awards" scheme for people to nominate colleagues for 6 categories of award. The list of nominations is published, and 3 nominees are "shortlisted" in each category and invited to a lunch ceremony, where one nominee in each category is declared as the overall "winner" and gets a certificate.

Of course some people get into the spirit of this and nominate several people at a time, whereas others don't bother, not least because they don't have time to write a 600 essay on why they are making the nomination.

Aibu to think this is more likely to create cynicism and cringe than anything else? The people nominated are great, but there are others who are just as great, or more great, who have not been nominated. Also, some of those who have been nominated would definitely prefer a £10 Amazon voucher to a cringe lunch with the VC, and some will definitely be embarrassed to have been shortlisted ahead of their equally capable colleagues.

I agree - we're not children, and things like this will never be equitable / fair.

I agree. I'm quite vocal about our 'employee of the month' scheme being a demotivational swizz. People get nominated for doing something they were tasked to by the boss, that nobody else has the chance to, such as organise the Xmas party. Whilst I don't doubt there is significant work involved in organising the Xmas party, the rest of us are covering and picking up for that person for the period, but who gets the bubbly and the gift voucher (and the chance to get away from the drudgery of the normal day to day - i've asked before but less people can cover my role than I can cover theirs), the chosen one. We also went through a phase of one office worth of people clubbing together, all agreeing on who to nominate (so they got the most nominations) and then just using the voucher to get pizzas or something for lunch between them. Smart, but demoralising for those who worked in smaller teams and it became another option of never having a chance. The dependable ones who just get on quietly don't get any sort of recognition.

Mind you, I also learned very early on as a child that the naughty kids would get star of the week for managing not to throw a chair at anyone despite not doing half their work and still being a disruption whilst I could get straight A's and do some extra curricular representing the school etc but because that was just my normal working level, it wasn't 'award worthy'. Mum didn't have an answer for essentially 'maybe i'll just be shit for a while then I'll get a reward for improving', which she obviously had to tell me wasn't a great plan for getting through life but definitely she sympathised from conversations as I've grown up. Yes you might say I maybe had the 'reward' of more opportunities as an adult because of better grades etc, but that's not exclusively true, and when you are 8, not of significance to you.

IMO It's best to just give people fair pay and conditions for work done, and spend the money saved on this sort of shit on everyone's work experience. Get the ice cream van in on a hot day and put a tab on it, or give everyone a voucher at Xmas.

Cringeworthy. We have something similar.

It's something you have to deal with. Personally I've found that support staff (aka the front line) never get the recognition they deserve.

The only way round it is to play the game and nominate all that you can and ignore the mouthy ones who blow their own trumpet (not necessarily because they deserve to, but more because they can).

Yes, we have this and it’s just so condescending and, frankly, naff.

We had them, but run by the SU and nominated by students. The awards night was fun and staff appreciated it.

One done by colleagues would feel different, I think.

Yeah these things are awful and demotivating.

General gratitude is worth more IMO.

We have something similar and it's just awkward and embarrassing just let me come to work do my job and go home i don't need or want to be celebrated

My work does a thing where once a year people get nominated for outstanding contributions and the prize? 20k. It's never people at the bottom of the food chain like support staff that get it. One year it was the head of HR.

Wow, that's really shocking.

They could have a lot of smaller prizes, and recognise a lot of people's contributions for that amount of £.

Or, they could just not bother, and focus on something for everyone instead.

It’s always certain departments that can be bothered with nominating these sorts of things and others just can’t. So our work gives each department a number of awards and forces them to distribute them within the team. Makes it more fair, than all of the awards going to X department.

I find them totally cringey,
however many years ago one of my team members won some kind of employee of the month award (no voting, very controlling chief exec).
Fifteen years later, he still proudly had it on his CV and linked in profile.

They annoy me too. As admin I have to promote them every month and watch as all cliques vote for each other, managers nominate staff to try and beat other managers in other areas and guess who always gets forgotten? Admin! Only front line staff get recognised - never the repairs people, admin, IT, cleaner etc - who are all amazing. Only the frontline staff.

My colleague updated her email signature to include that she was "highly commended" in the staff awards last year 🙄.

We have some similar load of bollocks where they host an awards evening and literally hound you to attend but want to charge you for the privilege. Yeah, fuck off.

Shite. ‘Star of the week’ for adults.

I don't think they are divisive as such. I just think different people are encouraged by different things.

Some people want more money, others would sooner have more days off. And some will be encouraged by these types of awards.

One "award" type I loath is an award for attendance. My adult child was "given" their schools award for attendance every year in their senior school. Once they were old enough to understand what the "award" signified (that they were extremely lucky to have good health and a very good immune system) they refused to accept it.