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Leonhart comments on Open thread, 24-30 March 2014 - Less Wrong
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At my workplace, the question came up of how best to publicly recognise people for good work, while minimising the amount of politics/friction/jealousy that comes about as a direct result of it. We have only just grown past the point where we all know each other well; hence why this sort of thing is becoming interesting.
My initial response to the question was "Make being praised unpleasant, using ugly trophies (sports team strategy) or stupid hats (university graduation strategy)" but I would like to say something more upbeat as well.
Is anyone aware of good writing on the subject/google keywords I could use to find the literature?
You don't want to make being praised unpleasant for the recipient -- that leads to perverse incentives. And you don't want to give an award a stupid name or an embarrassing shape -- part of the point of this sort of thing is that it looks good on your resume or perched over your desk. You want to mark their achievement in a way they'll genuinely appreciate, but simultaneously add symbolism to make their coworkers feel that their status hasn't been diminished.
I think what you're looking for is a little temporary public humiliation, not intrinsic to the award but coming along with more standard recognition. You could do this in several different ways. If it's a fairly small group and the awards are a fairly big deal, for example, you could run a roast as part of the party following the award. You could probably contrive ways to add this kind of symbolism to physical awards, too.
Find a way to make it non-zero-sum. Only 1 person can be employee of the year, so others lose out and may resent their colleague. Maybe a gold/silver/bronze border around your portrait on the intranet, with a tooltip that explains what you got it for?
Isn't being praised already unpleasant enough?
Most people rather like it. It appears you don't; what makes you dislike it?
Public attention of any kind is just embarrassing. Probably not unrelated to past experience of politics, friction, and jealousy resulting from praise in the past. But if I were threatened with public praise in my job I would be strongly tempted to quit before it could strike.
Woah, that's paranoid!
Money. Give the person a token bonus and let it be known that if you get a bonus you are not supposed to tell other people about it.
Money is expensive and not public recognition.