Reps,
Currently our main rewards system, or lets say it best, our main recognition system is Rep of the Month and shout outs during Reps calls and other channels. Those are ways of highlighting the personal contribution of individuals. As a Brazilian, the first time I’ve ever seen a “Worker of the Month” kind of highlight was at McDonald’s fast food chain and having a sister-in-law who worked there, I’ve learned of all the politics involved with such kind of systems.
In my point of view, this kind of system is made to foster competition among members, each one trying to outdo the others to receive the glorious moment of recognition. I know, we as a community avoid this kind of “all out olympic-like competition among members” but it still happens even if subconsciously. This, in my humble opinion is not the best system we could have. It leads to:
- Reps asking mentors to vote for them, like political campaigning.
- Reps with absent mentors are never nominated which leads to them potentially feeling left out.
- Leads to popularity contests and feeling of superiority.
I see why people like this. It feels like a video game leaderboard and you can be the winner. Everyone wants to be a winner right? There is one thing that this system doesn’t foster though, which is collaboration among members. And before someone come here screaming that it does, think for a second that this rewards or recognizes an individual and not all the people who helped them.
There are other systems that work better and I want to talk a bit about them.
Scouts badges
I was a sea scout and a scout master in my younger years. The badges system, which served for inspiration for Open Badges, is a great system. Let me highlight some cool characteristics:
- First of all, it is topical, so someone can craft their own path through the many available badges.
- One scout getting a badge on a given month, doesn’t preclude other scouts from getting the same badge.
- Acquiring more badges help the scout feel like they are on a progression path.
- It helps provide metrics for the organization as they can gauge interest in specific topics by how many scouts are pursuing some specific topic and from which locations they are located.
- Some badges are only possible to acquire through teamwork, others are individual. It provides a path for introspective and extrovert people.
Game trophies/achievements
Also inspired by scouts badges, there is video game achievements or trophies. These might be more familiar to people here many of which never seen a scout live. These are little badges that are awarded to the player when they meet certain criteria. They are quite common in Xbox and PlayStation games.
These kind of achievement badges are common beyond video games as well. For example, I am an avid reader and love my Kobo device. Kobo has a gamification mechanism called “Reading Life” which collects metrics on my reading habits and awards me badges like “Hungry for Books” when I read during lunch hours for five days in a row.
A plan for Reps
While I was doing Rio Mozilla Club, I came up with a badge system for us. I think we could have a similar system in place for Reps with badges designed to promote collaboration.
A solution like this would foster more active participation and allow different personas to pursue different paths. A more technical introvert might pursue technical badges while an extrovert people person might go for events and working with others badges.
I believe that we need to pursue this further and my plan is to update this topic weekly with ideas of badges and systems that could be put into place.
