By Aimee Levitt
In one of the most famous scenes from the TV series Mad Men, copywriter Peggy Olson has skipped out on her own birthday party to help her boss, creative director Don Draper, with an important ad campaign. Their late-night work session devolves into a screaming match over what Peggy perceives as Don’s lack of appreciation for her work. “You never even say thank you!” she cries. “That’s what the money’s for!” he snarls back.
The vast majority of American workers share Peggy’s frustration (though they probably wouldn’t shout at their boss about it). According to a 2020 poll by Achievers Workforce Institute, 82 percent of employees want more workplace recognition than they’re getting, and, in another study by the employee recognition firm OC Tanner, 79 percent cited lack of appreciation as the primary reason for resigning from their jobs.
Over the past decade, especially during the pandemic lockdowns when remote work made it harder for managers to spot instances when employees went above and beyond, many firms have adopted peer-to-peer recognition programs in which public praise comes from coworkers rather than just the bosses. Some firms have gone so far as to install leaderboards to rank who gives or receives the most recognition, and sometimes these leaderboards are connected with material rewards, like gift cards or bonuses. The idea is that this public recognition creates an environment where people are more generous with praise toward their colleagues, which generates a supportive environment and more motivated workers.
When Alex Vandenberg, an assistant professor of accountancy at Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, learned about these peer-to-peer recognition programs and leaderboards a few years ago, he began to wonder about the impact they had on workers. Did people respond better if they were ranked by how much recognition they received from their peers or how much recognition they gave? Or did the leaderboards make no difference at all?
“In traditional economics theory,” he said, “this shouldn’t matter at all, because the ranking has no influence whatsoever on how much you’re getting paid.”
But psychology says otherwise. Leaderboards can help create a culture of recognition within the workplace. They can also, Vandenberg said, “diminish the helper’s own perception of their good deed. Because certain leaderboards introduce an incentive for employees to help each other, leaderboards can ultimately make help feel disingenuous and insincere, for both the helpers and the people receiving help.”
What the experiment tested
Along with two colleagues, John H. Evans III of the University of Pittsburgh and Adam Presslee of the University of Waterloo, Vandenberg designed an experiment to determine which variation on the peer-to-peer recognition leaderboard was most effective — or if no leaderboard was the most effective method of all. Their study, “Peer-to-Peer Recognition Leaderboards and Employee Proactive Helping Behavior,” was recently published in The Accounting Review.
For the experiment, the researchers recruited 135 participants to sign up for scheduled computer lab sessions. The participants were divided into 27 groups with five participants each and each group was told that they were co-workers employed at ABC Inc., a company that placed a high value on colleagues helping one another. In each of eight separate periods, participants had the opportunity to help their co-workers as well as receive help. When they gave help, the participants sacrificed some of pay they were set to receive for participating and in exchange, the coworker they were helping received an increase in their pay. (The salary for each period was 1200 lira, a fictitious currency; each lira was worth $.002.) At the end of each round, participants would learn how much help they received from their coworkers and could decide if they wanted to acknowledge their helpful coworker in ABC Inc.’s peer-to-peer recognition program. Then participants were notified whether they had been recognized by the coworker they’d helped.
The participants were shown four different variations of the peer-to-peer recognition leaderboard: a ranking based on how many times workers receive recognition, how many times workers give recognition, both giving and receiving, and no leaderboard at all. These leaderboards were updated throughout the exercise.
At the very end, participants filled out a survey that asked whether they felt the help they had received was sincere or motivated by a desire to appear on the leaderboards, if they felt they and their coworkers usually helped one another, and whether they felt in control of their leaderboard ranking. Then they received their payouts, which were fairly equal among all four conditions, largely because people who gave help were also more likely to receive it.
Why “recognition received” can backfire
The study showed that compared to participants who were working without a leaderboard, participants who were ranked on a “recognition given” leaderboard were significantly more likely to help their colleagues, while participants with the “recognition received” leaderboard as well as participants with both leaderboards were less likely to help.
Vandenberg thinks this is because “recognition received” leaderboards make people question the motives of their coworkers.
“If you were to help me and if I know we’re all being ranked based on how many times we each receive recognition,” he said, “when you help me, now I question, are you helping me because you are generous and care about me? Or are you helping because you want me to recognize you and improve your spot on the leaderboard?”
It’s not that leaderboards are bad, he concluded. It’s just that employees are more likely to trust their coworkers more if there are “recognition given” leaderboards.
The researchers have already shared their insights with several companies who have switched leaderboards based on the results of their study. Now they’ve partnered with a peer-to-peer recognition service provider and one of their customers on a follow-up experiment to see how leaderboards function in a real-world setting.
“I think our research gives preliminary evidence as to what basis you should be using to rank employees,” Vandenberg said, “and it shows that there are real consequences to these leaderboards.”