They got me too. I’ve been invited to the awards thing but have declined the offer. As I said in my earlier post, I don’t mind being nominated or even winning but I’d prefer a minimum of fuss and attending the awards dinner is too much fuss for my liking. One good thing about it is that once I was nominated for the award I felt that I should pay it forward so I nominated someone else (who was genuinely deserving).
I remember years ago seeing a quote along the lines of, “Service Excellence Awards are the cheapest means available to management to lower the morale of most of the staff while boosting that of very few.” It may have been Scott Adams. It seemed true from happenings where I work.
Apparently research backs this up.
Here’s the thing: Like most stuff at a big company, “awards” without some tangible benefit attached are bureaucratic bullshit. I’m as interested in them as I am in attending yet another pointless meeting about the internal “employee satisfaction” survey.
If they’re not going to give me extra money, I’d rather have a personal “attaboy” than a stupid plaque or whatever. A good manager can do wonders for morale by stopping by to say, “That thing you did? I don’t really understand it, but it was a hell of a thing.” Preferably with an appropriate note in your file for the pointless and annoying Ritual Dance of the Employee Evaluation, of course. (You want an award that means something without handing out money? Give vouchers that you can swap for an automatic “Exceeds” on one of the dumbass generic “goals” they like to lard those things with.)
Hell, even giving rep points like some forums do would beat another crummy certificate.
It is not quite the same thing, but when I was given the one named chair in my department I was inordinately pleased. There was no cash involved. Originally, the endowment covered a $5000 annual salary in the 20s, then it became a $5K salary supplement, but then the university decided to just lower my salary by that $5K, so I ended up with no extra cash, but the honor was still nice (and I still get to call myself the Named Chair Emeritus Professor of Pure Mathematics).
I got an “award” one time that was truly whose-turn-is-it-this-time. The so-called commendation pretty much just said that I was doing my job. Yes, I took and spent the money that came with it, but the honor was non-existent.
In my last job before retirement, I got two cash awards that I believe I did earn - I’d put a lot of effort into a couple of projects and I done good, so I was rather proud of those. I was also actually surprised by one award - it really was nice to have been noticed.
HOWEVER, there was a committee (yep, that means silliness) that came up with an on-the-spot award idea that was reminiscent of the cheesiest fake recognition one could give to a second-grader. They wrote up a convoluted declaration of the value of this award, which was, in fact, a cheap plastic cup with some hokey writing on it. I mocked the whole idea (along with most of the workforce) rather loudly and frequently. Naturally, my boss made sure I got one when I retired. 
I loved that man!!
The team leader of the month award I didn’t care about.
When I got a laminated page showing me as the number one salesperson in the entire Midwest region for Lowe’s, I kept that one.
I was your colleague in this scenario a couple years ago.
I was new at the company and asked to help a coworker on a major project. During the project, a really intense task came up and I offered to knock it out, so I did. My supervisor nominated me for a “level one” award for doing that task. That was cool and I appreciated it.
Several months later, in a division all hands meeting, I was called up to the front with a big hullaballoo to receive a “level two” award. It wasn’t until I was up there looking down at the sea of faces while the CEO explained the project I was working on that I thought to remove the WTF? look on my face and pretend to be happy. As I was walking back to my seat I saw my coworker sitting there. He’d done so much more on the project than I did and I was the one getting the major recognition for it. That was really messed up.
Later I remembered that the level two awards are granted based on a lottery of that quarter’s level one winners. So it really was bullshit. In my case, what they’d selected for level 2 was the important project, not really my contribution to it. The funny part is that my supervisor also had no idea they were going to award it to me!
In general only thing I worry about is the annual ratings, because if they are strong enough I get some extra cash. I’ve gotten awards on occasion, mostly deserved, but like many of the folks here, what I considered my best work never got a second glance or even a mention.
Eh. Validation is nice but I’d rather just have my boss give me specific, concrete praise about something that I did well. I don’t need to be handed a thing in front of my coworkers.
Or money. You don’t even have to hand me a thing to go with it. Just scrawl “good job” on a cocktail napkin and call it a day.
My current company does not give out awards, and that is a function of their attitude that anyone below senior VP level is a cog in their machine, and that if you recognize someone another company paying more might come to recruit them.
Awards are good if tied to projects. Team awards are good also. Giving any kind of an award as a result of a lottery is just plain stupid. I worked at one place which had a cabinet full of little things like movie ticket vouchers which anyone could give to anyone else who went out of their way to help. It was not abused.
The other good thing about rewards is that is shows that your boss knows what you do and is willing to go out of his or her way to get you recognized. I got a lot of rewards for my people at one point because none of the other managers cared enough to prepare an application for their people. If someone doesn’t go to bat for you for awards they won’t during performance appraisal either.
At a college, there are few awards that a prof would actually want. Getting an endowed chair is very nice, but at many places those only go to outsiders. Current profs are out of luck.
The one you almost certainly don’t want is the teaching award. It’s called “the kiss of death award” for a reason. Everyone I knew who got one was axed soon after.
At my job, they do give awards for public service, and for valor. Those seem worthwhile to me.
I worked my arse off to get nominated for a certain award at work. I finally received the award in 2010 and was really proud of myself. It sits on my desk.
All that award did was make me think “Eh, I’m done.” I don’t have a reason to work hard anymore. (Also budget cutbacks have made it so I can’t do the things I did to earn the award like I could before.) Just counting the days until retirement now…
Workplace awards both make me roll my eyes and give me a teeny warm fuzzy inasmuch as I want my boss and my department to realize I’m doing a good job.
Plus, my company is really political and cut-throat - better that people recognize me for being good than not recognize me.
We have three tiers of awards.
If you do something good but it’s small potatoes (like staying late to help another unit meet a deadline), then you get a certificate that you can turn in to HR in exchange for an item out of the reward cabinet. Example items: coffee mugs, baseball caps, umbrellas, tote bags, and mouse pads. If you turn in two certificates, you can get something nicer–like a laptop bag. I love when I get picked because I always find something I need in the reward cabinet. No one knows about it except you and your boss (and the HR person who takes your certificate).
Then there’s the “above and beyond” award, which is given to a handful of people each quarter. The prize is a $50 gift card to select big box stores. You get this award if you did something that’s not “small potatoes”, but with a short duration. Like if you find a bunch of embarrassing errors in a spreadsheet authored by a certain federal agency, thereby pushing back a deadline. I’ve only gotten this award twice, and I was honored both times. They announce the winners by email.
And then there’s the employee excellence award ceremony, which is held once a year. Most awards are given to teams that had successful, high-profile projects, but individuals are also recognized when they do something spectacular.
I’ve only won this award once–last year–because I was a member of a “award-winning” team. Part of me was very happy. I got a $100 gift card to Krogers, which allowed me to have a wonderful shopping spree. Plus, it was my first time being recognized like that. But I also know it was a big ole joke. The only reason our project was selected was because it was constantly in the news since it involved an environmental catastrophe. There were people on the team who got recognized who did very little work, but they got the same amount of glory as the person who did the most work. And the thing is, everyone knows it is a joke. We just go to the ceremony because they give us cake and punch.
My wife was named her school district’s Teacher of the Month the same day she and her fellow teachers were cited for contempt of court during a strike against the district.
I’ve always thought the irony alone made the award worthwhile.