How To Use A Company Leaderboard To Improve Employee Engagement

Schoolchildren are often taught that “winning isn’t important; it’s the taking part that counts.” In the workplace, winning and participating can both trigger a dopamine hit—a natural reward response in the brain. Leaderboards tap into this by celebrating top performers and motivating everyone to strive for improvement. Whether employees aim for the top or simply enjoy moving up the rankings, the thrill of participation keeps them engaged and motivated in their daily roles. 

This guide introduces you to company leaderboards and explores how they can be integrated into your recognition program. We’ll walk through best practices and showcase how Nectar uses an internal leaderboard to boost engagement.

What Is A Leaderboard? 

A company leaderboard visually ranks employees against each other in terms of points, performance metrics, or other results they've achieved at work. Organizations might share their leaderboard digitally using internal software, post it in a prominent workplace location, or share it in an employee newsletter. Wherever it's placed, the aim is to create a buzz about who’s securing those top spaces on the board.  

Overall, companies might implement leaderboards to boost productivity and celebrate their high-performing employees. They may also introduce them to spark a fun, collaborative team environment where people feel engaged at work. 

6 Types Of Leaderboards In Organizations

Leaderboards are entirely customizable. There are no hard-and-fast rules about what companies may choose to rank their employees for, although the below are common: 

• Recognition: Leaderboards might highlight employees who actively share praise with their colleagues or supervisors. 
• Engagement: These leaderboards focus on engagement metrics, such as attendance and punctuality. 
• Team activities: In this type of leaderboard, employees are ranked as a team rather than individually to promote bonding between peers. 
• Gamification: Learners participating in training programs accrue points for completing assignments, getting high quiz scores, or contributing to discussions, with the most impressive participants appearing at the top of the leaderboard. 
• Challenges: Employees might participate in company-wide challenges related to health and wellness, like walking the most steps in a month, or charity work, such as logging the most volunteer hours. 
• Performance: Employees might be ranked based on sales, productivity, customer satisfaction, or other KPIs. For example, here’s how Taabi Mobility uses driver leaderboards, with employees “demonstrating safe driving practices, maintaining attentiveness, conserving fuel, selecting optimized routes, and engaging in other efficiency-focused behaviors.” 

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How Do Leaderboards Improve Employee Engagement? 

Nectar’s recent engagement survey revealed only 22% of employees have high engagement at work. Leaderboards may improve these disappointing figures by:

Igniting Friendly Competition 

Dr. Robert Hogan, founder, and president of Hogan Assessments, believes that friendly competition at work is based on socioanalytic theory. In a group context, human behavior is guided by three universal motives: 

• Competition: Humans are motivated by getting ahead 
• Cooperation: Humans want to get along with each other  
• Worldview: Humans want to find meaning in their work. 

Competition leaderboards accomplish all these things. They spark friendly rivalry, give employees a chance to bond over shared goals, and a chance to contribute to something bigger than themselves.

Making Work Fun 

When done well, leaderboards are fun and engaging. Your employees will want to feature on the board—whether in the top spot or otherwise. This type of gamification, essentially applying elements of game playing into your work, is highly motivating for many employees. It can even feel slightly addictive, as employees feel driven to beat their teammates or achieve a personal best score. 

Boosting Employee Performance 

Introducing various leadership contests could motivate your employees to work harder, faster, and better. Microsoft discovered this when it introduced gamification into its Business Process Outsourcer call center. Agents here had struggled to achieve stellar performance results from their sales calls due to infrequent reviews and ineffective incentive programs.  

But Microsoft’s new gamification program included daily challenges, real-time feedback, and visible leaderboards to foster emotional engagement, motivation, and learning. The new program: 

• Boosted agent productivity by 10%
• Doubled the attach rate for paid services
• Reduced absenteeism by 12%
• Improved knowledge retention by 66%

Overall, gamification transformed Microsoft agent behavior, driving deeper engagement and improved business outcomes. 

What Are The Potential Pitfalls Of Leaderboards? 

Before you incorporate leaderboards into the employee experience at your organization, it’s worth knowing about some of the disadvantages of using this type of incentive. Note: All of these pitfalls can be overcome with the right planning and consideration of your employees. 

Leaderboards Can Become Stressful 

While the right dose of healthy competition has multiple advantages for your team members, an overemphasis on "winning" can lead to a negative, toxic work culture. Naturally, some workers who find themselves at the bottom of the leaderboard can feel humiliated and disengaged, which can affect their mental health.

And the thing about disengagement is it has a domino effect. 64% of employees say their work experience is impacted when other people are disengaged at work, according to Nectar’s engagement study. 

Nectar tip: Leaderboards are supposed to be fun. To overcome any stress associated with them, try only publishing the top 10 or top half of the leaderboard rather than shaming those at the bottom. This approach reduces the risk of hurting employee morale and generating unhealthy competition, where employees become too heavily invested with their position. 

Leaderboards Can Exclude Some Employees 

Some of the challenges or competitions you create may inadvertently leave out some employees and make it impossible for them to succeed. For example, employees whose creative contributions aren't easily quantified may be overlooked compared to sales team members who bring in X leads or $X sales per month. 

Nectar tip: Consider how to design inclusive challenges; for example, your leaderboard challenge might include points to recognize contributions that don’t have a monetary value, such as introducing new ideas or supporting colleagues with their work. 

Leaderboards Can Harm Collaboration 

Leaderboards may motivate some employees to focus on their individual pursuits rather than collaborating with the rest of the team. In particularly toxic cultures, some workers may even try to stunt their peers’ efforts or make them look bad to secure a higher ranking for themselves. 

Nectar tip: If competition is a problem in your company, promote collaboration by encouraging teams to work together towards a common goal. 

6 Best Practices For Using Leaderboards In Your Recognition Process 

Leaderboards are an excellent accompaniment to your overall recognition program. By celebrating your employees according to how they give and receive gratitude, you’ll create a culture of support and respect. Here are some key strategies and best practices to consider as you slide leaderboards seamlessly into your recognition program: 

1. Align Leaderboards With Company Values And Goals  

Take a long, hard look at your company values, mission, and culture to determine what's really important to you. What types of behaviors or activities do you want to recognize your employees for? For example: 

• If your company has a strong commitment to customer satisfaction, track and recognize employees with the highest customer ratings. 
• If innovation is your top priority, create challenges that allow employees to showcase their creativity and problem-solving abilities. 
• If you value candid feedback, recognize and reward employees who give the most helpful but respectful feedback to their peers. 

Nectar tip: Creating a recognition policy is a useful way to gain focus on how praise and appreciation align with your company culture. 

2. Promote Fairness And Inclusivity 

Decide who is eligible to feature on your recognition leaderboard. For example, is this initiative only open to full-time employees, or can part-time workers, contractors, and freelancers also participate? 

Beyond employment status, be inclusive by creating different leaderboard categories that give everyone a chance to shine. Remember to account for different personalities, skills, and roles within your organization so you're not limiting the opportunities to be recognized to only a few types of employees. 

For example, you might: 

• Use multiple leaderboards to recognize different types of achievements, such as problem-solving, diligence, and effective communication
• Consider rotating the metrics you track and recognize to keep things fresh and give everyone an opportunity to be recognized
• Rank employees in teams rather than individually so everyone within a team is recognized for their collective efforts. 

3. Establish Rules And Clear Guidelines 

Set some participation ground rules before launching your leaderboard program. Your employees should know:

• What they need to achieve to advance up the leaderboard. 
• What they can expect, if anything, once they hit the top spot. For example, do they receive a reward? 
• If they need to produce anything to track their progress, such as a report or screenshot to prove their achievement.
• What behavior is unacceptable and could result in disqualification, for example, cheating or belittling a colleague?  
• How often you’ll update the leaderboard to reflect the latest points totals.

Document and circulate your guidelines before rolling out your leaderboard program. As a best practice, store them in a central location, such as your staff handbook or internal wiki, so everyone knows where to access them as required. 

4. Set Up Employee Challenges 

Leaderboards integrate well with metrics you're already tracking, like customer ratings or employee attendance. But they also work fantastically well with customized employee challenges that incentivize your workers to commit to a set of activities or behaviors within a certain timeframe. Challenge leaders are recognized as those who receive the most points during this period.  

Challenge ideas include: 

• Reading the most professional development books within a quarter (employees receive recognition points every time they fill in a book review) 
• Earning an X-day streak in a learning application (employees receive points for the longest streak)
• Completing their health and safety training refresher (employees receive points directly linked to their end-of-course score)
• Setting up the most virtual coffee chats with remote team members (employees receive 5 points for initiating a chat and 3 for attending) 
• Posting regularly on LinkedIn to strengthen the company’s employer brand (employees receive a point for every published post) 

5. Create A Continuous Recognition Culture 

Engagement in your recognition program leaderboard depends on a company culture filled with gratitude. A whopping 98% of employees who receive daily recognition feel valued by their employer, stressing the importance of your employees giving and receiving appreciation as part of their working day.

Leaderboards keep that momentum going, especially if you set up short-cycle challenges to prevent stagnation and keep engagement fresh. Think monthly or quarterly over annual, ensuring it's never too long until the end of the competition when the leader can be crowned.  

6. Choose How To Incentivize Leaderboard Positions 

Decide what it means to top the leaderboard in your organization. Is this for honor or a tangible reward? Some ideas for incentivizing leaderboard positions include: 

• Giving the top-ranked employee a day off or allowing them to leave early 
• Offering an extra vacation day or work-from-home day as a reward 
• Providing a cash bonus, gift card, or company swag 
• Offering larger rewards for consistent high performers over a longer period 

As a more flexible approach, consider giving recognition points as incentives that employees can accumulate and redeem for rewards of their choice. 

Nectar’s Real-Life Recognition Program Leaderboard 

Here at Nectar, leaderboards are an integral part of our company culture. We use ours to engage everyone in our recognition program. Our leaderboard includes:

• Top point givers and recipients: This balance encourages participation in our recognition program while celebrating those identified by their peers
• Top shoutout senders and recipients: Similarly, board leaders are those who actively praise others on the Nectar social feed. The system also honors those receiving the most messages of appreciation. 
• Top team recipients: While we recognize individuals, our team-focused leaderboard acknowledges the collective efforts of each team within the company.
• Streaks: We also honor the people who give recognition consistently within a specific timeframe 

As you can see, our inclusive leaderboard provides plenty of opportunities for people to be recognized, either for their individual achievements or being part of a winning team. We can also filter our leaderboard by department and core values to make the results more meaningful.

Most important: Fairness and equality are integral to everything we do at Nectar. Companies using our leaderboard feature can choose settings to prevent users from gaming the system or exchanging points with each other. These include: 

• Monitoring guardrails: Administrators will receive an alert if any suspicious activity occurs. Users will also be warned they have been flagged. You can set specific controls for these warnings, such as triggering the alert when a user gives 50% of their allowance to the same recipient within 3 months. 
• Preventative guardrails: This setting completely restricts users from sending recognition points if they meet your pre-defined criteria. You can adjust the percentage of allowance and number of months to meet your preferences. 
• No guardrails: Removing any controls demonstrates trust in your users, allowing them to send their allowance freely. We recommend starting with this setting, then adding guardrails if required. 

Encourage Employee Engagement With Nectar 

Nectar offers a comprehensive suite of tools aimed at creating a company culture your workers will never want to leave. Choose from the following to engage your employees and ignite a friendly, competitive spirit: 

• Challenges: Managers can set up personal and professional challenges with themes like wellness or learning & development, then celebrate challenge winners. 
• Recognition: Peers, managers, and company leaders give and receive shoutouts and redeemable points in Nectar’s social feed. 
• Rewards: Employees exchange their points for a wide range of rewards, including gift cards, Amazon products, charity donations, company swag, and custom rewards. 
• Awards: Leaders set up awards, such as Employee of the Month, and request nominations from their teams. 

Ready to see these tools in action? Book a free demo to kickstart your recognition program today.