FEATURE
NISERIN/123RF
“We are seeing that competition is quite common,”
Shekhtman told Piling Canada during a recent interview.
“Through the pandemic and the recovery period, organizations
have had to make infrastructure decisions. As those
shifts have occurred, competition has increased.”
The key, he says, is knowing how to capitalize on those
competitive feelings to improve employee engagement and
increase productivity. For example, during a time when many
employees continue to work remotely, positive competition
can be fostered through virtual contests or challenges that
encourage participation and provide a barometer for buy-in.
“I think a competition like that connects people together,”
said Shekhtman. “When you don’t have that common goal,
people tend to work in silos, especially from remote offices.”
Recently, Robert Half conducted an online well-being
challenge in which employees were divided into teams
and encouraged to log their physical exercise in exchange
for points.
“It was a great opportunity to virtually connect with team
members and drive employee engagement, and the response
was really positive – it encouraged different departments
and people from all over North America to interact with each
other,” said Shekhtman.
Groups that pull together, engage together, making teamwork
a critical contributor to workplace efficiency.
According to Ofir Paldi, founder and CEO of Shamaym,
a provider of collaborative real-time learning solutions,
nowhere is the importance of teamwork more evident than
in military pilot training. His company enables high performance
through military teaching concepts based on
identifying, recording and sharing key day-to-day learnings.
“You start with 100 pilots (in training) and everyone
knows you have 10 or 20 spots at the end,” said Paldi, who
served nine years as a pilot with the Israeli Air Force. “You
know you are in competition all the time, but the way to
structure it is as a team, where everyone wants to help each
other – even though in the end, that could be against them. I
think that’s an amazing example for building a healthy, competitive
work environment.”
While teams are the backbone of today’s business landscape
and it is possible to encourage friendly competition in
virtual work environments, it’s also critical to foster this concept
with essential service workers who continue to report to
the workplace. For the construction industry, strategies that
drive employee engagement could be especially critical.
A PlanRadar article published in October 2019 says efficiency
in global construction has dropped below 1993 levels.
“No less than 98 per cent of all megaprojects slip by over 30
per cent, more than 75 per cent of the big projects suffer
cost overruns by even 40 per cent and more,” reported the
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