Most Outstanding Remotasker Awards, And The Value Of Praise

During a meeting way way back, the folks here at the Remotasks Support Team realized that the Remotasker Community has clocked in around 10,000 members and counting, with our Discord Server alone having at least 2.1K Remotaskers online at any point in time. That’s a lot of people to help and support, even with our healthy number of Team Leaders, Moderators, and Administrators. In these meetings, we constantly highlight certain users that go above and beyond when it comes to helping Taskers with concerns that not all Support Agents can help with. So, we realized - what if we announce who these members are?

Or better yet, what if we let the Community decide who the most helpful Remotaskers they’ve encountered were? Enter the Most Outstanding Remotasker (#MORE) Awards.
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What’s the #MORE Awards?

‍Interestingly, the #MORE Awards isn’t exactly the Remotasks equivalent of the “Employee of the Month.” Rather, the #MORE Awards is our way of identifying, locating, and rewarding Remotaskers (we call them Remotasks Rockstars) for their efforts to help our massive community.

Essentially, we find some of the most active Remotaskers in the platform and even ask the entire community to place their nominees. Afterward, we ask the community to vote who they think is their Remotasks Rockstar for the month. Most importantly, we don’t just announce the winner - we schedule a quick interview with them that we’ll post to our platforms. That way, we get to help other Remotaskers get to know their Remotasks Rockstars behind the scenes.

It seems pretty excessive for a monthly awards program right? Not necessarily! We believe these things are necessary to foster a healthy community.

Positive Psychology: Gratitude, Praise, and Acknowledgment

It might help to take a step back and look at things from a more personal point of view. Chances are, you have a relative or a loved one that you just admire so much that you see the beauty in their actions more than they could see it in themselves. You see their wonderful smiles, their awesome talents, or just how darn amazing they make every single day for as long as you’re with them. For you, talking about what makes them amazing is second nature - these can be in the form of parents, friends, loved ones, or even our kids.

According to Linda and Charlie Bloom of Psychology Today, just a simple praise from our end can have a huge impact on other people. After all, when other people praise us or acknowledge our efforts, we do feel a rush of confidence that makes even the hardest of challenges a bit more bearable, right? Turns out, there’s a lot of psychology that goes on when it comes to praise and validation.

For one, praise can become a method of reinforcing and establishing norms. While growing up, we tend to learn what is right and what is wrong when our parents or other grown ups praise us for what we do. In turn, the lack of praise - or when people get mad or have other reactions - might make us feel like what we’re doing is wrong. Outside growing up, we can apply praise to become a method of positive reinforcement for things around us - to praise something is to help that person realize that doing something good can make them feel good.

Essentially, praise and validation works on interpersonal relationships in three key ways:

• For receivers, getting even the slightest boost in validation can help us build our confidence and make things seem worthwhile. Some of us might be shy to ask about our progress and how our efforts seem to others, so receiving even the slightest “good job!” can really give ourselves a much-needed boost in self-esteem.
• For givers, affirming and validating the efforts of others can help cultivate an attitude of gratitude. Doing this helps us count our blessings - to look at things that matter and acknowledging their presence. Being grateful and praising the little efforts that people do for us can spill outside and make life much brighter, especially when we begin sharing these praises to others.
• For both physiologies, feeling grateful and praised increases activity in the hypothalamus - this part of the brain controls metabolism, sleeping, eating, and our response to stress. When we feel appreciated, the brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter that makes us feel good. In turn, the dopamine the brain releases from praise makes us associate that praise with a happy feeling - essentially, it motivates us to do something good again.

For us in Remotasks, we don’t just want our Remotaskers to earn money. We want to cultivate an attitude and spirit of gratitude that Remotaskers can apply inside and outside the platform. With this in mind, maybe we can help become more resilient and be more positive individuals, especially now that we’re still facing a global crisis (e.g., COVID-19 Pandemic, among others).

However, how does this exactly relate to work?

Workplace Appreciation: The Role of Praise, Validation at Work

You might think that the term “workplace” doesn’t apply to Remotasks because it’s essentially just a tasking platform, and that all its members are all working from home. There’s no “office” to speak of, right? In most cases, that’s true - but for us, for as long as you’re interacting with fellow Remotaskers in our communication channels, we’re going to do our best to treat everyone as employees that deserve respect, training, and most importantly, praise and validation.

Interestingly, the psychology of praise also applies at work. Granted, as employees - be it in the office or at home - we don’t necessarily expect praise from our higher-ups at work. However, it’s just as important to receive appreciation for things we do, and there’s a certain level of psychology at play here:

• Better job satisfaction and stronger engagement. Remember when we said that being praised makes us associate the praise with feeling good? We can apply the same thing in the workplace. In a study about workplace recognition, just a simple appreciation from managers can drive a huge increase in job satisfaction. In the study, 70-percent of employees who received praise say they’re happy with their jobs. Without that praise, only 39-percent say they’re “satisfied.”
• More fulfillment at work, better relationships. Moreover, appreciation and recognition plays a huge role when it comes to employee fulfillment, as 80-percent of employees who were called out for great work also feel more fulfilled, productive, motivated, and engaged. More importantly, employees who felt more acknowledged often have stronger relationships with their bosses.
• Better morale for the entire team. Additionally, receiving praise and recognition doesn’t just boost the morale of a single employee - it can boost the morale of the entire team. When an organization shows that they value a single employee, they show other members that the organization truly values their efforts.

These three components are the main reasons why we push for the #MORE Awards monthly, as we don’t want to “just pay and compensate” our Remotaskers for their hard work. We want to make all our members feel that we appreciate their efforts in a concrete manner, and we’ll flex you to the community and - through these posts - the entire world.

Remotasks Rockstars: Our Personal Heroes

As soon as you join our communications channels, we will treat you as a co-worker and a team member that deserves all the training, the respect, and most importantly, the praise and recognition for your efforts. Thanks to your efforts, we constantly provide satisfactory and stellar output that our clients continue to love and appreciate. Our award is just a small token of thanks for how grateful we feel towards the extraordinary level of attention and care all our Remotaskers put in their work.