By Kurt Jensen,
Communications Director
Awards are important—take advantage of ACVP recognition in 2015.
In this CV Directions, I have already wrote at length about the importance of employee recognition in terms of Cardiovascular Professionals Week. On our website, we provide a sample of employee awards, which are a great way to recognize
your fellow employees and improve employee culture, engagement, and retention on a micro level.
But on a macro level, awards can have an even more profound effect—promoting the sharing of knowledge and ideas in
a setting such as the Alliance of Cardiovascular Professionals, and giving individuals a much larger degree of public recognition for good work in the promotion of best practices in healthcare.
Despite the prevalence of award-giving in corporate and non-profit culture, only recently have studies been conducted
to analyze the empirical impact of awards. A 2013 study by Susanne Neckermann and Bruno Frey, published in the Journal of Socio-Economics, provides an excellent overview of the literature and empirical analysis.
The results? The possibility of an award, made substantially more valuable by the ceremony and publicity of its receipt—
ACVP award winners, for example, are recognized at ACVP conferences and meetings nationwide in addition to a profile
in CV Directions and the ACVP Blog—has "statistically significant effects on the stated willingness to contribute to a public good" as well as statistically significant effects on the "willingness to share important information with colleagues.” 1
Awards also provide statistically significant benefits to the recipient. Take the ACVP Cardiovascular Writing award, for
example, which is closely related to selection for journal awards in academia. A Frey, Chan, Gallus, and Torgler study
from 2014 finds that Award winners publish more and are cited up to 78 percent more often. 2 Award receipt also tends
to raise the likelihood of receiving grants and collaborating with other experts in the field, which can improve productivity and make for a larger impact on healthcare.3
Healthcare is not entirely academic, however, so let’s also consider the effect of awards in the work place. Take the ACVP
Cardiovascular Professional award, which could be applicable to any active ACVP member. In a study entitled “Awards
at Work,” Frey and Neckermann find that “awards have a sizeable and robust positive spillover effect on employee performance.”4
The takeaway? Nominating colleagues for ACVP awards will make the Alliance of Cardiovascular Professionals a more
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