When I talk to HR practitioners about launching a nomination program, the initial excitement is almost always followed by a list of worries:

"What if it just becomes a popularity contest?" 

"What if people campaign for nominations?” 

"What if someone on a performance plan gets nominated?" 

"Won’t the people who aren’t nominated feel left out?" 

These are fair questions. Structured recognition programs do carry real emotional and cultural weight. But I think we sometimes let a few hypothetical worst-case scenarios overshadow the much larger risk: too many employees go unseen for too long.

If we’re honest, the bigger cultural problem in most organizations is not over-recognition, it’s under-recognition.

Awardco’s research on the recognition gap points to the real cost of that problem. Employees who receive no recognition experience a steep drop in engagement. So before we decide that nomination programs are too risky, it is worth asking whether our caution is protecting the culture or quietly starving it.

Let’s take the biggest myths one at a time.

Myth 1: It will just become a popularity contest

This is probably the most common objection, and it usually comes from a good place. People want fairness. They worry that the loudest personalities or the most visible departments will dominate, while quieter contributors get overlooked.

The reality is that popularity contests happen when programs are designed like popularity contests. If all you ask for is a name and a one-line endorsement, charisma and visibility will probably win. That's not an argument against nomination programs. It's an argument for better program design. 

It's also true that the people with the most visibility tend to get nominated most often by default. That's part of why I'm such a fan of pairing an open, all-employee nomination category with a dedicated "unsung heroes" award, as I covered in Part 3: it builds the counterbalance into the program instead of hoping it happens on its own.

Base your nomination program on storytelling and evidence, not visibility. Clear prompts and specific criteria push nominators to describe what someone did, not just how well-known they are. Consider a blind first-pass review, where names and departments are stripped before scoring, so the committee is evaluating the story rather than reacting to a familiar name.

Myth 2: People will campaign for nominations

Possible? Sure. Common enough to justify not recognizing anyone? In my experience, no.

Most employees aren't spending their time building elaborate nomination campaigns. They're doing their jobs. And when social encouragement does happen, a strong program makes room for the enthusiasm without confusing it with merit: you can appreciate the energy around a highly visible employee while still using a rubric and review process to evaluate the substance behind the nomination. Someone can receive multiple nominations, and that's fine, but the count is just one input into the decision, not the deciding one. 

Myth 3: Someone ‘undeserving’ or on a performance plan will get nominated

This is the scenario that keeps administrators up at night because it feels awkward and high-risk. But it is worth separating the recognition moment from the final award decision.

A nomination is a public shout-out, not a promotion or a legal determination that someone is flawless. It is one person saying “This employee made a contribution that I want to be seen.” Someone can be underperforming in one area and still have handled a difficult customer, prevented a safety issue, or helped a teammate in an important way. Those two things aren't in conflict.

That said, final awards should absolutely include an HR integrity check. If someone has active performance concerns, has given notice, or presents another legitimate issue, program owners need the ability to screen that before a final selection is made. This is one of the reasons administrative controls matter. Better to design a smart checkpoint than to use edge cases as a reason to suppress positive stories across the board. The benefit of surfacing 99.9% of your positive stories far outweighs the risk of the occasional tricky one.

Myth 4: People who aren’t nominated will feel left out.

This is a different worry than the one I covered in Part 4. There, the concern was about people who are nominated but don't receive the final award. Here, it's about the people who are never nominated for anything at all, a different, and often more serious, problem.

The worry is that if we highlight a few people, we devalue everyone else. This concern views recognition as a finite pie: if one person is seen, another person must feel unseen. But the research points in the other direction. Employees who receive zero recognition see a nearly 40-point drop in engagement. The real danger isn't that someone else was nominated, it's that a person is never recognized for anything, ever.

In reality, the emotional outcome depends a lot on the broader culture. If nomination programs are operating inside a generally healthy culture where recognition is frequent, seeing peers get nominated is often motivating. It gives language to excellence. It creates examples that others can emulate. Zoom out, and the real risk isn't an isolated case of someone feeling snubbed, it's that large portions of the organization go unrecognized for anything, at any point.

This is why I often come back to abundance. When employees are used to meaningful recognition in general, a nomination program feels like a spotlight, not a threat. When recognition is scarce everywhere, then yes, any visible distinction can feel more charged. But that is not a reason to avoid nominations. It is a signal that the everyday recognition culture needs attention too.

The Bottom Line

So what should organizations do instead of letting these fears drive the whole strategy? Build guardrails. Use clear criteria. Ask for examples, not adjectives. Separate nomination visibility from final award validation. Include an HR review step before the final round. Make sure nomination count is not the only decision factor. Coach leaders and committees on what good evaluation looks like.

This is also where the right technology lowers the temperature. Awardco gives teams structured workflows, configurable approval steps, and the ability to create visibility without giving up control. 

The bottom line is simple: fear is a weak design principle. If we wait for a perfectly risk-free way to recognize people, we will wait forever. The better path is to acknowledge the concerns, solve them intelligently, and keep moving toward a culture where great work gets noticed more often, not less. 

Because most of the myths surrounding nomination programs are not reasons to avoid them. They are invitations to run them better.

What's Next

If the myths don't hold up, the real question becomes practical: how do you actually build a rubric and a review process that's robust enough to turn skeptics into believers? That's the subject of the next post.

Previous Nomination posts

Part 1: The sticking power of nominations: why the investment pays off

• The overall impact of nomination programs and why they’re important

Part 2: Transforming employee recognition: the essential evolution of nomination programs

• Practical advice for building modern nomination programs

Part 3: Beyond “Employee of the Year”: designing a nomination program to fit your company culture

• How to design intentional programs that achieve the goals you set

Part 4: No losers: why language matters in nomination programs

• Strategies for celebrating all nominees, not just those who win