"Benching" Competitors

What is "benching" in Ambition competitions?

Does benching impact User vs User competitions?

How do I bench a user?

Can users be unbenched?

What should I consider before benching a user?

Can I export a list of users who have been benched?

Benching Overview

"Sally is on PTO this week and bringing our whole team down"

People get invested in competitions. That's great for productivity and focus, but nothing undermines that spirit of competitions faster than un-fairness. 

To help with competition fairness, Ambition provides the option to bench your contributors.

You are able to bench employees during both challenges and fantasy Competitions so that they don't negatively impact group-Based competitions scored on daily, averaged Metrics.

Benching in User vs User Competitions

Benching someone in a User vs User Competition will have no impact as the "benched" user will still have a score of 0 if no score contributions are made.

Benching is advised for User vs User competitions to help organizations put users on PTO, Sick Days, etc at ease that working on an off day is not required or expected.

ex. Joe and Sally are schedule to compete in a Call Challenge on Monday.

Sally is out on Monday for PTO.

Regardless of whether Sally is benched for Monday, if Sally makes 0 Calls on Monday, Sally's score will be a 0. Scores are not prorated on an individual level to accommodate benching being applied.

In the case of a User vs User competition, being out is similar to forfeiting the competition. No Ambition Phantom will be used in the place of benched users.

Bench a User for Team Competition Scoring

1. Open the left navigation and click Competitions > Benching.

If you have the Out of Office feature enabled, the benching tab will redirect to the Out of Office form. Learn more here.

2. Search for the Employee in question.

3. Select a Start Day and End Day for their "bench" duration, and select a Reason (Sick, Vacation, Other) for the absence.

4. Click the Bench Employee button.

Unbench a User

If a User was benched accidentally or the reason they were benched if no longer applicable (vacation cancelled, etc), they can be unbenched.

Note: If the competition the user's team is competing in has ended before the user is unbenched, the competition scoring will be locked. Unbenching the user will have no longer impact scoring.

1. Open the left navigation and click Competitions > Benching.

2. Locate the Employees Benched section.

3. The user who needs to be unbenched can be located by typing their name in the search bar.

4. Click the Unbench button in line with the respective day(s) the user needs to be unbenched.

Considerations With Benching

Benching a user will prevent their activity, if any, from counting toward the group's score. Just like any game or sport, you can't score points from the bench. 

↳ If a benched user contributes ANY points on a day they were benched they WILL NOT count towards the group score.

Unfortunately, sometime managers will "bench" underperforming users to help a team win.

Permission to Bench Users in competitions will be tied to the Users: Bench permission.

Benching users for reasons other than a true absence will invariably undermine integrity of not only a competition but Ambition as a platform.

To discourage cheating, Ambition allows for the download of a full benching history. This locked record serves as an impartial record for any who may question the validity of a competition's outcome.

Download Benching CSV

1. Open the left navigation and click Competitions > Benching.

2. Employees who have been benched can be viewed in the Employees Benched section.

3. Download a CSV of benching records by clicking Download CSV.

View of Benching CSV Download