How to keep motivation alive in software testers?

Couple of months back I wrote an article on “How to keep good testers in testing position“. There I mentioned one point as to appreciate the testers for their good work.

“Reward testers for finding good quality bugs. Keep some weekly or monthly competitions such as ‘Bug of the week’ to reward them. This will help to build a successful QA team”.

The same concept is used by Eric Jacobson - a software tester, to keep motivation alive in his testing team. Eric found interesting idea to reward good testers. The idea of holding a bug contest. And decided to award the ‘Mercury’ cap to the tester who could log the most bugs in a given week. See the winner of his contest.

A small tweak I would rather suggest to make this technique more effective is to award the testers who will find the quality bug, may be called as “Bug of the week”. This way quality bugs will be the main focus of software testers rather than running behind the quantity. Obviously you should not ignore those small UI bugs also

I am really fan of awarding testers for their good work. It may be any kind of appreciation. May be a small gift or just few kind words of appreciation from the lead or manager. This will keep the spirit alive in testers to find new and quality bugs.

If you are a team leader, manager or even a team member, what do you think is the best way to keep motivation alive in software testers?