I have seen the opposite actually in industry so far in regards to rewarding “individual effort”. There were a few rather big milestones hit upon my time at my company and generally the entire project team got recognition rather than individual recognition. I think it is based up to the managers discretion and the theme in the company I work for is reward the team first. In regards to making the numbers I agree however, metrics are huge within most companies and a lot of people are very concerned with hitting those metrics at all costs, whether that be NCs, performing certain number of audits, or completing ECOs. These are the things that are seen at a high level from upper management so it makes sense why there is so much emphasis on these items.