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 ppreciation as a Tool of Culture Change
- from Hughes Software, Delhi
The Popular Awards are a medium of employee to employee recognition and augment the pre - existing "formal" management - driven award system. In the last one year, HSS has launched 12 popular awards, which are behaviours pulled out of The HSS Way, HSS' culture and Value System. Each quarter, 3 characteristics (eg. Great Communicator, Great Mentor, Terrific Troubleshooter, etc.) are chosen, and all employees have one vote for each of these. The employees can cast their vote for any employee of the company. The person who gets the maximum votes is declared the winner. The program works launched through HSS' Intranet to which all employees have access. This has been a tremendous succes.
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Starting from 20% a year ago, 76% employees participated (cast their vote) in the most recent quarter. Gradually, a large number of people have started participating in the appreciation process. |
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In the first quarter of the launch, we just declared the winner for each award category. In the last quarter, we were able to declare Top 20 for each category. Each of these people had sufficient number of votes. (More and more appreciation is taking place). |
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An informal cross - functional task force has come up, which has promoted this concept and encouraged more and more people to participate by casting their votes. (The system is spreading to people who are not directly associated with this function). |
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The awards have been won by people from all functions, and from all levels and by old timers as well as new. |
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The HSS Way now has faces, people can relate to being a good coach by relating to the person who got voted as the great mentor, etc. Rather than mere words, employees can see and know "The HSS Way". |
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These awards are highly coveted. The winners are being seen as role models and leaders. It has helped people understand what leadership is all about, and that it is not really the role of "senior management", but of all employees in a unique manner. |
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In the last one year, there has been a visible difference in the overall culture: people are using other forms of appreciation a lot more, there is general concern about common causes (employees saying that we should do something for Kargil, Orissa, Blood Donation, etc.) |
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The winners are contributing back to the system : The winner of The Best Leader Award takes the session on Leadership in the Supervisory Induction Program. |
To enable the employees to provide more appreciation in normal course of life, in addition to the once-a-quarter opportunity, we also launched the e-greetings program. This works like a typical portal for greeting cards on the Internet. The difference is that it is available on the HSS Intranet, and has been specially designed for the HSS context. The children of employees have made some of the pictures used for this system. This provides a quick method of expressing your appreciation, and since it is sent electronically, the discomfort related to personally saying it is taken care of. Also, it provides ready-made ideas, e.g., Teachers' Day card for the person from whom you have learnt a lot. Over the last few months, the traffic on e-greetings has increased continuously. In fact, since its launch in June 1999, close to 3000 e-greetings have been sent. Also, there is a distinct and visible change about appreciation. People are now taking initiative to send positive notes through other channels, e.g. emails, person to person, etc.
This write-up is an excerpt from Hughes' award winning entry for the corporate excellence award of the Asia Pacific HRD conclave.
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