NAER Pamela Sabin Recognition Champion Award 2007
Nomination Form - Deadline for Entries: January 15, 2007
Page 6
OFFICIAL NOMINATION FORM: DEADLINE January 15, 2007
National Association for
Employee Recognition (NAER)
Pamela Sabin Recognition
Champion Award
Pamela Sabin Recognition Champion Award winners are lifetime award winners and cannot be considered multiple times. Past and present NAER Board of Directors members are eligible to be awarded the Pamela Sabin Recognition Champion Award.
Complete the nomination form and return it to the above address.
Upon submission, the information on this Nomination Form becomes the property of NAER and may be reproduced in NAER publications (including website) for information sharing. If chosen as a 2007 Pamela Sabin Recognition Champion, the nominee agrees to share their expertise as a NAER committee volunteer for the duration of not less than one year. The nominee and his or her organization understand and agree to these terms. b Yes 1 No
Has this nominee won this award before? 1 Yes bNo
If chosen as a 2007 Pamela Sabin Recognition Champion, would the nominee and his or her organization be willing to present their programs/practices, or be part of a panel of Recognition Champions, in a one (1) hour presentation at the NAER 2007 Fall Summit, Chicago, Illinois? bYes 1 No
Has the nominee and his or her organization been notified of this nomination? bYes 1 No
Nominee’s name: ___Joan Kelly______Title: VP Compensation & Benefits
Company (or Organization) Name: __DHL______
Dept/Division/Section (if applicable):
Business address: ___1200 S. Pine Island Rd., Suite 170______
City: __Plantation, FL______State: __Florida______Zip: ___33324______
Telephone number: _954-888-5720______
Address:
City/State/Zip:
1) Number of employees: q 1-500 q 501-5,000 ü 5,001-50,000 q 50,001+
2) Number of divisions:
3) The organization is: ___ non-profit ___ government __X for-profit
4) Industry: Express Delivery Services government other (please specify)
NAER occasionally transmits information regarding the Pamela Sabin Recognition Champion program via electronic communications (Email).
I authorize the National Association For Employee Recognition (NAER) to send association Email communications to my Email Address:
NAER occasionally transmits information to its members via FAX communications.
I authorize the National Association For Employee Recognition (NAER) to send association FAX communications to my Fax number: 954-888-5700
Who referred you to NAER? O.C. Tanner
How did you hear about NAER? O.C. Tanner
If the nominee is selected, please provide any upper-management contacts you would like notified of this prestigious accomplishment and please include all of their contact information:
Scott Northcutt, EVP Human Resources
954-888-7126
Hans Hickler, CEO, USA
954-888-7365,
Please respond to all criteria that apply to the nominee. Please use specific examples.
Describe the recognition program(s) designed and initiated by the nominee:
Energetic. Powerful. Effective. These words describe not only DHL’s new recognition strategy, but also the woman responsible for creating and instituting its programs. As VP of Compensation & Benefits, Joan Kelly has taken the energy, engagement and results recognition brings to DHL to unprecedented levels. So much so that her business card now reads “Chief Carrot Officer,” honoring her efforts to give DHL managers and employees the right “carrots” to keep the company moving forward.
Some of the programs Kelly has developed and implemented include:
§ Career Achievement Program: When DHL and Airborne Express merged in 2003, employees from both organizations needed to be united and inspired to move in one direction. Initial employee surveys indicated significant levels of disengagement and a general feeling that there was a lack of communication from management. Kelly and her team seized this opportunity to use recognition as a tool to unite employees and move the company forward as one.
Kelly’s first step was to redesign the company’s career achievement program. Adding to the existing 10 and 20-year service awards, DHL’s new program included additional levels of recognition for 1, 5, and 15+ years of service and an additional level for retirement. By adding levels Kelly included more people and bonded new employees to the company with early recognition.
Also important was Kelly’s decision to strategically center the program theme around DHL’s employee proposition “Add Value, Be Valued”. In an effort to rally employees in building a culture of action and responsibility, Kelly and her team designed a career achievement program that not only recognized tenure and accomplishments, but also helped to communicate the company’s most important messages. Training for the new program emphasized to managers the importance of the presentation experience.
§ Performance Award Program:
Realizing the importance of recognizing outstanding behaviors in a timely manner, Kelly and her team also implemented a performance award program designed around DHL’s internal branding campaign, “I’m On It.”
o On-the-Spot: Kelly understood the importance of allowing peers to recognize each others’ actions as well as giving managers immediate tools to honor employees whose actions exemplify the core values of DHL. As a result, Kelly and her team crafted a two-tier on-the-spot program that includes “I’m On It” e-cards and a $50 level that allows employees to select from a variety of gifts on a custom Web site. Since its launch in 2005, thousands of e-cards have been sent and 5,400 employees have been recognized with on-the-spot awards.
o Above and Beyond: For those who go above and beyond in representing the corporate values and achieve significant business impact, Kelly and her team designed and instituted a more formal performance award program.
“We needed a way to honor those employees whose actions make a significant impact to DHL’s bottom line,” says Kelly. “We needed to make extraordinary actions visible to others to inspire performance and reinforce the types of actions that make DHL a better company as well as make our top performers aware of our appreciation as an organization.”
The program includes bronze, silver and gold levels and requires completion of a simple nomination form designed by Kelly and her team to determine the appropriate level of achievement.
o Value of Excellence: To address the needs of individual functional organizations to recognize the achievement of specific goals or results, Kelly created a platform to manage customized recognition award criteria. To date, organizations have used this program to recognize customer retention, innovation, customer service, merger and acquisition integration and targeted sales accomplishments. This year, the Safety organization will launch a new recognition program to encourage safe work behaviors. Working with functions to create their own recognition approach under the DHL Recognition Hub allows Kelly and her team to keep track of all of the recognition activity. “We don’t want to turn away any of our recognition champions”, says Kelly.
Describe the processes and resources used (external and internal) and steps taken to design and implement the recognition program(s) initiated by the nominee:
In 2003 when Kelly began to evaluate recognition programs at both DHL and the newly merged Airborne Express, she discovered a great deal of recognition occurring on an ad hoc basis.
“Recognition was decentralized,” says Kelly. “People were doing their own things in both companies. It was very difficult to even uncover how much was being spent on recognition. Instead of wasting time on trying to identify what was currently happening, we focused how we could start building a new DHL Recognition Culture”. At the same time Kelly and her team were developing the recognition programs, DHL was doing extensive advertising to increase their brand recognition. The team felt it was important to align the recognition brand with the company branding campaign. “Above and Beyond” and “Going the Extra Mile” were used on the DHL billboard advertisements. Employees were familiar with these taglines, so the team used them as the new Recognition Program names.
Describe how the nominee displays dedication to the principles of recognition.
There are few more dedicated than Kelly when it comes to helping managers and employees realize the impact recognition can have at DHL. In fact, Kelly is so convinced that “carrots” are the best way drive results at DHL that she dressed up as a Carrot at an HR training event in 2005.
“I will do all I can to inspire the vision of recognition at DHL, even if that means turning myself into a carrot,” says Kelly. “Our managers have to understand that while we are talking about how great recognition can be for the bottom line, part of recognition’s power is in the fun it brings into the work environment. The carrot costume is a way for me to inject some of that fun into training sessions.”
Beyond making things fun, Kelly never rests when it comes to encouraging managers and departments toward greater program utilization and, as a result, better employee survey and business results. Within her own department, Kelly has started an informal carrot basket recognition program. The basket contains several Carrot icons and is awarded by peer nomination to the employee who has best demonstrated the most “carrot-like” behavior or results.
Describe how the nominee takes initiative to communicate, demonstrate, and deliver recognition throughout the organization.
Kelly’s passion for recognition stems from a key belief that as DHL takes care of its employees, they will take care of the customer. As a result Kelly works to bring as much information and as many resources to every employee to make sure recognition becomes part of everyone’s work day.
In addition to regular recognition training sessions, Kelly’s biggest communication initiative is the “MVP” (My Value Package) employee portal. MVP was designed to create an all access place for employees understand the value of working at DHL and to make it easy to use the Recognition programs and tools.
“Launching the MVP site was a shift for HR,” says Kelly. “This is not an HR site employees can learn about HR programs, it’s a site for employees to learn about Health, Wealth, Career and Work/Life issues. It is all about the employee experience and what we can do to enhance that by making information and access to programs as simple and exciting as possible.”
The site allows peers and managers to nominate others for recognition or browse testimonials and suggestions for improvement. Kelly does not shy away from using the MVP forum for providing direct and clear answers to employees who have questions about the program, pointing out what’s been done to address suggestions for improvement.
Kelly’s influence and inclination to share all recognition targets, goals and initiatives comes as you walk around DHL headquarters. Posters, measurement charts and clearly posted goals and progress reports are plastered on walls. It is clear Kelly has a passion for promoting the use and impact recognition has at DHL and she is calling on every employee to participate.
If faced with management and/or employee indifference to recognition, describe how the nominee would overcome and resolve the situation.
Kelly will be the first to tell you that she has been fortunate to work with a supportive senior management team. In fact, Global Executive Vice President of HR, Scott Northcutt, says, “Recognition has become a core part of our culture…It’s actually separating us from our competition and we really see recognition as an accelerator for greater business results.”
However, senior management in remote locations throughout the company don’t always buy in to the recognition message right away says Kelly.
“Training and constant communication are the best methods for fostering buy in,” says Kelly. “When you give people the opportunity to see the impact recognition is having on other areas of the organization they realize recognition is not another initiative, it is a way of doing business. Once managers understand how to use the program and the direct benefits that come from it, we usually don’t have a utilization problem. So my job is to get the tools out there and educate my people on how to best use them,” says Kelly.
Kelly also listens when it comes to meeting the needs of different managers in different areas.
“I realize there may be better or different ways of doing things that are better suited to their locations and the employees there,” says Kelly.
One such opportunity for adaptation came recently at a facility in Ohio. Instead of using a computer-based system that required a formal nomination, managers felt strongly that their employees would respond more favorably to an on-the-spot program. So Kelly and her team came up with a more rapid, on-the-spot reward program. By introducing a $50 award level that need only to be approved by the local manager, Kelly improved program participation by more than 300 percent.
Most importantly, Kelly’s initiatives deliver results. Because she does not shy away from measuring the effectiveness of recognition as a business principle, senior management is continually reminded of its importance through improved survey and business results.
“We recently brought a third party in to look at our service level versus our competition. They did it around the country in different areas and in almost every area our service is now at par or better than our competition. The whole idea of recognizing, of inspiring and asking our employees to move that service level up, and then recognizing them for doing it, has made a tremendous difference for DHL.”
Describe the nominee’s methods of measuring/tracking recognition strategies and results.
Because the success of recognition at DHL is so personal to Kelly, she does all she can to understand the impact recognition is having within the organization. Measuring recognition’s results at DHL is accomplished through a variety of methods:
§ Employee opinion surveys: Improved survey results are Kelly’s passion. And with 2006 improvements in every area related to recognition, she feels her efforts are showing through improved employee engagement levels.
o Areas such as employee engagement, manager effectiveness, leadership trust, rewards and recognition and performance management all made impressive improvements in 2006 meeting or exceeding their improvement goals.
§ Usage results: Kelly believes one of the best indicators of program success is usage. After all, if people are using the program, it has the most potential to impact the business. After falling short of participation and budget targets in 2005, Kelly’s redoubled communication and training efforts paid off in 2006 when DHL employees recognized each other and reached the goal of $1 million in performance recognition.