Imagine the excitement of an employee who has been awarded one of only 18 Outstanding Employee Grand Awards and is invited to receive the award at a glittering presentation ceremony in front of top management and 500 colleagues.
NWS Holdings, a finalist in the HKIHRM/SCMP People Management Awards 2007, claims that the award scheme has had a significant knock-on effect on all staff, increasing motivation, improving standards of service across the group, uniting the diverse range of staff across many businesses, bolstering management belief in human capital and helping to build the brand.
'The company has extensive interests in service and rental, including business such as New World First Bus and New World First Ferry. It was a seemingly impossible task to instil an understanding of the core value of the group to thousands of employees across so many different types of business,' said Elina Lam Yuet-wan, general manager of human resources.
However, the Outstanding Employee Grand Award scheme, which was implemented in 2003, had a positive impact on the company's brand image and an increase in customer satisfaction, which was no doubt due to the improved staff productivity and enhanced standards of service witnessed since the inception of the scheme.
It may be surprising to some that an award given to so few might affect the output of so many in the company, but Ms Lam explained that, as each team had to nominate candidates for the award and help to make a short film about them, its influence cascaded though all levels of the company. The 56 candidates short-listed for the final stage in last year's competition, came from a list of 980 nominees, put forward by 20 subsidiary companies and, in the process, thousands of employees had been exposed to the programme.
Deciding on a winner is far from easy. 'It can be like judging oranges and apples, as our companies are so different. For the past two years we had to award two second prizes.'