the gem blog

Last weekend my eldest daughter brought home Barnaby Bear.   Barnaby comes with his own suitcase of clothes and is much beloved of the children of my daughter’s Primary Two class.   He went everywhere with us at the weekend and was lovingly tucked into bed each evening by my enraptured daughter.  He does look very cute (especially when dressed up in his “Sunday Best”) but what is much more important to my daughter is what he represents – recognition for a job well done.  The best in her class each week gets to take home Barnaby Bear.

Recognition is important to everyone, no matter what their age.  And gem does their best to provide our own “Barnaby Bear” recognition. 

Every week gem highlight in our weekly staff newsletter “High Fives” – recognition from managers/peers to staff who have achieved something special or delivered above and beyond the call of duty.   Every month, gem applaud and award our high performers at our monthly management meetings.   And each year we have our gemmys – an award night that gives the Oscars a run for their money, hosted by two of our staff (dressed for the red carpet) who should really be in show-business and with most of the categories voted for by all our staff.   

gem also goes to a lot of effort to recognise and reward good ideas.  A recent restructuring of our BIG Ideas scheme means that we now recognise and reward ideas at multiple stages – bronze, silver, gold and platinum – depending upon how adopted and successful the new idea is within the company. 

And we know that all this recognition is valued by our staff through the responses we receive in our regular employee surveys.  

It’s also nice for the company to receive industry recognition for our efforts – recently we have either won or are finalists in national competitions for Coaching and Training, Innovative Use of Technology, Employer of the Year, Outsourced Contact Centre of the Year, Professional of the Year, Action in the Community and Customer Service Team of the Year.  As an employer and a provider of quality contact centre services we value any industry accolade that we get and know that it re-emphasises to our employees and clients that they made the right choice to work with us. 

I also know that many of our clients run similar schemes.  I recently visited a client site and sitting on one of their desks was the most enormous silver trophy (this impressive display of bling proving that the Celtic Tiger may be down but it’s definitely not out).   Every month the employee of the month gets to display the trophy and every visitor notices and comments.  I was proudly told about their achievements the previous month.  

Barnaby Bear was only with us for the weekend and has now been returned to the class-room where all the pupils can clearly see him and hope that this weekend they too will be considered the “Best in Class”. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 5:22 pm and is filed under gem. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.