Balancing school, an internship, a part-time job, and an obsession dedication to punctuality is tough. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a robot. It requires a great deal of time management and constant priority evaluating. This Wednesday I was awarded the "Ace of Spades" award at work. The award was given to the top eight customer-care performers for 2011. Contrary to the way this has been sounding so far, this post isn't all about me. I wanted to use this as a discussion about employee relations and the way I feel companies should recognize the people who, even at the bottom of the company hierarchy, dedicate themselves to their work. On the surface, this may seem like totally a human resources function, but I think public relations communicators play a critical role in spreading the recognition throughout an organization.
Back to the Ace award, we were taken to this fancy place called the Summit House in Fullerton. We were able to bring a guest and all the team leads and project managers attended as well. The food was amazing (I had an eggplant crepe) and I had the awesome opportunity of sitting next to the operations manager, which is basically the guy that manages all the California teams. A little background on my position: I've been working at the company, Alta Resources, for about 3 1/2 years. The company is really flexible with my busy student schedule and afforded me the opportunity to buy my first car. Now, don't get me wrong there are some days that are insanely challenging, but overall I am very grateful to have found Alta at this stage in life.
For an organization to be successful, I think it needs to have a distinct culture. This culture doesn't need to be super elaborate and globally recognized such as Google's, it simply needs to foster both company and personal achievements in a consistent and specific way. Alta has adopted the Ace Awards program which a great recognition program that is broken into various levels: Ace of hearts, Ace of diamonds, and Ace of Spades. Each comes with its own rewards. I received the Ace of hearts before and it came with a $50 visa gift card. This award came with a catalog and I'm able to choose a gift from there. (I think I'm going to go with the mountain bike!) Overall, communicating effectively the importance of lower-level employees to your whole organization will develop a positive culture. This communication goes beyond just HR. It needs to be implemented throughout the organization and public relations professionals can help each department develop the best strategies to convey the company's culture to everyone.
