Large Financial Institution: Inclusive Employee Recognition

Situation

Although recognizing great work was always a part of the culture at this financial institution, they found that their previous program wasn’t stretching across all supporting functions. The program only focused on recognizing customer-facing colleagues and didn’t recognize internal colleagues, such as HR, finance, and all the other important supporting roles.

Solution

This problem caused the Recognition Lead to look into possible solutions that would make everyone throughout the organization feel valued and appreciated. That’s when she decided to implement a program that celebrated the great work of each employee by celebrating their career anniversary.

By teaming up with O.C. Tanner they changed their program from celebrating an employee’s 25th year anniversary with the company to celebrating employees starting on their third career anniversary. The program continues to celebrate an employee every 5, 10, 25, 30, 35, and 40 years by giving them a personalized Yearbook™.

“We wanted something that was personal to each individual. Something that would make them feel valued. The Yearbooks that O.C. Tanner provided were just absolutely the right thing for us.”
—Recognition Lead

The introduction of the Yearbook, which includes personalized congratulations, photos, and messages from leaders and peers, is a key addition to the new culture of appreciation and has been embraced across the organization. Yearbook makes it simple and easy for the organization to celebrate each service anniversary with year-specific messaging, notes, and photos. Within the first six months, a phenomenal 3,700 comments and 1,100 photos were added to over 600 yearbooks.

Along with a personalized Yearbook, the organization also implemented a personalized pin that sports their logo and the amount of time each employee has been with the institution.

“People wear the pins proudly. Especially in the branches. When a customer sees how long someone has been with the company it builds instant trust. The branch colleagues really love them.”
— Recognition Lead

Overall, by implementing a genuine way to not only recognize everyone at the organization for their great work, but for just being them, the financial institution created a culture of inclusiveness, trust, and overall appreciation.

“It really does make you proud to see what happens day to day and have the opportunity to share that in the Yearbooks. It truly is a rich part of the culture. As for a return on investment, it's priceless. It doesn't cost a huge amount to do something like this and the benefits you see day to day, and how people respond to the feedback they get, the thanks they get, it's just fantastic.”
—CEO

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Outcomes are everything
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