Reflecting the wide world of HR: a toy maker, a marketing firm and a New Zealand government agency receive this year's HR Magazine Innovative Practice Awards - Competitive Practices - human resource program awards announcements

HR Magazine, July, 2002 by Bill Leonard

Judges who reviewed the entries for HR Magazine's 2002 Innovative Practice Awards saw proof that creative HR programs are truly global. This year's three winning HR departments include one in New Zealand, the first outside the United States to win this award.

Awards for the three winning HR departments are presented each year at the Annual Conference and Exposition of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). The 54th annual conference was held in late June in Philadelphia.

"The quality of entries this year was again impressive. While the entries were spread across many HR functional areas, the majority--and not surprisingly--were in the performance management and development areas," says James W. Gray, SPHR, one of three judges for the awards and vice president of human resources for Asten Johnson Inc., of Charleston, S.C., a major supplier to the paper-manufacturing industry.

All of the judges found it difficult to narrow the field of 43 entries to just three winners. In the end, the judges selected HR departments that marketed themselves well and provided strong evidence that their programs added value to their organizations.

"In my mind it was their ability to fully explain what they were doing, the ability to tie their program to their company and the ability to quantify their results in some sort of financial or numerical terms," says contest judge Donald M. Herrmann, SPHR, an HR management consultant in Dayton, Ohio. The winners "clearly demonstrate how individual organizations can improve and enhance the value of their human capital."

Debby Ogan, PHR, who also served as a judge and is senior vice president of human resources for Sterling Savings Bank in Spokane, Wash., reviewed the entries from the perspective of a CEO. "I asked myself constantly: 'What value does this program add to the organization and are they really showing me how it adds value?'"

Most entries had measures to show how they enhanced or helped the HR department, Ogan says, but many lacked tools to demonstrate their benefit to the organization as a whole. While the three winners "I also thought the entries were good because it's very crucial for HR to know how to market and sell itself within its own organization."

All three judges found it ironic that the best entry high-lighting a workplace security program was not a U.S. company's response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks but a program in New Zealand developed in the aftermath of deadly workplace violence. The program captured the award for organizations with 501 to 2,500 employees.

The award winner in the category of organizations with up to 500 employees was the Human Resource Department at SIGMA Marketing Group in Rochester, N.Y. For organizations with more than 2,500 employees, the award went to the Human Resource Department for toy manufacturer Hasbro Inc. in Pawtucket, R.I.

SIGMA Marketing Group

A Welcome Change

The Human Resource Department at SIGMA Marketing Group in Rochester, N.Y., received the award in the category for organizations with up to 500 employees.

The winning program grew out of a question that SIGMA Marketing's HR staff could not resolve to its own satisfaction: Why do employers generally throw parties for departing employees but rarely, if ever, for new hires?

The HR department developed a new-hire orientation program called "The Road to WOW." The name was chosen to fit with SIGMA's internal recognition program, WOW (for "Weally" Outstanding Work).

"We have a great work environment here, and one that we feel is very unique," says Susan O'Connell, director of human resources for SIGMA Marketing. "So we wanted to create a program that would help us to maintain that environment and to keep any kind of office politics at bay as the company gets bigger."

The first step in the process, O'Connell says, is to make sure the right people are hired for jobs. The next step--even more crucial--is to ensure that new hires get a good start at SIGMA. "Our goal is to get the new hires excited about working here," she says. "We really strive to keep the process up-tempo and make the experience of starting a new job fun and exciting. Whenever you start a new job, it is typically a stressful time, and we do our best to make all our new hires feel welcome and help them adjust to their new workplace."

It would be virtually impossible not to notice when a new employee starts work at SIGMA. HR sends an all-staff e-mail announcing the new hire and then throws a welcoming party at the new employee's workstation or office--complete with balloons and bagels. "Food is a great incentive for people to get together and talk," O'Connell says. "So we will put a basket of bagels or muffins at the new employee's desk and invite the rest of the staff to visit and have breakfast."

Each new hire also receives a "Traveler's Road Book" of information about the company, including an organizational chart and the names and numbers of people to call for help. The new hire is asked to complete a short biography that includes some offbeat and fun facts. The bios are posted on a bulletin board--called "Fellow Travelers on the Road to WOW."