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

In addition, each new employee is assigned a mentor who serves as a primary point of contact and helps the new hire get settled into the job. Each mentor receives a checklist of responsibilities and is expected to maintain contact with the protege even after the new employee has become accustomed to the job.

"With this program, you really can feel the excitement when employees start a new job here," says Lori Blackwell, benefits manager for SIGMA. "It has also definitely strengthened the feeling of family among our staff."

SIGMA's program not only has boosted camaraderie, according to the company's HR staff, but also has helped increase HR's visibility and has raised employees' awareness of how the HR department operates. And because HR has improved the orientation sessions, employees get acclimated and enrolled for benefits quickly. As a result, O'Connell says, HR now spends much less time walking employees through procedures and tracking down information to correct or complete HR forms.

"This program really is a tremendous marketing tool for the HR department," says O'Connell. "Through 'The Road to WOW,' we are really marketing our company to job applicants and, once a person is hired, we are then marketing the support and services that the HR department provides to employees."

Moreover, O'Connell says, the program has taught the HR staff quite a bit about the company's business, and her staff has tapped the marketing expertise of SIGMA's employees. "We are a marketing firm, and that has really helped us to understand how this program really needed to be sold both to employees and upper management," she says. "Once everyone understood and bought into what we were doing, then the program really clicked and began to exceed our original expectations."

O'Connell says the HR department has measured the orientation program's success through employee feedback and through HR staff members' informal observations of how new hires react to the program. "Compared to a couple of years ago, before we implemented 'The Road to WOW,' we have definitely seen that people get acclimated to their jobs and fit in much quicker," says O'Connell.

With 152 employees, "the company is small enough now that we can get a good feel on how it's working just through conversations with employees and other informal feedback," O'Connell says. As the company grows, she says, the program's effectiveness might be determined by tracking new hires' billable hours as an indicator of productivity.

Accident Compensation Corp.

A Safer Place to Work

The Human Resource Department for the Accident Compensation Corp. (ACC) in Wellington, New Zealand, received the award in the category for organizations with 501 to 2,500 employees.

When violence erupts in a workplace, the initial reaction is usually: "We never thought it could happen here." On June 24, 1999, that reaction resonated throughout ACC when employee Janet Pike was stabbed to death by a deranged man whom she was helping to file an insurance claim. Pike was conducting a routine interview with the claimant at her desk when he attacked.