Incentive - March 2008 - (Page 35)

contribution to the company overall, and at the same time develop skills that may pertain to other areas of the business. Depending on the scope and success of their ideas, employees are eligible to win grade, department, plant and presidential awards. One of the perks of these awards is face time with upper management: Anyone who wins a plant award can tour the plant with the plant manager and showcase his idea in action. Similar events for other award levels involve department managers or senior company executives. Participants also receive points for each award level, and these can be combined with other recognition points for benchmark awards. At 300 points, associates receive a trophy; at 2,500 points, they can choose to take home a Honda Civic or a VTX motorcycle. Those who accumulate 5,000 points are awarded either a Honda Accord or a Goldwing motorcycle as well as two round-trip airline tickets, two weeks of vacation and four weeks’ base pay. Honda of America’s suggestion program has been around since 1985, though the company has made many improvements to it during that time. The next iteration will be to create a fully electronic version that employees can access from plant floors. With the current program, Bradley says he sees around 2,500 submissions a year from the approximately 10,000 eligible employees, with a 68 percent implementation rate. “It’s not about getting one hundred percent participation,” he says. “We want quality participation.” The greatest benefit of rewarding good ideas, as he sees it, is that it shows employees how doing what they do better can impact other aspects of the business: “These are the associates that are going to be our next leaders,” says Bradley. “Our programs prepare their knowledge level for that. They need to understand that their role is not just coming in and hanging a transmission every day. It’s understanding how what [they] do is affecting the bottom line.” Good Idea: Three Honda of America associates—Anthony Blamer, John Ayer and Steven Augustein—teamed up to find a solution to a design problem in the cars they were building: water leaks at the beginning and end of window seals. By reconfiguring the sealer application tip, they reduced the leaks by 85 percent, and by 100 percent at the dealer. Their creative thinking garnered them the Overall Idea of the Year award for 2006 from the Employee Involvement Association. http://harrahstahoe.com http://harveystahoe.com http://harrahstahoe.com http://harveystahoe.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Incentive - March 2008

Incentive - March 2008 Contents Editor’s Note: Delivering on Diversity In The News Cover Story: Leveraging Diversity in the Workplace Incentive Interview: Paul Levesque on Why Awards Fail Case Study: AEIS’ Max!-imum Incentive Program Mine Employees’ Creativity with Innovation Incentives Incentive Must-Reads The Third Annual Gift Card Roundtable My Turn: Motivation or Bribery? Everybody Get Together In Her Shoes: Why Bosses Should Be Flexible Incentive Primer: Passport Problem-Solving potentials Here and Now Is CES Electronics Heaven? China and Crystal: More Than a Pretty Face Travel News Florida: What’s New on the Beach? Smooth Sailing for Incentive Cruising Come To Hawaii And Take It Fast Last Word: But Enough About You

Incentive - March 2008

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