Incentive - November 2008 - (Page 54)

CAMERAS AWARDS The Picture of Innovation An employee suggestion program spurs creativity using digital cameras as a reward; and innovative new features keep digital cameras a top award category By Leo Jakobson and Alex Palmer an a picture be worth a thousand ideas? When the leadership at Ottawa-based EION Wireless started actively seeking ways to improve how the company did business, they turned to their staff for ideas. They opened a suggestion box for employees at all levels across their global organization to contribute ways to improve the company. “The idea was to generate as many ideas for the company as possible,” says Richard Kelland, marketing communications manager for Ottawa-based EION. To encourage contributions of new ideas, EION offered merchandise rewards to employees who contributed to the suggestion box. At the end of each month, a winner was drawn from the suggestions and received a reward. In one recent month, a Panasonic Lumix digital camera was the sought-after reward for inventive employees, attracting many suggestions. C “One of the big ideas was using a wiki [a Web site that allows the visitors to add, remove and sometimes edit the content] to better track our internal communications, summarize what went on in meetings and follow up on tech support issues,” says Kelland. He says there have even been suggestions that the company is looking into patenting, which might not be at that stage if the draw of rewards like the Lumix camera hadn’t encouraged employees to actively pursue new ideas. Another idea that took off after being put in the suggestion box was to create a database of all the employees’ photos, to let the staff— who frequently deal with colleagues all over the globe— see the people they talk to. “We’re spread out all over the world…and a lot of us haven’t actually met each other,” says Kelland. “It’s really helped a lot.” One of the reasons that a Lumix camera was such a draw was that the people at Panasonic, like other major digital camera makers, have been devising plenty of innovations themselves. At this point, most people have a digital camera. And yet, cameras remain among the most frequently redeemed merchandise awards. The reason is simple: manufacturers have been making them smaller, more colorful and easier to use, as well as adding new capabilities that range from resolution that matches semi-professional SLR cameras to “smart” scene selection that can tell the difference between a mountain vista and group portrait, adjusting settings accordingly. Some features that were unheard of a year or two ago are now standard on new digital point-and-shoot cameras, like image stabilization, face recognition, and built-in red-eye correction. Unless otherwise noted, these models feature a 2.5-inch to 3.5-inch highresolution view screen, 4x optical zoom and are about one inch thick. Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-TZ50S has 9.1-megapixel resolution, a 10x optical zoom and a 3-inch LCD. Built-in Wi-Fi wireless Internet connectivity combined with a year’s free T-Mobile HotSpot wireless access makes it easy to share (and save) great pictures on the go. Retails for $450 w w w.panasonic.com 54 | Incentive | November 2008 | incentivemag.com http://www.panasonic.com http://www.incentivemag.com

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

Incentive - November 2008 Editor’s Note Headlines Cover Story: Pop, Fizz! Incentive Interview Cracking the Recognition Code Primer Travel News Canada, City Style Potentials Here and Now Cameras: Picture of Innovation The Spirit of Giving Advertiser Index Last Word

Incentive - November 2008

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