Shopping centre organisation Intu operates a values-based peer nomination recognition scheme for its 2,500 UK-based staff. This celebrates employees who perform over and above their day-to-day job roles in line with the organisation’s three key values: being creative, being bold, and being genuine.
Its Win Your Dream scheme was introduced in 2015 for employees based at the 15 shopping centres around the UK that Intu operationally manages. The recognition programme functions on both a local and national level to provide monthly, quarterly, and annual awards for staff that have been nominated by their peers for living the organisation's values.
The monthly golden envelope award, which contains a thank-you note and a gift voucher to the value of between £25 and £100, is judged by each local centre’s general manager and a senior manager from head office. The best monthly nominations are then put forward to a central reviewing committee, which includes up to eight senior managers, to be judged for the organisation’s quarterly Mini Dream awards. Each quarter’s winner receives a personalised prize to the value of £1,000, for example, a holiday. The four quarterly winners, as well as some monthly wild-card entries, are then put forward for the annual Maxi Dream award, which is again judged by the central reviewing committee. The annual winner receives a prize up to the value of £10,000, for example a luxury Rolex watch.
Since its launch, the organisation has added new categories to the programme to acknowledge employees that have excelled in health and safety situations, or have been particularly innovative in highlighting ways to improve the business.
Linking its recognition programme to the organisation’s values was considered to be important after the Intu brand was re-launched in 2013, says Bernie Kingsley, HR director at Intu.
“We put a big push into launching Intu as a customer-facing brand four-and-a-half years ago,” he explains. “We spent a lot of time in the first year or two training people in […] understanding what the business values were all about, and having done that we have a continuing programme to make sure people understand [the values].
“We feel it’s important to recognise where people have taken the initiative and gone beyond just doing their daily job. We’re asking [employees] to live our values, so we need to find a way of recognising [staff] over and above getting paid to come and do [their] job.”
