OCTOBER 03

Like day and night.

SEEING THE LIGHT

Barbara Ruddy had worked at the Arizona Department of Economic Security for thirty years when we met her. During the course of our conversation, she told us her five- and ten-year service awards had arrived impersonally in the mail. Her fifteen-year award arrived an amazing three years late, because her boss couldn’t be bothered to fill out the paperwork.

But her twenty-year service award was different. Her new boss gathered colleagues. He delved into her personnel file and told the group every job Barbara had held in the department for the last two decades. “Near the end,” said Barbara, “he thanked me for all I had brought to the department. I had tears in my eyes. No one had ever recognized me in front of my peers before.”

Barbara was so moved by this simple presentation, she asked to take over the department’s recognition program so she could teach managers how to make effective service-award presentations that would have an emotional impact on employees and bond them to their organization.