No M&S vouchers for CSC staff as awards scrapped to save costs Cash strapped CSC is scrapping the Recognising Excellence (RE) award for its top workers as it looks towards another year of austerity. The RE was based on a token system which awarded successful contenders £25, £50 or as much as £100 - those lucky staffers - which could be traded in for M&S, John Lewis and other store …
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We used to have a Thanks program where you could reward colleagues up to twice a year. The colleague in question got to choose a small gift from an online catalogue. It wasn't the material value of the rewards that counted, but I still remember fondly receiving Thanks awards.
Then they ditched it and replaced it with a 'Send an e-Card to reward your colleague' program. Wasn't even a proper e-card - just an email with Thanks! in the title.
After HR sent the mail saying that Thanks was being discontinued, employee morale took an absolute nosedive. Totally out of proportion to the monetary value of the program - people interpreted it (correctly) as a huge smack in the face and a statement from the company of how much they truly valued the hard work that you did.
I have never sent a Thanks email, nor will I ever. Everybody in my team would see it as a complete insult. If one of my team does a great job, I go down to the liquor store at lunchtime and buy them a bottle of wine - costs $10, and the result is a team that would die for you.
Was tempted to post this anon, but then I realised there's nothing in this post that I wouldn't quite happily say to anybody in company management, face to face, right up to the chairman themselves. One of the most idiotic, counterproductive, shortsighted decisions I've ever seen.
HR are always good at stripping out the heart of anything. What matters in a thank you is that it is personal, truly meant, and that someone took a bit of effort to do something. Colleagues and managers I've worked with who have gone to the trouble of thanking me --and my own line manager -- for what I've done is golden. 'Official' systems of recignition have been introduced and pulled, introduced and pulled, until we wave them by pretty cynically.
If the company is in such dire straits that they need to cut out good-will gestures with trivial financial value, then there is far more to worry about than the actual cutting. As someone else mentioned above, morale will take a nose-dive, which will reduce the overall effectiveness of the workers, and thus the company. One would hope that a company that does this really does see this as a very serious step, and takes a great deal of effort to keep the staff on-side. That doesn't seem to have happened here, so I'd say that management are running the company into the ground for some stupid reason (hopes of more government money on the basis of the NHS contract?), which won't work because the damage will already be done.
Quite simply, if you are company that has made an issue out of recognising and rewarding excellence, you cannot lightly go back on it.
Oh, and HR was mentioned - they would have done better getting rid of anyone claiming to "work" in HR and related "activities". Morale would go up, and they'd save a fortune in wages, efficiency, and worn-out chairs.
that it has come to scraping the barrel to recoup any cost not associated to a project. As an ex CSCer (as most put it) I do feel for ex colleagues. I has onced worked with an individual who had worked all hours and was 'rewarded' with an i-REX reward of the some of £1000. This was obviously in place of any overtime he had induced but he accepted nonetheless and used it to purchase gifts for his family and activities which he felt he got more out of then had he got money in his pay packet (some may feel differently but he was happy).
The whole point of recognition rewards wasn't to just get freebie offers but to increase morale to truly show people that the work put in has not gone unnoticed and that the organisation has gone to some effort to demonstrate that. A blanket email with the words "Well done" may come across as patronising and to be honest hardly going to take a lot of effort as individuals tend to do that for colleagues.
Closing sites, voluntary redundancies, banning non-project related travel expenses and now taking away vouchers hardly shows signs of growth for a company like CSC. The cost cutting will hit a wall (lessons from Carol Bartz) Clients will question the passion and commitment of the company.
Also I would like to know how much money had been pumped into the staff to investigate the options to cut (did they get a thank you email?) and if it was anywhere near to the internal programmes awaiting to go live. So much can be put on to Mike Lawrie but I would also look at the regions such as Liz Bennison to question their strategy. Positive ideas need to come from the board faster than they can say "DEYDOOKAWJAWBS"
Anonymous because I can :)
as an accountant originally I(sorry, I grew up) can confirm 10,000% that no company EVER succeeds in the medium term by cost cutting, it is a one year smoke & mirrors trick
I confidently expect that in 5 - 10 years that the old giffers like me will tell young PFYs about the 'old' companies like SC and HP and how they once were a force in our industry ;)
I once got recognised by a work colleague who put me in for a company recognition award. I got it, and got myself a cordless screwdriver!! Doesn't sound much, but the fact that someone took the time and effort to put me forward, and the fact that the company had this scheme and erwarded staff, has stayed with me for about the last 19 years! I've never forgot it, a small incentive like that goes a loooooooooong way, I donlt even work there now. So, David Wildblood if you're out there somewhere! You're the 'BOM' and thank you :)
p.s. Dave, my hair aint long anymore!
I currently work for CSC in the states; there have not been pay raises for the last four years and for the second time in three years we are all being forced to take a weeks vacation by the end of March (the end of the company's fiscal year). We were informed of this requirement just last month and since many of us only have two weeks vacation it is a pain. At an all hand conference call to announce further restrictions someone asked if the bonuses for managers would also be stopped (she became an instant hero). The manager running the call said that wouldn't be fair since for many of them bonuses were their primary income. I thought the whole idea was that if they did well they should be rewarded and they didn't do well they would suffer. Where is the incentive if they still get big bonuses even if they drive the company into the ground. Morale sucks.
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