Published on December 07, 2017
Tata Power Delhi Distribution (Tata Power-DDL) distributes power to North and North-West Delhi. Zones or business units (Bus) that carry out the operations and maintenance work are crucial for the company. 37 zones and BUs fall under five circles with a similar job profile. The Zone-a-thon Award has been introduced as a specific award to acknowledge and appreciate the best zonal teams and motivate them to perform consistently by evaluating them on a common platform.
The need
Tata Power-DDL felt the need to appreciate the hard work of its employees and wanted to introduce an award that acknowledges the best teams. The objective was to evaluate zonal managers and their teams on a common platform, award and recognise their collective performance as this helped build team spirit and created a sense of joy and celebration within the team.
Best Practice Adoption
This award is inspired/adopted from the Zonathon award of Tata Teleservices (TTL) which was shared in their best practice document titled Sales Motivation and Engagement Programmes. The Zonathon is a non-monetary award.
After completion of half a year, the HR would take inputs for the award from corporate operation services (COS). Based on the
cumulative half-yearly performance of zones, both in the Zonal Score Card and BEMI Score Card, COS will provide the name of one best zone from each circle to HR. There is an 80% weightage of the Zonal Score card and 20% weightage of the BEMI Score card.
Accordingly, five zonal teams, one team from each circle will be declared as the winner of the half-yearly award. A total of 10 zonal teams will be awarded in a financial year. At the end of the financial year, COS will provide the name of the Best Performing Zonal Team and the Best Performing BU for the financial year based on the cumulative annual performance, both in the Zonal Score Card and BEMI Score Card to HR. Accordingly, one zonal team and one BU will be declared as winners of the annual award. As part of the half-yearly award, the best zonal team of each circle along with the District Manager will be awarded a lunch with the respective circle head. As part of the annual award two teams, one zonal team and one BU team will be awarded a lunch with Chief (Operations & Safety) and each team shall receive a rolling trophy in the Annual R&R Ceremony.
Some ideas or features were taken from the source practice and tweaked for the company. The similarities between both awards is that the award is for zones, is a non-monetary award and dining with CXOs/Functional Heads form a core part of the award.
Benefits
Zonal Managers with their teams and District Managers are the beneficiaries of this practice. The benefits that are expected to be delivered is an opportunity for zonal teams to celebrate their achievements with their respective Chiefs and Heads of the functions over lunch, organised by the HR department.
Apart from celebrations this initiative will create a deeper bonding among team members, leadership and will further strengthen a sense of belonging with the organisation. The teams will also get the opportunity to closely interact and learn from the wisdom of their seniors helping them in their personal and professional growth.
The response to this new initiative/practice has been overwhelming during the various employee interaction forums such as Voice of Employee and focused group discussions (FGTs).