I work for an Engineering, Procurement and Construction Contractor named INELECTRA here in Venezuela. Our business focuses on the Oil Industry. We have at this moment a quality award program for employees, but our President Ing. Antonio Vincentelli has asked our Quality Management Department, to search and look for other sites, in order to compare to what they have as their standards.

Our current program is based on groups of personnel selecting each a department, activity or product / service and trying to identify a related problem or aspect, that they would like it to be improved, using mainly TQM principles and statistical techniques (brainstorm, cause-effect diagram, Paretho, etc.), actually improve it and present it as a paper by each team, in order to qualify for the award. Some of the Company Directors participate in grading and selecting the best 3 papers presented. Awards are then provided to each of the 3 groups, ranked as best, second best and third best, consisting essentially of a copy of the book of the 7 habits of Covey, pens, in our Annual Anniversary Celebration which is Company wide.

I would like to know if you have it or have information or from other sources in USA or abroad, about requisites or basis for handling quality or performance awards at corporate level for employees, such as conditions to participate, what are we looking for competing, how the award is handed over to personnel (privately or in public), types of awards (gifts, trips, incentives, etc.). It could also be based on a person by person basis, based on performance, compromise to business operations, loyalty, ideas, etc.

I would appreciate your reply to this.

Regards,

Anibal Cardenas