Personal Delivery: DHL Empowers Employees
January 10, 2008
DHL creates a culture of individual empowerment through individualized online and spot rewards
By Alex Palmer
Industry: Shipping
Objective: To increase employee initiative; to create a company-wide "recognition culture" that motivates employees and managers to award others who go beyond expectations in performing their jobs.
Results: A combination of training, rewards and conscious tracking of employee recognition have contributed to an over 200-percent increase in recognition incidents at DHL from 2006 to 2007. Reinforcement of the "I'm On It" attitude has increased employee initiative at the company and the frequency that this initiative is recognized.
Giving employees a degree of freedom in how they do their job, and the power to take action even when their supervisor is not there to give the okay, has been shown in numerous academic and industry studies to keep workers more engaged in their work, more productive, and happier. This benefits both employer and employee, improving retention and creating an energetic workplace where personal responsibility, rather than unquestioning compliance, becomes the rule.
Shipping company DHL Express sums up this attitude of individual responsibility as, "I'm On It," which the firm calls its employee recognition program started more than two years ago. This campaign has sought to motivate the company's workforce into becoming self-directed individuals, reinfocing the personal initiative message at meetings and training, and by publicly rewarding models of personal initiative.
 "We continually find ways to identify and to recognize individuals that demonstrate their commitment not just to bringing customer service back into shipping, but the behavioral element that demonstrates 'I'm On It,' " says Tom Snowberger, vice president of human resources for DHL Express USA, based in Plantation, Fla. "Through that motto and that philosophy, we can elevate the stories of individuals that went above and beyond to help support that brand promise."
In 2005, DHL began to rebrand itself as a more customer-focused shipping company, and employees from the top leaders on down had to ask themselves what they were doing to make the experiences of their customers as enjoyable as possible, in order to differentiate the company in a highly competitive market. Particularly in the pickup and delivery functions, the employees would have to be motivated to take a proactive approach to meeting and exceeding customer needs.
So DHL, working with incentive house O.C. Tanner, developed "I'm On It," which spotlights the mutual benefits that eagerness and resourcefulness offers both employers and employees.
"We embed recognition into a lot of our internal communication tools as well as all of our town halls," says Tony Treglia, vice president of talent management. "We want recognition to be seen as part of everyday life."
This message is supported by examples of employees in action. DHL recently published the story of employee Jesse Frank, who expedited a shipment of gift cards for Cold Stone Creamery. Learning that the shipment was particularly important and in need of immediate clearance, Jesse made a number of fast phone calls to the import agent and the client in order to fill in missing information, then pushed the shipment through customs.
A more dramatic example is the story of Operations Agent Sarah Tunison, who, while routinely inspecting a shipment going to Canada, discovered over $9,000 in hundred dollar bills hidden between the pages of a magazine. After she notified her superiors of the questionable shipment, the company brought in the Michigan State Police to investigate. They found that the shipper was a fraud victim, an elderly woman who had been falsely led to believe she'd won a large amount of money and had to send the additional money to claim her prize. Because of Tunison's efforts, the woman's money was returned.
Getting the word out about these episodes of individual initiative not only gives other employees models to learn from, but it gives the workers who are "on it" special recognition. In addition to publicizing their stories, DHL honors motivated workers through an extensive system of rewards designed to maximize motivation.
"The recognition philosophy is all about timeliness," says Snowberger. "It's about sincerity, and it's about recognizing individuals who go above and beyond, not necessarily by saying, 'Here's a check for $10,000.' We're focusing on the meaningful, day-to-day recognition."
Part of these everyday ovations come in the form of DHL's "I'm On It" awards. In keeping with the individual empowerment philosophy, any employee, whether within management or not, can give another employee one of these awards for making an impact through the quality of his or her work, satisfying a customer, or being a good corporate citizen. The employee gets receives a small plaque, and notification is sent to the manager and tracked company-wide.
 There are also bronze-, silver-, and gold- level awards. Each comes with its own level of merchandise—and potentially travel rewards—that employees are able to choose for themselves from a Web site.
All of these awards are monitored in a central database, so that the company leadership can see how frequently they are occurring and the distribution of the recognition among the various departments. This database has tracked an over 200-percent increase in recognition events from 2006 to 2007. Another metric used by DHL is the annual employee survey, which has shown a notable improvement in positive responses about the company's rewards and recognition efforts. Even though employees have a great deal of freedom in awarding their coworkers, the company leadership stays aware of how efforts are going in instilling the culture of recognition throughout the company.
With that in mind, DHL actually trains managers in the art of recognition. In seminars of 50 to 100 people (and sometimes as many as 400), managers are instructed not only on the importance of rewarding good work by employees but in the specific ways in which it should be done for maximum impact.
"E-mail is probably the easiest way to tell somebody thank you, but it's probably also the most insincere way. So we talk about making sure that the recognition is timely, that it's sincere," says Treglia. "We always strive to get the managers to understand that doing it in a way that promotes it in his or her team, publicly, is going to help us support the whole culture."
These interactive training sessions are opportunities for managers to ask for advice on recognizing individuals in specific situations. Leaders go over why these commendations are important in a workplace culture and offer examples of when people were recognized and what worked or did not.
"Afterwards, I've had people come up to me and go, 'You know, Tony, I've always seen recognition as something where I say I'm going to give someone this Starbucks gift card, and that's what I do for everybody. But going through this, I've learned that it's about what's important to them.' It's not a one-way approach to recognition," says Treglia. "You really need to understand what motivates the individual and recognize the individual in a way that's important to them."
Despite its success at implementing a culture of recognition at DHL, the company sees a lot more to be done. "While we've had a significant increase in recognition events, we know we're not where we want to be. We have 20,000 employees in the U.S., and we want to get up to over half of those receiving recognition a year. We're getting close to where we want to be, but we still have some opportunities for us to get better, to reinforce and train people."
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