1. SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE
The Problem
In a time of tight budgets and staff reductions ‘Do More with Less’ is the
prevailing mantra to drive an increase in productivity.
Unfortunately, it causes disengagement by staff, stifles innovation and hardly
presents the DELWP as ‘an employer of choice’.
The Solution
There is a way to drive staff productivity and engagement, and provide
opportunities for process improvement. Staff must be given the tools, opportunity
and encouragement to take ownership for staff engagement. Therefore, empower
local management and staff with a system that is easy, personal, local and
timely.
‘Shiny Happy People’ - because happy people are productive and engaged.
The What (Five Ideas)
The Big Red Toolkit - Think back to that manager who got the best out of you.
Remember how they took an interest in you, nurtured your talent and rewarded
your successes. The Big Red Toolkit, a commercially available product, is a
manager’s toolkit with templates and tips to facilitate that kind of management
excellence.
Because
• Every manager should understand, develop and reward their staff.
Recognition Cards - Existing reward & recognition systems are great for
recognising milestone achievements such as years of service or a large project
delivered on time and budget. But what about the small win, the smart idea, the
exemplary customer service that demonstrate our values on a daily basis? How
do we acknowledge those? How about a postcard designed to make it easy for
anyone, not just managers, to recognise achievement.
Because
• Taking the time to personally acknowledge good work has a lasting
impact.
3-Minute Win - And don’t wait for someone else to reward you. Do it yourself
every day. At the end of each day, take 3 minutes to reflect on, and record, at
least one positive experience from that day.
Because
• Small successes motivate and
• It helps identify winning patterns.

2. Stakeholder Shadowing - How can you know the higher purpose you serve, if
you don’t know the people you serve. So, spend half a day with your
stakeholders. Observe & Understand why your work is important to them,
build that all-important context for your work.
Because
• Understanding leads to insight which leads to process improvement.
Make Your Idea Happen - Allow staff to negotiate, with their manager, a
small increment of time to develop an idea as a training opportunity (in their
performance plan). Typically, 1-2 hours per week.
Simply ask the person: ‘Why?’ and ‘What is the first step?’.
Because it’s a training opportunity, staff experiment, learn what works and fail
forward in a safe environment. And, promising ideas can be scaled.
Because
• The time commitment shows that our company values ideas.
• It encourages all staff to consider ideas and experiment, knowing that it
can be approved at the local level.
Why These Ideas Work
‘The Big Red Toolkit’ promotes consistency in management and enables
identification, development and recognition of individual strengths.
‘Recognition Cards’ provide for peer feedback and acknowledgement.
‘3-Minute Win’ builds personal confidence through self-acknowledgement of
positive steps made.
‘Stakeholder Shadowing’ builds insight.
All these coalesce to inform ‘Make Your Idea Happen’, which provides a safe and
cost-effective environment for experimentation and innovation.
Together they build a more engaged, resilient and optimistic workforce through
more timely, meaningful recognition of effort and achievement, and the freedom
to innovate. They empower people to think for themselves, to seek patterns and
to synthesise new ideas in a culture that is accepting of their insights.
The Risks
The risks are minimal as:
• The ideas are low cost or no cost.
• Evidence supports the effectiveness of the ideas.
• The ideas can be adopted at the team level, which encourages piloting and
improving the ideas. Larger units can implement the ideas as they develop
a level of comfort with them, having observed the impact on teams that
have already adopted them.