Reward & Recognition Program

The Process Improvement Award

PURPOSE: This award is designed to promote improvement of the processes (i.e. how work is accomplished) within a unit, division, and/or the university. The demonstrated impact of process improvement can be unit-wide, divisionwide or university-wide. Submitted materials should reflect the purpose and intent of this award category. Self-nominations are encouraged.

A PROCESS IMPROVEMENT involves a beneficial change in
the policies or procedures or practices used by everyone
who is responsible for doing/achieving a specific task/objective.

ELIGIBILITY: Individuals, teams, work groups or committees who have implemented a process improvement which demonstrated one (1) or more of the following criteria are considered eligible for this award:

1. Either added value to a process or eliminated unnecessary steps from a process.
2. Reduced the cost of a process.
3. Reduced manpower needs of a process.
4. Improved the timeliness, accuracy and/or relevance of a process.
5. Improved the end user’s satisfaction with a process.

AWARD:

• A monentary award based upon the significance of the accomplishment. If it is a group effort, the awarded amount will be divided equally.
• An Engraved Plaque with group names and department.
  

Note: To determine the value of the award, the Recognition Committee will evaluate the benefit to the unit, division, and/or university. The minimum total award is $75.00 and the maximum total award is $1000.00. If a reduction in cost cannot be estimated, or if the improvement is nonmonentary in nature, the minimum amount will be awarded.

As a guideline, if the benefit has an associated cost reduction, then 10% of the estimated value of the first year savings will be awarded to the individual or shared with the group. The nominator must provide an outline of the cost savings.

Example: An F&A employee implements a plan to increase the attractiveness of the university to prospective students to GSU, and therefore, there can be no first year cost savings. In this example, the employee would be awarded $75.00 (less taxes).

ALL CASH AWARDS ARE SUBJECT TO PAYROLL TAXES

The Narrative Must: (Click here for some Writing Tips)

Give a brief statement which tells which process was improved and how.
Describe the improvement made to the process using before and after examples.
Describe the nominee’s involvement in making the improvement.

Answering as many as possible of all applicable questions listed below may help you to write a stronger nomination:

How did removing unnecessary steps or adding steps that added value to the
process make the process better? Describe the benefits reaped by the end user,
department, or university. Explain how this improvement was able to maintain or improve the quality of the process.

What changes in manpower took place? Describe how changes in manpower
improved the process (i.e., less manpower required because of redistributed job responsibilities? Same amount of manpower produced more and/or faster product and/or service?)

How has the timeliness of this process been improved?

How was customer satisfaction improved?

How did the quality of product or service improve?

Was the improvement made because of an existing or urgent problem?

Was the nominee self-motivated to make this process improvement or did the
motivation to make the improvement begin with someone else? If so whom?

List everyone who was impacted by this process change. (i.e., other departments,
students, customers, outside agencies, vendors, etc.)

Click here to submit your Nomination