Kaizen Reporting

Kaizen Reporting uses a novel approach to recognise staff going above and beyond and to boost morale.

“Here at Kaizen we didn’t want a traditional “employee of the month” scheme, but still wanted to recognise our employees’ greatness. So instead we have the “Jar of Awesomeness”.

It all started with an idea that our CEO – Dario Crispini – came across in a Tim Ferris podcast. Originally, names would be entered into a glass jar anonymously, for doing something ‘awesome’. The “Jar of Awesomeness” would then be taken out at the following staff social and all the names revealed. This was when Kaizen was just a team of nine people and the CEO’s daughters had decorated the glass jar.

Since then, the decorated jar has become symbolic, sitting on our office windowsill, but the “Jar of Awesomeness” has grown into a peer-to-peer nominations system. Employees are encouraged to nominate a colleague who has gone above and beyond in demonstrating one or more of Kaizen’s core values: innovation; collaboration; honesty; adaptability; and ‘no egos, no jerks’. It’s all about recognising when a colleague has made a difference to the nominator or other colleagues.

We don’t like hierarchy or bureaucracy; it’s not a laborious form or questionnaire-driven process to nominate employees. Team members just email their nomination to the office manager. There is no overall judgement or input from management; whoever is nominated gets that win and the recognition for whatever it is they have done to deserve the shout-out. We are all on a level playing field; even the CEO is able to nominate and be nominated.

The winners are announced during the staff meeting and a presentation, listing all the winners, what value(s) they have demonstrated and who nominated them, is delivered. The nominator is also given the opportunity to explain why they nominated that person. The winners receive a £25 Amazon voucher; a small token reward to make it all about the recognition from the people they work most closely with.

We often find that when an employee has been truly ‘awesome’, they are usually nominated by more than one colleague for their efforts. In the past year we have grown from 15 to 28 employees. In that same year we’ve had 27 wins from 17 winners and 33 separate nominations from 16 nominators. We’ve found our ‘Jar of Awesomeness’ integral to our employee engagement – giving a boost to morale in the company, while helping to promote the core values we operate by.

Kaizen Reporting are regulatory reporting experts on a mission to improve the quality of reporting in the financial services industry. This City-based SME combines regulatory expertise with data science to develop market-leading data testing services that provide clients with full visibility of their reporting quality.”