Aim
“Great People, Great Place” is UCSF’s signature employee well-being program; a series of initiatives aimed at continually making UCSF a better place to work, learn, teach and discover. UCSF’s PRIDE values - professionalism, respect, integrity, diversity and excellence – are central to that mission, and peer recognition is a key ingredient for bringing those values to life. To that end, SOM Tech and the Great People, Great Place team partnered to create an innovative peer recognition program that would effectively engage the entire UCSF community—over 24,000, faculty, staff, students, and trainees—while making recognition easy to give, easy to receive, and highly visible.
Approach
The Great People, Great Place team worked with SOM Tech to empower employees, particularly leadership, to express regular gratitude and support to colleagues via an interactive peer-to-peer tool: recognize.UCSF.edu. The site’s launch was supported with an integrated enterprise-wide internal marketing campaign – Recognize, featuring coordinated physical, digital and public elements.
Partners
Leeane Jensen, Executive Director, Wellbeing Services & Operations, Campus Life Services
Gil Lorenzo, Project Manager, Great People, Great Place Initiative
Susan Pappas, Division Director, UCSF Health Experience
Kelly Anglim, UCSF Health Human Resources
Lisa Cisneros, University Relations
Solutions
SOM Tech developed Recognize using off-the-shelf and readily available technology, and worked with the Great People, Great Place team to refine it through an iterative, agile process that continues today.
Recognize makes peer recognition easy, intuitive and powerful - leveraging enterprise data to connect supervisors with employees and make every moment of excellence visible across every department. Recognize also provides the UCSF community with a single, central access point to existing recognition programs.
After a three month pilot program in early 2017, the team rolled out the site to the full UCSF community in September 2017. A comprehensive campaign targeting all levels of UCSF leadership accompanied the launch, and had an immensely positive ripple effect.
More Information
The team has been meeting regularly since October 2017 to review success metrics such as mention of UCSF Recognize in official communications from senior leadership and regular use of the site.
The long-term goal of Recognize is to have a majority of leaders, managers, and staff across the enterprise reporting more ease and confidence with giving recognition. Data shows steady progress – with more than 21,202 recognitions sent between employees across UCSF.
Today, the UCSF Recognize program brings UCSF’s PRIDE values to the forefront by making peer recognition an easy, accessible, effective part of campus life.
