One year, 190,000 awards: How BP's recognition program became “a real source of pride” for its employees

In 2023, BP PLC gave out 190,000 awards across 43,000 in 58 countries. Its global recognition program is modern, global, and a source of pride for its employees and people team alike.

But according to Ashok Pillai, Global Head of Remuneration and member of BP PLC’s People and Culture Leadership team, it wasn’t always that way. As BP began its journey from an integrated oil company to an integrated energy supplier, its people team began a journey to move away from a fragmented recognition system to a consolidated, modern, and global approach.

Here’s how Pillai and his peers turned BP’s recognition program into one of its greatest cultural strengths.

Ashok Pillai

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Global Head of Remuneration

How BP’s recognition program became “a real source of pride”

Recognition programs are fundamental drivers of engagement, retention, inclusion, high performance, and happiness. They’re also famously tricky to get right, particularly for global employers with complex organisational structures. Expectation often fails to live up to reality.

This, admits Pillai, who advises leadership on all matters relating to performance and reward, was true at BP, where recognition has always been crucial to its culture. “It’s central to ensuring that our people feel valued,” he states. “It helps reward the achievements that drive our business forward. That said, previously we had a fragmented way of recognising these achievements.”

Recognition at BP was done differently across multiple counties, with no central architecture to determine what was recognised and how it should be rewarded. Such inconsistency can lead to employees, teams, and divisions being overlooked and underappreciated, compromising the benefits detailed above. Rewards were also solely cash-based, another common shortcoming of many recognition schemes.

Over the past six years, BP has progressed to a more consolidated and modernised global approach. “We tie recognition to our values and behaviours, complementing the existing cash awards already established,” explains Pillai. In addition to milestones in safety and compliance, BP also acknowledges and celebrates day-to-day successes such as accountability and prioritising the team.