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News | Feb. 20, 2019

Shooting Star award recognizes the individual accomplishments of Subsistence employees

By Alexandria Brimage-Gray Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support

Writer and thought leader, Kamil Toume, once said, “The real competitive advantage in any business is one word only – people.” With this in mind, leaders of the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support Subsistence supply chain sought the help of the Culture Improvement Team to develop a new recognition initiative.

 The Shooting Star Award allows employees to nominate fellow team members for going above and beyond the call of duty to support the warfighter and be recognized during Subsistence’s quarterly town hall meeting.

“At one point, there used to be a [DLA Troop Support] Pat on the Back Award where you could nominate a fellow employee,” Kevin Burza, Subsistence CIT member said. “They would have an opportunity to be recognized and presented with a slip of paper which allowed them to pick a prize like duffle bags, umbrellas and other neat stuff with the DLA Troop Support logo on it.”

Early in 2018, the members of the CIT had an idea to bring back an old Troop Support employee recognition program under a new name and on a smaller scale for Subsistence employees.

“We came up with the Shooting Star Award,” Subsistence CIT Chair Anthony Brown said. “The foundation of the Shooting Star is to give employees notoriety and recognition. This is a great opportunity to formally and publically thank them for their work on a project. It does not have to be a supervisor commending you for your efforts. It can be a peer that called you out for doing a consistently good job.”

To date, the supply chain has presented almost 20 employees with the Shooting Star Award.

“At every town hall we have at least one or two awardees,” Brown said. “For every award, the person making the nomination has to provide a justification paragraph explaining why this person should receive the award. The CIT receives the nomination form through a designated CIT team email address. Then three team members review all the nominations and make a determination on who will receive the award.”

Burza added, “Typically, we select all the nominees because the people who receive the award are selected because they were doing something outside of their normal scope of work.”

Brown stated that best part about the award is that recipients have no idea they were nominated until their name is called during the Town Hall meeting. 

“I actually got one for the drone project that I was working on,” CIT member Shannon Collins, said. “I really liked it because it was a surprise and that was cool. It was nice to hear what management thought about the work that I was doing…and it felt good to hear them say ‘she has been doing a good job with this.’”