This Could Only Happen Online! Event Report from the “LFK Value Award” Internal Award Ceremony

At LINE Fukuoka, each year we hold the LFK Value Award, which is our company’s internal awards ceremony, and the most recent ceremony was held just the other day. Today, we’re bringing you a full report of the event, which was full of creativity that can only happen online!

What are the LFK Value Awards?

The LFK Value Award began in 2016. “LINE Fukuoka” standards for evaluation are “Impact”, “Ownership”, and “Next”, and the first letter of each quoted word spells LION, which is the nickname of the awards.

This event is of course to praise the achievements of our members, but it's also an extremely important venue for everyone at LINE Fukuoka to come together and share the "good work" created by each section of the company, and discuss what good work actually is for the current LINE Fukuoka, and where to aim in the future.

If you want to learn more about the history of the LFK Value Awards up to the present day or details about the event, this article is for you!

http://linefukuoka.blog.jp/archives/81662738_plan_and_op_welfare_interview.html

This year, awards where divided into four categories: The “Department” category for all eligible departments, the “Project” and “Semi-permanent employee” categories which employees nominate themselves, and the “Contracted employee” category which is nominated by supervisors.

Those awarded for the “Contracted Employee” category are given the “Young Lion” award, and in all other categories, there are three prizes available – the “Gold Lion”, the “Silver Lion”, and the “Bronze Lion”.

The winners are determined by the department and center heads, as well as the COO, but in the Project and Semi-permanent Employee categories, winners may also be chosen for the “Everyone’s Lion” award which is decided by employee votes. This idea of voting for the project we think created the most WOWs might be a part of LINE Fukuoka’s culture!

This is an email sent from the Event Operations Office to all relevant employees. Employees see a list of the conditions for being nominated, watch nominee presentations, and then decide on their votes.

The first online ceremony! A dedicated Slack channel and our broadcast were full of exciting tricks.

Unlike previous years when the event was held offline, this year's LFK Value Awards were held online. The event operations office got creative to preserve the sense of unity that the event is designed to instill.

Our Creative Department created an original video for the opening ceremony! 

Our event operations office and leaders served as the MC and presenters for the event!

We also created a dedicated Slack channel, so that everyone could enjoy the event together.

We had a total of 127 entries in the Project and Semi-permanent Employee categories. Following judgement of materials and presentations, our winners were decided from 14 finalists.

At the event, our finalists joined the live broadcast, you can see how nervous they were before the winners were announced. Who do you think the winner was...?

Ms. Kato, from the QA Department that takes on quality assurance for our services, took the Gold Lion award for the Semi-permanent Employee category. The title of her project was "Reducing Test Periods by 50% through the Removal of De Facto Standards!" 

Her project was highly evaluated as an independent step towards designing a system that preserves the balance between quality and productivity during the testing period, which is very brief leading up to a project's release.

Ms. Okita, of the Strategic Operation Department that takes on LINE's strategic business operations, was awarded the Gold Lion in the Project category! The title of her project was "The key to increasing sales is "user cultivation!" Creating a loyal customer base that doesn't stop with user acquisition." 

The project was awarded the Gold Lion due to the extremely high amount of value it creates from a customer success perspective. Ms. Okita also took the top prize in the Semi-permanent Employee category last year. This year she made a stunning back to back victory!

Mr. Oyama of the QA Department was awarded the "Everyone's Lion" award in the Semi-permanent Employee/Project category, which is decided by receiving the most employee votes. His initiative was titled "Reimagining how to manage test devices - Redesigning working arrangements to overcome the shock of COVID-19." 

For his project regarding managing devices that are used in QA activities, Mr. Oyama received a lot of comments that he inspired those around him by enjoying the challenges while involving others in his work.

In the new Department category that was established this year, the Strategic Operation Department took the top honors. The title of their project was "Creating a department that optimizes the strengths of the SO Department." 

The SO Department was able to optimize their use of man-hours through the use of operational design methods such as automation, tool creation, and patternization, and was highly evaluated for their project that seeks to create an organization that is at the peak of optimization.

Discussion is the key for judging

At the end of the meeting, our COO Mr. Yusuke Suzuki gave a summary of the event.

"We rank the projects in the end, but sharing opinions during the review process is very important. I want to continue to cultivate a culture within the company of open discussion that lets people be interested in their work, and say things like "this is good" or "this is an issue" frankly. The LFK Value Awards are also a part of that process."

"The LFK Value Awards have been around for five years, and have grown a lot over that period,

in terms of how we show the projects, and how we set the stage. The projects that you're all working on may not see any results in their first or second years, but if you continue into your third, fourth, and fifth years you'll connect with like-minded members, and will start to see results. Please keep at it without giving up."

That was his message to the winners and the company as a whole.

We plan to share the details of Ms. Okita (of the Strategic Operation Department)'s project which took Gold in the Project category at a later date. We hope that you'll take the time to read that post as well!

Extra

A big thanks to the LION Event Operations Office who was in charge of holding the event online for the first time!