OREANDA-NEWS. September 17, 2012. Employees of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) have once again bagged three 'Vishwakarma Rashtriya Puraskars' for the year 2010, among a host of public & private sector companies in the country. With this, the total number of Vishwakarma awards won by BHEL employees has gone up to 114 awards.

The awards were presented by the Hon’ble Minister for Labour & Employment, Sh. Mallikarjun Kharge, at a function in New Delhi.

3 Vishwakarma Rashtriya Puraskars have been shared by 13 employees from BHEL’s Trichy unit, for innovative suggestions leading to cost reduction, higher productivity, safety and quality of products

In addition, 5 'National Safety Awards' have been won by BHEL's Trichy unit and Electroporcelains Division, Bangalore for outstanding achievements in terms of the longest accident free period and lowest accident frequency rate at their works. Significantly, BHEL and its employees have been winning both these prestigious national awards, consistently, since their inception.

People in BHEL have always been its strength and BHEL continues to invest in their learning so as to enable them to develop new ways of providing innovative solutions to customers. A pioneer in Human Resource Development in India, BHEL realises the value of quality human resources and that the development of this critical resource has become imperative, in view of a business environment where globalisation, competition, customer expectations, fast pace of change and new economic policies pose serious challenges.

Aimed at encouraging individuals to take up improvement projects for capability building and for continuous improvement in every sphere of activity, an Improvement Projects Rewards Scheme (IMPRESS) is operational company-wide. The scheme is e-network based and provides weightage for various aspects like relevance to the department, innovation/creativity, meeting targets, institutionalization, deployability and financial impact.

BHEL continually invests in education and training programmes for employees with a view to constantly upgrade their skills and knowledge. The company has several employee productivity enhancement initiatives in place, such as multi-skilling of employees, optimum utilisation of critical machines through three-shift, 24-hour operations and effective redeployment of employees.