No one questions the importance of employee engagement. It’s a big priority for business leaders and communicators for good reason; a 1% productivity gain from having employees engaged around company goals can lead to an additional $1 billion in revenue.
We work on a range of activities specifically focused on supporting employee engagement and alignment with business priorities – mobilizing employee around company goals, enabling manager-employee dialogue, and supporting peer-to-peer learning – and the stakes can feel very high. But internal communications isn’t always so serious. Sometimes we need get creative to help employees celebrate and remember what makes them proud of their company and coworkers.
A recent question in CEC’s Employee Communications discussion forum asked for ideas for driving employee pride around the globe. We’ve talked about how to create messages that connect emotionally with employees before, but in this case it sounds like actions speak louder than words.
Here are our favorite ideas from your peers in the Employee Communications Forum:
- Create a corporate lip dub: This “definitely won’t be a traditional, a-bit-boring type of pride campaign.” –Senior Executive, Fortune 500
- Crowd source inspiration: “We have found that while you can influence pride, you can’t create it; the best way to drive pride and engagement is to tap into your company team members. They have great stories, real moments of inspiration and pride, and are usually more than willing to share.” –Corporate Communications Manager, Aerospace/Defense
- Host themed celebrations: “When we opened a milestone location in France, we asked people to celebrate with French pastries…(The) key to the event was to take photos. We have many small offices of 1-15 people around the world and everyone participated.” –Corporate Communications Manager, Fortune 500
- Make sharing easy: “Our company intranet offers several weekly features for team members around the world to contribute stories and photos, recognize other team members for lending a helping hand, talk about their volunteer work, and answer Q & As about themselves and their communities. –Corporate Communications Manager, Aerospace/Defense
- Pull out all the stops: “We go big when we celebrate company achievements, with cake, banners, fireworks on our intranet, and leadership recognition that is delivered to all areas of the company.” –Corporate Communications Manager
What have you done to get employees in the mood to celebrate? Video contests, scavenger hunts, Hunger Games themed competition — we’d love to hear about it in the comments!
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