Innovation@Follett is a collaborative idea site that joins a variety of other social updates to an intranet that was introduced in 1999, but had deteriorated into little more than a repository for documents. The relaunched intranet features videos, visuals, two-way dialogue and interactivity. As a result, Innovation@Follett has earned first place in the “Social Intranet” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards.

Follett, an education-focused organization, launched Innovation@Follett as a way for employees to contribute ideas that others can upvote (Reddit style), comment on and share. Part of the motivation for launching the channel came from employee feedback that highlighted the importance of giving employees a voice. 

Once the innovation portal was launched, employees began sharing their ideas. One idea was such a no-brainer that it was implemented immediately. Another resurfaced a years-old idea that had been shelved due to lack of support but was implemented when it became the single most upvoted idea on the portal. 

Altogether, 460 ideas were submitted in the months following launch; hundreds of comments and thousands of votes bolstered those ideas. At Follett, the innovation portal is allowing employees to demonstrate what they can bring to the organization beyond the day-to-day job. Innovation@Follett is a shining example of what an intranet can do when an organization chooses to listen to employees as much as it speaks to them.

Congratulations to team members Tom Kline, Paul Sevilla, Carol Wood, Ericka Lawrence, Chad Addie, Ron Inawat and Haleigh Stern. 

There were many reasons why an intranet refresh was a good idea for Make-A-Wish®, but even though the existing intranet was woefully inadequate, resistance was anticipated. The success of Make-A-Wish at overcoming the challenges has earned it first place in the “Intranet/Value to Employees” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards.

Familiarity with the old site was one issue. The organization’s chapter structure—with large, medium, and small chapters around the country—meant that each chapter would have to adopt the new intranet. Another big issue was that the updated intranet would encourage knowledge sharing in a culture in which silos and hesitation to trust others’ expertise tended to keep employees from working together to their mutual benefit. Driving employees to embrace the new intranet would require demonstrating its value at all levels. 

The team launched a change management initiative that included a cross-functional intranet advisory team to ensure the needs and interests of employees from across the organization would be considered. The team was consulted before any changes were implemented. 

As for those subject matter experts, they were entrusted with the autonomy to develop and manage their own content on the intranet – a responsibility that delivered reputation benefits to incentivize sharing their knowledge and expertise.

The team also ensured staff members were kept up to date through the development process, with senior leadership getting detailed monthly updates and frontline staff learning quarterly about progress. The idea was to ensure nobody was caught by surprise when the DailyWISH launched. 

Internal marketing helped build enthusiasm as the launch got closer, leading ultimately to more than half of employees visiting the site daily, many of them interacting and engaging rather than just consuming content. DailyWISH achieved a number of other noteworthy productivity and efficiency goals.

Congrats to Make-A-Wish staff members Josh DeBerge and Jamie Sandys.  

The line between internal and external communication is getting blurrier all the time. While some communications are decidedly focused on employees only, others appeal to broader audiences. That’s the case with the “Life at AT&T” podcast series—the winner in the “Article Series” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards.

The podcast, which celebrates employees, fulfills several internal communication goals: It provides recognition to employees, it educates employees about the work being done by their colleagues, it introduces employees to people they probably didn’t know, and it reinforces a culture of bottom-up communication. “Life at AT&T” also serves the organization’s employer branding goals by communicating with job seekers about what life is like in various positions throughout the company. 

Host Doug Magdtich job shadows an employee for an episode, not only conducting a traditional interview but also hooking featured employees to a microphone to capture them doing their jobs. For a podcast of this nature to achieve 2,500 downloads per episode after only eight episodes is truly laudable.

We congratulate the AT&T communications team for producing an outstanding podcast. 

In 2011, InnovAge—a provider of health care for the elderly—adopted its new name based of the concept of “innovating aging.” A brand campaign in 2015 sought to reintroduce the organization to the public. As the time rolled around to produce an annual report, InnovAge decided to move beyond the conventional printed report directed at external audiences to one aimed at employees. The report has won InnovAge first place in the “Annual Report” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards.

With more change in the works (including the transition from being a nonprofit to a for-profit company), the team opted to use the annual report primarily as a means of communicating with employees about the year’s innovations and successes, and also about the organization’s future. Using a storytelling approach designed to connect audiences to the brand in a more personal way, the report featured coverage of each of the organization’s business lines, helping employees grasp the part they played in the narrative and how the various businesses connected to achieve big-picture business goals. 

The team also decided to make repurposing the annual report easier, with various sections able to serve as standalone communication; parts of the report are shared independently in the organization’s internal email newsletter. By creating an attractive digital version of the report, InnovAge was also able to ensure online audiences had access to it, expanding the reach well beyond the limited list of recipients of the print version. 

For reimagining what an annual report can be, kudos to Christina Pope, Elizabeth Moroney and Robin Doerr.
 

Ameren offers its employees a rebate when they purchase a plug-in electric vehicle as part of the natural gas utility’s overall commitment to sustainability. To remind employees that the rebate is available, communicators decided to tell a real story about a real employee making the decision to buy an electric car. That story has won Ameren first place in the “Feature Article (Print)” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards. 

The employee was Chris Chamoun. The article calculated her potential savings ($12,850) from switching from a gasoline-powered car to electric, and included a testimonial from another Ameren employee whose experience with electric cars has been positive. Photos include a side-by-side comparison of a gasoline and electric car being fueled, an infographic detailing the savings possible from electric car ownership, and a photo of Chamoun herself. 

The article, as part of a broader campaign to raise awareness of the employee rebate ($2,500 for purchasing an electric car and $1,500 for leasing one), has led 20 of Chamoun’s co-workers to take the plunge themselves. 

For an effective and engaging storytelling technique and leveraging the power of an infographic, kudos to writer Evan Asher, editor Keith Anderson and creative director Jill Fonville. 

George Robey had fallen on hard times. Mistakes and bad judgment in his youth had led him to life on the streets. But Robey’s tale is one of redemption and determination, as described in an article in AT&T’s intranet magazine AT&T Insider—an article that’s taken first place in the “Best Feature Article (Digital)” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards.

As explained in the piece, “George had scrounged a few coins together and had a little gas in the truck. He was driving along Highway 355 in Gaithersburg when he saw a bright orange sign that just seemed to call out to him. ‘I had long hair, scruffy beard—looking as rough as you could possibly imagine,’ George says. But he walked into that AT&T store in Gaithersburg Square, asked to speak to the manager, and uttered the three words that would change his life. ‘Are you hiring?’” 

The article recounts how hiring manager Yassir Querishe wound up impressed by Robey’s commitment. Eight years later, Robey still works in the store—he is now store manager after stints as assistant store manager and national account executive. Other parts of his life have turned around as well. 

Robey’s inspiring story is told with emotion and pride in AT&T Insider. It resonated with employees, earning 1,500 likes and 220 comments on the intranet. The story was also made shareable among the organization’s Social Circle, an employee engagement program through which AT&T employees share stories in their own social media channels. In just one week, external sharing resulted in 365 engagements and a reach of over 100,000. 

Congratulations to Matt Lawson for writing a compelling and motivational article. 

Employees are engaged in their organization when they feel they’re part of a community where people care about and help each others. That’s exactly what happened when a customer services technician at AT&T made a liver donation to save the life of his manager. The story of the donation has earned AT&T first place in the “Interview or Profile (Electronic)” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards.

Brian Burkett had been diagnosed with cirrhosis; a liver transplant was his final option for survival. None of his family members were a match, but a member of his staff, Mike Snyder, joined the transplant list and found he was a match. Deciding to go forward with the donation, Snyder went through a laborious process to meet the health criteria for the surgery—a process he willingly undertook to help his boss. 

The article prepared for the company’s intranet, AT&T Insider, was undertaken while both employees were on medical leave waiting to return to work. In addition to a heartfelt story that heightened the sense of community among AT&T’s employees, photos from the hospital added a dimension of reality to the piece, which wound up being the most viewed “employee hero” story of the year, viewed 23,284 times by employees. 

The story earned 635 likes and 85 comments.  Among the comments were many from other employees, both organ donors and recipients; other employees were inspired to register as donors. 

But the story didn’t end there. By sharing it externally through employee ambassadors, another 24,000 people saw the story. It was also posted to the organization’s online newsroom, leading to coverage on ABC News, in People magazine, and on the TODAY Show. 

Congratulations to writer Lauren Garner for an inspiring story. 

The impetus for transforming a print employee magazine to an online publication came when new CEO Mark Fields took the reins of Ford Motor Company. The online publication needed to reflect Field’s vision for innovation and convey his goals of growing the car manufacturer by introducing more new vehicle designs in a single year than ever before. The success of the effort has earned Ford first place in the “Electronic Magazine” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards.

Fields was intent on finding new ways to tell the Ford story. After reviewing Fields’ ambitious, forward-looking agenda, the communications team determined that the time had come to transform the internal print magazine, which had been around since the 1920s, into an online publication that would be accessible to employees anywhere, any time. 

The team wanted a publication that would encourage dialogue among employees and appeal to a diverse workforce that included retirees, dealers, unionized hourly workers, salaried employees and the full spectrum of demographics. The @Ford digital magazine meets all the criteria, transcending internal boundaries and sharing stories with interested audiences. 

From video on the front cover and photo galleries throughout to interactive design, @Ford shares stories that reinforce key messages while highlighting the work of employees from across Ford’s vast, global operations. Employees are able to share individual stories in their social networks, making @Ford an advocacy tool as well. 

For a single issue of the quarterly magazine, @Ford achieved nearly 8,500 “read more” clicks and over 16,000 video plays, among other admirable metrics. 

Congratulations to Ray Day, Susan Krusel, Sara Tatchio, Jenn Corney and Andrew Kidd for their work. 

Most of ARUP Laboratories’ employees don’t sit at computers where they can peruse content on an intranet. A print magazine turned out to be the best way to reach those employees, and the resulting publication has taken first place in the “Print Magazine” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards.

Employees at ARUP, a medical laboratory testing organization, know their jobs well, but communicators wanted to ensure they understood and supported the vital role the organization plays in patient diagnosis and treatment. Between 70 and 80 percent of healthcare decisions are made based on the results of the kinds of tests ARUP’s employees conduct every day. 

The print magazine, Magnify, allows employees to see the number of successes and innovations emerging from the various individual labs within ARUP. The magazine humanizes the organization as well, talking not just about the medical technology it employs but the people behind the science. 

Magnify also makes complex science accessible for employees who don’t work in scientific roles. In addition to serving as an internal communication vehicle, Magnify has also become a tool for the organization’s sales team. 

The execution of the publication is a clear match to the goals: It is filled with human stories and organizational achievements in a clean, engaging package with modern design. 

Internal feedback found that 87 percent of employees see Magnify as highly valuable. Other metrics also demonstrate that the publication is achieving its goals. 

Congratulations to Cynthia Holden, Peta Owens-Liston, Deanna Lemke, Daniela Liese, Daria Cassity and Rose Cox. 

Connect with HealthSouth, an eight-year-old publication for employees of HealthSouth Corp., had been delivered three times annually to the homes of 28,000 employees across the country (including Puerto Rico). The effectiveness of Connect led the organization’s communicators to take the publication to a new stage. In so doing, they won first place for “Most Improved Design (Print)” in Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards.

Two goals were increasing the publication schedule from three times a year to quarterly and expanding the size from 16 pages to 36. Consistency was a key objective of the redesign, with each issue providing a familiar path: a full-page table of contents to make navigation easy, recurring departments with shorter stories at the front of the magazine, and longer in-depth feature stories following the regular sections. 

The redesign was about more than just establishing a consistent format with each issue, though. Everything was on the table, from the fonts employed to a greater use of photography. This represented a challenge given the geographic spread of the organization, a challenge that was met with the assistance of employees and the occasional freelance photographer. The feature stories employ multiple elements, including sidebars, charts and timelines. 

Congratulations to editor Laura McAlister for a most impressive redesign.  

All you have to do is look at the New York Power Authority’s old weekly FYI—a bare-bones, no-frills email that looks like virtually any other email bulletin you’ve ever seen—and then look at the new FYI to see why it’s the winner in the “Most Improved Design (Electronic)” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards. It’s compelling, vibrant, visual, and multimedia. 

Staff members evaluated a number of email solutions providers before selecting  Newsweaver, through a competitive bidding process, to help with the bulletin’s metamorphosis. FYI now features a magazine-style image at the top, striking images throughout, video, links to related information, and clear navigation to sections (News, People and Milestones; Events; Policies and Procedures; HR; and Training). 

Open rates among employees underscore the success of the new design—20 percent of those who open the newsletter click through at least one link to get deeper levels of information. Metrics reveal that about a third of employees are reading the newsletter on a mobile device, testament to its adaptability across multiple viewing platforms. Readership was aided by an awareness campaign to alert employees to the newsletter’s upgrade. 

For a thorough and comprehensive redesign, congratulations to the team of Charles Dianis, Connie Cullen, Alice Kenny, Scott Greenlee and Harrison Getz.

Most newsletters deliver routine messages to make sure employees are up to date. But Ball Corporation’s special edition of its newsletter, Ball Line, was created to welcome some 4,000 new employees to the organization after Ball acquired its competitor, Rexam PLC. The special edition was so effective that it’s won first place in the “Newsletter (Print)” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards. 

The newsletter was part of an effort to ensure Rexam employees felt welcome as they became part of the Ball family while articulating the organization’s narrative—who they are, where they’re going (especially now that Rexam had joined the fold), and what was expected of them. 

The special edition introduced the incoming employees to Ball’s culture and outlined the organization’s key initiatives. To ensure the newsletter was relevant to every Rexam employee, it was delivered in print as a “keeper” publication that would reach the majority of employees who worked in manufacturing jobs and didn’t have access to a work computer. It was produced in each of the 23 languages Rexam’s global population of workers spoke. 

The special edition was both readable and comprehensive in its approach to indoctrinating the new employee population into Ball.

Congratulations to Barb Farson, who did yeoman’s work producing the newsletter. 

We’ve all experienced it: A torrent of one-subject emails distributed to an all-employee mailing list flooding our inboxes and dampening everyone’s productivity. That was the situation at the United States Geological Survey (USGS), which employs some 10,000 people in more than 400 locations. To end the overload, communicators tried a different tactic—one that has earned USGS first place in the “Newsletter (Electronic)” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards.

A survey found a clear majority of employees would find a weekly newsletter summarizing all those messages “very valuable,” launching the effort to create the weekly bulletin Need to Know. The team achieved a successful launch by unifying leaders accustomed to sending all-employee emails around the idea of consolidation, and they did it at virtually no cost. 

The publication dramatically increased the number of employees who were aware of messages they had previously ignored, guiding them to the intranet if they wanted to get more information. Employees can quickly grasp the importance of each item with icons that highlight “important updates” and “action required.” 

Employees are also able to comment on the articles; managers are notified when comments appear on items they submitted, and employees are notified when someone else comments on a story to which they contributed a comment. The shift to an email newsletter also enabled communicators to launch polls as part of the content, inspiring far greater response than previous employee feedback methods had produced. 

Congratulations to Blake Edwards, Aubrey McMahan, Dave Hebert, Mia Drane-Maury, Stacy Bushée and Elizabeth Stewart. 

You’re probably familiar with James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke” or Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Drinking Coffee.” At Molina Healthcare, communicators took a similarly humorous approach to educating the rapidly growing number of employees about the organization’s narrative. Their success has earned them first place in the “Humorous Video” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards.

The communications team was tasked with educating employees in a way that established a consistent and compelling voice for internal communications and humanized the organization’s leadership. Rather than take a traditional approach, the team opted to emulate the extraordinarily popular Corden and Seinfeld series with one of their own, titled “Executives in an Elevator.” 

Working with a local improv comic who portrayed a pizza deliveryman encountering various Molina executives while making deliveries in the building, the team produced biweekly videos that addressed a variety of issues and introduced staff to sides of their executives they had never seen before. Exercising even more creativity, they even created a blooper real. 

The first episode attracted 6,500 unique views and 169 comments; seven of the eight videos (including a teaser and the blooper reel) garnered five-star ratings. Cumulatively, the videos were viewed 31,765 times and attracted 668 comments. The production was so successful that Molina’s communicators are already at work on season two of “Executives in an Elevator.”

Congratulations to communicators Laura Murray, Sunny Yu, Kathleen O’Guin and Sandra Bravo. 

Pharmaceutical organization Astellas is serious about its culture, which is focused heavily on its journey to One Astellas, a multi-year campaign “rooted in authentic imagery of those who are most central to our culture: our patients and our employees.” The success of the campaign has earned Astellas first place in the “Visual Communication (Print)” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards.

To help realize its vision, communicators reviewed similar initiatives from other successful organizations, evaluated the strengths of its existing culture, and consulted with employees to create a new initiative: The Culture Narrative.

The initiative is unified by striking photography obtained from a nine-day photo shoot, along with patient photos. Employees received a Culture Narrative publication; they also have access to the content via a portal on the Astellas intranet. 

Graphics were produced for conference rooms, hallways, floors and stairwells. Thirteen-foot hanging banners were suspended in Astellas locations, laptop cling decals were handed out, a desktop calendar distributed, and PowerPoint templates updated to include the campaign’s visual themes. 

A poster series featured Astellas employees holding pictures of patients benefiting from Astellas medications. Particularly impressive is the “Culture Commitment Wall,” an 8×20-foot interactive visual display that travels between Astellas locations, encouraging employees to commit to the culture. 

So far, more than 1,000 employees have shared their personal pledges on the wall, just one metric that demonstrates the effectiveness of the campaign in only its first five months. 

Congratulations to Jennifer Saputo and Trent Richardson for their stellar work on the initiative.