Creating Community with Internal Comms - Avison Young & LVHN

Speaker 1:
Hi everybody, thanks for coming in. Good to have you. I’m Shawn Floss, one of the strategy advisors with Firstup. Ignore the music next door. We’re going to have a better time in here, right? Forget that. Is the coffee kicking in? How are we feeling on day two? Okay. Yeah. Anybody flying out later today? Okay. Alright, so we’ll squeeze in as much information as we need for you here today. It’s beautiful when we’re all together like this because as you know, it’s a chance to bond with each other. And I remember last year at Attune at one of the tables and it was like a round table of different industries in the room. And one of the people at a team, he said, wow, I’m just eavesdropping. And he’s like, we all have the same problems here. I’m like, yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1:
It’s so true. The pain points that we share. And as communicators, it’s a chance for us to connect and learn from each other. And what’s beautiful too is long-term in life, as you know, jobs come and go. Job titles change, we change companies, but these relationships that we’re making with each other, this can last forever. And that’s awesome. That’s a cool thing. And that’s what it’s about here with everybody getting to know each other. So on that note, when we’re talking about creating community with comms here, before we get into that, we want to create community with each other here. So we’re going to give you a couple of minutes to just find somebody next to you here and see what you have in common and just talk icebreaker, where you’re from, what you do, whatever you want to say, and find that out. And then the first person who’s done with that, if you want to stand up, just raise your hand. We have some fun swag that we can give away for that. Colleen, shout out to Colleen Sords from sales from Firstup, she’s going to be helping us out with the mic too, with the Q&A, right? Round of applause, right? Okay,

Speaker 2:
Colleen,

Speaker 1:
We love you Colleen. So Colleen will come up to you and if you want to just tell us who you are then with that introduction. So let’s pause right now. Grab a friend right next to you. We’ll give you a couple minutes, say hello and begin

Speaker 2:
Okay to move.

Speaker 3:
And I’m like, oh, they have something. I’m like, no, they’re just moving. They’re just moving because you said stand up.

Speaker 1:
Wow. This is great. Yeah, we’re doing a little icebreaker. Just getting to know people. Just hello, where are you from kind of thing. I’m Shawn, by the way, the moderator. Nice to meet you.

Speaker 2:
Who has it? First

Speaker 1:
Thing? Yeah, I know. That’s what I’m looking for. 9:05 is when I’ll cut it off. I forget. We can talk as comms. I was worried. I’m like, are they going to talk to each other? Of course. Okay. And that’s time. Bang. The gong done with the icebreakers. Oh we do. Awesome. Alright, so Colleen, if you don’t mind running up here, meet our guest right here in the second row, the first to stand up, to get to know each other. Let us know where you’re from, what you learned about each other.

Speaker 4:
We’re from the same city.

Speaker 1:
Oh, did you know that they’re from the same city? Go ahead. Where are you from

Speaker 5:
That down and yeah, we’re both from Richmond.

Speaker 1:
Virginia. Richmond, Virginia. Awesome. And anything else that you found out that you share in common beyond that?

Speaker 4:
Some of it is that we have the same struggles in getting people to the site. And so we shared a couple ideas on how we can do

Speaker 1:
That. Nice. Our struggle

Speaker 5:
Is keeping our first line employees actively engaged. We can get ’em there for certain events, buying their Christmas party tickets, Kingston being and day, but getting them to check it regularly is a struggle

Speaker 1:
For us frontline. And we’ll be talking about that in the healthcare community especially. Love you. Thank you very much. Round of applause on that one. And we are done here, so we appreciate it. If you guys want to go chill. No. Okay, so let’s get into it here. And thank you Colleen. Again, that’s Colleen who will be running around with the mic when we get into questions. So we’re going to have chances to sprinkle it in along the way with our two guests here, side by side as they each talk. And then we’ll have time at the end and as much as we can get in there with q and a, because that’s why we’re here. We want to really get something out of this. So let’s start off. We have Ashleigh Mavros here with Avison Young talking as we’re creating the community and how the approach that they took, they’re based out Chicago and quick fun fact, you’re flying out today because tomorrow is Day of Giving. Yes. So that’s going to be huge.

Speaker 6:
Yep. It’s our one day of the year. All of our offices cross the globe, go and volunteer for an entire morning and we work with different organizations, different charities. So I’m going to be at the beach tomorrow morning helping do a cleanup. So clean, I don’t know, tonight. Clean

Speaker 1:
Up along the lakefront. Well, good luck. And that’s another opportunity with the employees getting them engaged and we talk about Frontline getting to know each other that way. And then Kirstin Reed is with us here from Lehigh Valley Health Network along with Pam Riddell. Fun fact, when I checked into the hotel yesterday, I was right behind you in line like, Hey, good to see you. I’ve got an idea, why don’t you do a presentation for us? And it went from there. It worked out well. It’s good having you. So you look forward to this, especially beyond just talking to healthcare communicators. A lot of takeaways for the general public, for communicators, companies for sure.

Speaker 7:
Using generated content, our ambassador program. We’re excited to talk about

Speaker 1:
It all. Yes, we’ll get into that. Thank you both. So Ashleigh, let’s start off with you. Set the scene for us here and what we need to learn about with Avison Young. Yeah,

Speaker 6:
Thanks Shawn and Small World. I actually met Kirstin and Pam last year at Attune in Chicago. So you two could be the next dynamic duo next year at Attune 2024. So small world that brought us all together, but left Attune last year with a whole notebook full of great ideas, a bunch of new great ideas this year as well, so hopefully can pay it forward a little bit and share a little bit about our approach to the program. We’ve rolled out Orion, which is what we named and branded our platform about two years ago. And when we launched we had a hundred topics and close to 300 topic managers when we rolled out, which felt very daunting at the times and still to this day feels daunting certain times and I’m like, oh, did we do it the right way? But looking back on it, we really just wanted to embrace our communities within the company.

Speaker 6:
And I think even more so than creating community, we kind of approached it as embracing the communities that existed within our company. So know this approach isn’t for everyone, but wanted to share a little bit of a peek behind the current today of how we set this up and how we’ve really managed it over time. So before getting into that, to understand why we took this approach, starting first with who Avison Young is, we are a global commercial real estate company with more than 5,000 employees across a hundred offices over the years. We’ve really grown by acquisition. So those have especially come in at the local and regional level. So have these really strong pockets of communities that have been acquired and brought into the company on the geographic level. And then I’m sure as many of you are as well, highly matrixed by service line and business sector.

Speaker 6:
So a handful of different service lines and sectors that make up the company. And these are also matrixed by geographies as well. So a lot of really strong pockets of communities within the organization, both by geography as well as these service lines and sectors that we really wanted to try and figure out, okay, how do we get them onto the platform? So rewinding a little bit, this slide was actually from January, 2021. It was from a final pitch we were doing to our execs to bring the platform to our company. And at the time we were still in the depths of Covid remote work. How do we get our people to pay attention to anything and a lot of opportunities we had at hand. I’m an optimist, so I say opportunities, I don’t say challenges. So a lot of opportunities here that we really felt a digital platform could help us address with this.

Speaker 6:
I don’t think it was as much about the technology and the platform itself as it was sitting down and taking a refreshed look at our internal comm strategy because at the time everyone was doing it a little bit differently through different channels and we just were not aligned whatsoever on the global space. So we really felt that a digital platform would help us address a lot of this. And so we got thumbs up from execs, started moving forward for our launch in September, 2021. But the big question at hand was how do we roll this platform out to a company that is global and highly matrixed and has these really strong pockets of communities throughout the organization, new from the start. This could not just be a global corporate platform that we’ve rolled out. Our employees would not give it the time of day. They wouldn’t even bat an eye at this. Corporate has seen platforms that roll out, they just don’t see adoption. So as strong as we would like, so we’ve really had to sit down and think, okay, how do we make sure that this platform reflects the makeup of our company and those communities that we had identified? So knowing that me, Ashleigh sitting at Global could not do this alone. So we really kind of approached it in a three phase step to really figure out how we mirror the business. When we brought this platform to the company, and

Speaker 1:
We heard this in another talk too yesterday, the same thing. She was talking with Newell brands in the conversation starting it off and people saying this is not going to work. We’ve tried something like this before and whatever this is. And so like you said, I liked that one call out there, how it fits into the ecosystem, really raising awareness, not overlooking that fact to let them know why this is relevant and useful for these audiences.

Speaker 6:
And that’s a good point. The other thing was going to mention here is we really wanted to position it as the one go-to platform because we had Gamma, we had teams, we had our intranet, and we really saw this as that one centralized place that everyone would be able to go as that central point. So that was the original goal that we had set out to do. So the first thing we started looking at, I know the saying here is it takes a village to raise a child, but I joke that it takes a village to launch an internal comms platform because it very felt like that from the beginning. So once again, knowing I sat on the global team, I was still semi new to my role and getting a handle on the business and we were a global comms team of two at the time.

Speaker 6:
So we sat down and one of the first things I did was put together a launch team that had representation across their geographies, across these service lines and sectors. So we’d be able to get perspective and buy-in pretty early on to be able to build this platform from the ground up. So this launch team was so, so critical and really they were the experts that knew these pockets of audiences and communities, both those that we’re communicating and engaging currently as well as those who were looking for a better way to do so. They were absolutely critical is we started to build this ecosystem around Orion. The first thing we looked at was our geographies when it came to topic structure. So I felt pretty comfortable identifying the national and the global ones, but this launch team was so critical and we started looking at those local and regional communities specifically.

Speaker 6:
For example, out in California, we have two LA offices in San Diego office and an Oakland office. And our launch team came to us and said, Hey, they don’t really operate as individual offices. They really operate as one SoCal entity, which I would’ve never known, never been out to California and seen those offices. So that was super helpful. So we approached it as, okay, let’s set this up as SoCal instead of just blanket saying every office is going to get a topic. So they were incredibly helpful with that piece. And then going to our business sectors and service lines, same thing there. Some of those were structured by EMEA versus North America, others were country by country. So this launch team brought that perspective and knowledge of how those were set up. Then we also worked with our de and i and HR team to make sure that our employee resource groups and some of those more cultural groups were also reflected. So that launch team was so critical in helping us get this baseline set up. We ended up doing additional topics above and beyond what’s represented here. But this was really that foundation that we built our platform on. And then as an added bonus, that launch team was some of the first people that got to see the platform. So they were like our unofficial Orion cheerleaders within the company and we’re an extension of us too to really start getting the word circulated about the platform and its use. So extra bonus there

Speaker 1:
Change champions. Yes, we talk about this when we’re with customers and I love this approach because this is what we advise is that diverse group, when you’re testing this out, the leadership, that’s key. You want them in there, the different business units. Locations because they’re seeing it through a different lens. Frontline, back to the frontline. You want those managers, supervisors, head of operations in there because they can see what we’re not thinking of from their groups. They’re closest to it as the subject experts. Quick question for the audience here. Who’s has a digital platform? Had it like a year or two or more? Raise of hands. Okay. Alright, anybody who is new just launching testing out Ochsner Health from New Orleans. I see you. Anybody without? Yeah. Lehigh Lehigh University right here. Hey, good to see you. Good team is with us. Alright, Pennsylvania, I feel you. And then Hoop doesn’t have a platform is thinking about it. Okay, awesome. Thank you. So let us know afterwards anything with questions with our subject experts right here. Yeah,

Speaker 6:
So yeah, took this approach. Our launch team, in addition to helping look at the topic structure, they also helped us look at the topic managers that we had in place as well. And today we do have over a hundred active topics, over a hundred active topic managers. And they were really critical too with identifying those right people. I would’ve never been able to figure out a hundred people in the organization who were responsible for comms. But as we were going through this exercise and getting ready for launch, we realized a lot of those topic managers weren’t traditional comms people. They were an office manager or a market intelligence lead or a broker who just stepped up to lead an employee resource group. So the next thing we really focused on as part of this rollout was making sure our topic managers felt empowered and engaged, specifically those that didn’t feel as comfortable on the content side of things.

Speaker 6:
We did the typical training and playbooks and all of those pieces, but we found that the big question that kept coming up is, well, what are other people sharing and what are other people doing on the platform? So we really leaned into the approach of a show and tell of showing what we were doing on the platform. And we were very fortunate. We had a pretty strong pilot group that ran during the summer that helped feed into some of this so we could kick it off right away with some great content examples. So a couple of things we did here. We first started Orion Spotlight series where we would invite a topic manager on to talk about some of the really cool and great work they were doing. We would structure these and they would talk about what’s working well, what they’re working on and things that they had learned.

Speaker 6:
And we followed this approach across all of these sessions. They were short 30 minute ones, and we had time for q and a at the end and these are kind of like what we doing here at Attune of a show and tell our programs. And they really clicked with our people. Those were really engaging and we got really good feedback on those and were a good way to help us kick them off on the content side and show what was working well across different topics on the platform. And then leading into the content a bit more too, we did more real-time post roundups on a regular basis just looking at some of the most engaging content on the platform. And also just ones I would handpick, they were cool or unique or creative and we would share those out with our topic managers too, just to kind of give them some ideas and inspiration.

Speaker 6:
And then building on that, we actually ended up putting together a content inspiration deck that had dozens and dozens of examples from across the platform of not just the type of content and themes you could lean into, but how to structure it of really leaning into video or images and how to use good headlines and descriptions. So this went over pretty well. And again, going back to the idea of not everyone’s a content expert that we’ve enabled here. So really wanted to give them that freedom to explore and not have such a rigid structure, but give them the opportunity to lean into what was working well for their communities,

Speaker 1:
Freedom within those guidelines because that comes up a question typically is these aren’t full-time communicators. They know their subject, they know operations. How in the world do we help them be writers and what that looks like. So I love this with the best practice examples because we talk about that when we advise with customers is meeting with them monthly or having a committee set up, a governance committee that meets to talk about high level decisions quarterly and have these decisions. And what I also like, I hadn’t seen this before, where you have the topic owners talk about what they’re learning, getting them really involved instead of just following, but having an ownership in it. Do you see them then having extra motivation because of that ownership? Yeah,

Speaker 6:
They get to be put on a stage in a spotlight and then people start just reaching out to them directly. And even I was like, Hey, can you send me a copy of that? That’s really

Speaker 1:
Cool. Yeah, share

Speaker 6:
Those. Let’s get this out to the rest of the program. So we had some really strong people from the start that kind of set the standard and help guide some of the other topic managers that we had lead the way.

Speaker 6:
So speaking on kind of the next, what you had mentioned of those touch points and how we stay in front of them. I think the third piece of this was knowing, okay, we got through the launch, we got people trained, but we don’t just get to set this and forget this. This is a pretty big program that we have to still keep investing in and making sure our people felt powered to then power their own communities. So we put together a cadence of a couple different items to make sure we stayed in front of our topic managers. The first one we started doing biannual Orion wrapped reports. These are a fun little plan Spotify wrapped, but unlike my wrapped, that tells me every year I’m in the top 1% of Beyonce fans. These will instead tell you how your topic’s performing and give you kind of context of metrics in comparison to some of the other topics on the platform and a good snapshot on metrics.

Speaker 6:
But I think what is really valuable here is we send these out twice a year and it usually opens up a really good two-way dialogue with our topic managers and they come back and see, hey, my activation rate dropped, let’s talk about how we can promo in the office. Or I have this idea for a really cool campaign, I saw that this posted really well. So this opens a really good dialogue for us to stay in front of our people. And then on top of that sprinkled in, we also send quarterly topic manager newsletters. These include a short little opening for me that just really level sets on our vision and our goals and how we’re tracking. And then we also share new resources or templates and we also indeed on some interesting content pieces or new campaigns that rolled out. So really looking at this ongoing training and ongoing support of them to make sure that they feel equipped to really keep power in their communities.

Speaker 6:
And then lastly, we put together a topic manager resource center that is hosted on Orion. This was originally put together for our topic managers that we had in place, but it actually is used even more often now for when we’re onboarding new topic managers. So this includes all of the resources, all of our training, both from Firstup and then pieces we’ve put together. And we have been doing onboarding and offboarding on kind of a rolling basis. So this has been super helpful to point people to. I mean one-on-one sessions are really, really impactful, but this is helpful to direct people to is a good starting point. And speaking a little bit on, I know I get asked this quite a bit of how we do the onboarding and offboarding with so many individuals. It is kind of an organic thing throughout the year, but we just came up on our two year anniversary and we are actually in the middle of doing an audit of the platform, just taking a look and seeing do we still have the right people in place? Does the topic structure still make sense? The business has changed in the last two years. For example, our UK business groups have restructured just a couple months ago. So right now we’re in the process of, okay, how does that translate over into our audiences and the topics we have on Orion? So it has been looked at something that is very dynamic and very flexible. It’s not like we rolled this out, we’re done. It has been pretty active management and maintenance to make sure that we’re still accurately reflecting the business.

Speaker 1:
That’s a good call out like you said, because as we know with restructuring the business evolves, we have to adapt to that. So of course your platform has to adapt to that. What about the challenge of people come and go, you lose people or they lose interest, they’re not as involved, not that they lose interest, they’re busy, they’ve got their own job, they’re not as engaged with the platform. How do you recruit, how keep that momentum, that continuity going? So you have a good bench of these topic owners so you don’t have to keep finding new people.

Speaker 6:
Yeah, I think for those that are in their roles, every time we send a newsletter, every time we send a wrap, sometimes they’re like, ah, I know I need to be doing more. It keeps

Speaker 1:
They feel guilty, top of

Speaker 6:
Mind, kind of a guilt trip that we get in front of ’em and say, Hey, you’re responsible for this. But for as people come and go for most of our topics, we do have, I don’t think there’s any topics where there’s just one or two people. Most of them have a couple topic managers supporting. So if we have someone leave, I typically reach out and we sit down and say, okay, is this role being backfilled or is there someone else that would make more sense here to fill that hole? So it is kind of AON one-on-one basis that we really try to fill those gaps.

Speaker 6:
So to kind of wrap up here and go back to the original question of how do we roll a global comms platform out to this highly matrixed company with a lot of pockets of communities. I think the big thing is starting from the beginning, casting a wide net and getting that buy-in and perspective from our people and not just seeing this as something global down. We’re just going to roll this out with any sort of input. It was really critical that we got that buy-in and perspective from the start. And then as we looked to the rollout and beyond, it was important that we really leaned into this topic manager community because they knew their people best, really had to trust them and really invest in them to then be able to power their communities on the platform. But I will say it took about a year or so to get some good traction going and hit some of our goal metrics.

Speaker 6:
So it wasn’t something that just happened overnight, but two years in, we’ve hit some pretty sound milestones. We usually stay around an 84% activation rate. More than 90% of our people are viewing content on a regular basis. And even above and beyond the metrics, I could spout numbers on tape, but I think what’s really stuck is that especially over the last couple months, people are now coming to me and saying, Hey, our US rems business has really grown and we’re sending this newsletter through a word doc. Can I get new studio? And I’m like, yes, a hundred percent come on in. And so they’re coming to us now and having ideas for new campaigns or new setups in the platform. And so we really have started positioning this platform as the go-to place to engage with their people and communicate. So we’ve really kind of cut down on some of those other channels and tactics and have really funneled everything through Orion. So has taken a bit of time, a lot of resources, a couple good glasses of wine and a podcast to set everything up, get all the topic managers and topics set up. But at the end of the day, what was really critical for us to make sure we were embracing the communities at ey,

Speaker 1:
Like you were saying earlier, it’s that trust, it’s that autonomy. They know their subjects and it’s their own unique audiences as you set up at the beginning, how do we reach these targeted audiences so it’s relevant and they see the value in it? And then that good dilemma of them coming to you saying, I want a topic. I want a topic. Okay, let’s find out. Do you know the expectations here? How much content each week to make it relevant for your audience to keep coming back and use it. So nice work. Congratulations on all that. Thank you. Okay, before we get to a couple of questions for Ashleigh, if you have anything, a word from our sponsor, ology. Ology is the employee networking group and we happen to have the president and the C E O, Kristen Hancock with us here today. Hi Kristen. If you have, Kristen carries around a mic with her all the time. That’s just a thing she does. She’s just a spark of entertainment. Kristen, thanks for being with us and we’ll hear from you. Anything in the q and a more than welcome to jump in. Say that you’re

Speaker 8:
A Firstup customer and you’re coming to the customer festival this afternoon. I may or may not be bringing dogs.

Speaker 1:
Oh, dogs will be at the festival. Okay. I heard of a DJ too. And then tell them real quick, the presenter yesterday at the keynote, the ai, she was Miss Canada.

Speaker 8:
Is anyone here a Canadian? Okay, I’m Token one in the room. You all were in the presence of Canadian royalty.

Speaker 6:
Oh wow.

Speaker 8:
Julia Powell was not only Miss Canada, she was the first black Miss Canada and she was on Canada’s M T V Canada own much music. She was BJ for years. She’s super

Speaker 1:
Famous. Carson Daley. Yes. Thank you, Kristen. Okay, back to the question. So Colleen is our runner with the microphone. Do we have a quick, can take one or two before we move on? Yes, far left over there, Colleen. Thank you. You’re still on. And if you want to tell us who you are, where you’re from, your favorite dog, if you have a dog.

Speaker 9:
My name is Marissa Lemon. I’m with a medical company down in south Florida called ChenMed. We’re family owned and we specialize in underserved senior healthcare. And I do have a favorite dog. His name is Leo and he is near and dear to my heart. He’s my black Labrador at home in South Florida.

Speaker 1:
Those are fun. The labs.

Speaker 9:
He’s babysitting my children right now. I have a question about your topic managers and how, I think it’s a two-part question. The first one is, how did you select those specific people to manage your topics? I am sure there was some thought process into what level of an employee needs to be those topic managers and also what parts of the business were most important. And then additionally, I lost my train of thought. What was the second part?

Speaker 1:
That’s okay. We can focus on this with this one. It’ll come back to you. That happens all the time. Go ahead.

Speaker 6:
So how we selected individuals from that initial build out, it really was looking at who is already communicating with their people. So who is sending emails or managing in signage in the office. It really was kind of that simple from the start of who is responsible for emailing on behalf of a leader or the office or wherever that might be. And the idea there was, I know we talked, I was in a session yesterday, it was like, how do you trust all these people to go into the platform and really drive this? And I think the idea of is, okay, well they’re already sending emails and have the ability to reach out to all of the staff, so why not just give them that platform and space to do? So that was kind of the first level. And then from there we really, as we kind of looked at it of especially with employee resource groups and different topics, that was who would need the ability to connect with those people. Maybe they weren’t necessarily sending emails, but they were leading a committee or they were in a leadership role. So really kind of looked at it in layers, but started with that core of who’s already going out and talking to these people and communicating on a regular basis.

Speaker 9:
I did think of my second part. Go for it. So have you worked those responsibilities into those people’s actual annual goals? Did you work with HR to make that part of their position?

Speaker 6:
So truthfully, we do not have a global annual review process in place right now. So it’s really different from one team to the next and one department to the next. So we couldn’t just cascade kind of top down from our internal comms team we have, so I now have leads for each country and so the comms and marketing team, we work together collectively on goals and what we’re trying to accomplish. And those get cascaded down. But for our topic managers, we don’t have that cadence in that roll down right now.

Speaker 1:
I was just going to say, if you bump into Chris Andrews, the senior director of comms from Cooper Standard is out here. We hosted a webinar with her in February and she talked about that topic. She’d been there 25 years with the company and has these relationships with operations where they made it a K P I for their managers, supervisors in manufacturing operations based on benchmarks from a guru like Jill Greenwood, one of our customers success managers who dig into the metrics with customers and can relay those registration adoption numbers and how their numbers are doing. Then that’s reflected in their KPIs. So if you see her here, Chris from Cooper Standard, we can look for, that’s a good one. Okay. Do we have time for one more? Yes. The red jacket? Yes.

Speaker 10:
My name is Fatima Boyette. I’m with Sentara Health. We’re a healthcare system in Virginia, North Carolina, and we’ve just stepped a little bit into Florida. One of my questions to build on hers when it comes to topic managers, our issue is we have too many, too many newsletters, too many people sending stuff out. Did you find yourself in a situation where you had to ring that in some or have to tell some people you can no longer send 12 newsletters, you can do

Speaker 6:
Four, please? Yeah, that is a really good question. We hit that same exact kind of thing, especially when it came to email with newsletters or emails that they were sending. It was a fine line to walk. It was kind of that idea of well, they were managing and doing it on their own before, so they were kind of doing their own thing. But we did want to make sure that now that we have this platform, we weren’t overwhelming and bombarding our people and cutting down an email was one of our original goals. So honestly, one of the things that I did was I set myself up. So I received every single piece of content that was coming out from the platform, which crazy inbox some days, but it let me kind of have an eagle’s eye view of everything that was coming through. And when we did see topics or topic managers that it was one topic was emailing every birthday that someone had in the office.

Speaker 6:
And so things like that. Or if they were sending a newsletter every week I would reach out and we’d say, Hey, how could we approach this a little bit differently? Or how can we drive people back to the platform a little bit more instead of sending a newsletter every week? We did have that happen and most people were receptive. I think it went back to that piece of the weren’t all traditional comms people and they had kind of seen it as their little bubble that they were always just talking to their office before. But when we sat down and talked about, okay, well now there’s all these other layers and all this noise coming, we really have to think in that context. So we did, when we’d have a lot of newsletters or birthdays coming through, we would just have to reach out and kind of a sit down and say, okay, how do we figure this out to make sure we weren’t doing email overload?

Speaker 1:
Streamline it. Okay. Ashleigh, thank you. That was really helpful. Thank you. And this is great that we have healthcare questions. Let’s get into healthcare now with Kirstin and Pam.

Speaker 11:
Okay, so I have to ask you, how many people have seen the dating game?

Speaker 1:
The dating game? The

Speaker 11:
Dating game? Oh, okay. Shawn’s like, where’s she going with this? I got on stage and I was like, where am I? You are an amazing host. I’m like, he is Chuck Wooley and I am on the dating game. Oh,

Speaker 1:
Chuck Woolery. Oh wow. That’s a blast from the past. So

Speaker 11:
It’s a generational thing. Look it up, watch it at night. It’s great.

Speaker 1:
We’ll be back in two and two. That

Speaker 11:
Was touch bridge. Yes. And in that vein, I like to teach about culture and community and how to build that in your network, starting a brand ambassador movement and elevating your colleague voice and listening to that voice. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Awesome. How’d I

Speaker 1:
Do? Yeah, no, great. Yeah, I love the history that you all have there. It’s rich. Great. No commercial break. You’re good. No

Speaker 11:
Commercial break. So here we go. Starting a colleague ambassador movement really started back in 1899 at Lehigh Valley Health Network. We had 13 civic-minded women who raised $5,000 for a plot of land to start what is today this massive health network that Kirstin will describe in a moment. So right there, our story begins with these incredible women brand. One of our brand qualities is that we’re very driven and that started over a hundred, almost 25 years ago.

Speaker 1:
It’s that purpose that people,

Speaker 11:
That purpose.

Speaker 7:
So as Pam said, we grew from one hospital in 1899 to what we are today, which is our region’s healthcare leader. Lehigh Valley Health Network has 13 hospital campuses, five health institutes and a children’s hospital. And we have more than 20,000 LVHN proud colleagues who serve more than 10 counties in Eastern Pennsylvania. So I’ll draw your attention to the map. If you’re not familiar with Eastern pa, I’ve got a couple landmarks to orient us to the conversation today because we’re in a room full of storytellers. So who would we be if we didn’t tell you a quick story? So Pam and I are both located in the Lehigh Valley is kind of the hub of our health network. And the Lehigh Valley is made up of three principal cities, Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton. Shout out to our Lehigh University colleagues here in the audience.

Speaker 7:
So the Lehigh Valley is one of the fastest growing regions in Pennsylvania among young people, and that’s unlike anywhere else in the state of Pennsylvania. So remember that as we talk about some of the other regions we serve, we have a hospital in Schuylkill County in a city called Pottsville. It’s in the heart of Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal community. So probably not very fast growing among young people in the state of Pennsylvania. We’ve got a hospital as far north as Scranton, the Electric City, any office fans? Yeah, a couple. Okay. Yeah, very cool. We’ve got a hospital in the Poconos, so beautiful mountainous region full of outdoor adventure, many a indoor waterparks, so year-round adventure in the Poconos. And then we’ve got a hospital in Hazelton, which for anyone maybe Lehigh will understand and sympathize with this. No matter the season in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, it’s snowing. Yes. So we’re a health network who serves a diverse range of communities and the colleagues who work in our hospitals and our facilities live in those communities too. So we have a diverse group of colleagues that we employ as well.

Speaker 11:
We do. And when you’re building a brand and building a culture, you really want to honor those unique cultures. So most of us in this room, many of you are global companies, some of you are health networks. We have had mergers and acquisitions, and in each of those communities they have their own subcultures. And so we want to bring out the best in that. We want to keep the brand integrity strong and we want to cascade the brand to those sites, but we want to honor what is good about those communities. And so here’s just an example of what some of those communities look like. And I’ll ask you, has anybody ever had a Mrs?

Speaker 7:
Wow.

Speaker 11:
Only one in one hand. Couple hands.

Speaker 11:
Okay. Okay. So that is hyperlocal. We are not that far from New York City, Alice Island. So each of these communities have rich heritages of immigrants. And in Schuylkill County, our Pottsville campus, a lot of Slovak roots. So they started Mrs. T’s Pierogis and it’s their frozen peries. They’re not the homemade church lady. IES are PGI as my Slovak mother would say. But we want to celebrate, honor and teach others at the campuses about what’s fun and important to those groups. So how do you start the movement to bring out the best in those campuses and in your employees? Well, it starts with listening. We’re very good at listening at LVHN. We survey our colleagues twice a year and we looked at what are our, and what we learned is people love each other. I love my team. They say, I love what I do.

Speaker 11:
This is a great fit. I’m doing the job I want to do, and I would refer friends and family for care. Well, how do we bring that out more than it exists today? You get the employees who are your most passionate ambassadors and you activate them. How do you find those employees? Typically you call the leader and you go, well, who on your team wants to be a colleague? Ambassador? Nominate somebody. But we realize people don’t always follow the leader. People follow each other. Peers follow peers. So who are the most respected colleagues that people listen to? And so we looked at some of our awards programs, who are the nominees, not just the award recipients, but the nominees who are those who step up and say, I’ll take care of this. And we got them together in person pre covid. This is six years ago, laying the groundwork for a lot of the future.

Speaker 11:
And we said, what makes you LVHN proud? So I’m a colleague at this network for 26 years, and I thought, boy, if you have to start a movement, somebody has to go first. Somebody has to be bold. And so I told my story and I was run over by a pickup truck on my bike several years ago. And it was vulnerable. It was emotional even now, and it was scary. But I did it. I told my story. And guess what that did? It opened up the room and people talked about a having cancer or one young woman lost her fiance in a car accident and how colleagues came together and supported them. And we left that meeting so bonded and connected and energized. And I said, you are LVHN proud, hashtag LVHN proud. Tell your stories. Use the hashtag, get out there on social media and we’ll also interview you for videos and get them out there.

Speaker 11:
Now, this is pre-Firstup. So the in-person connection and community was really important. And we did simulcast this to different areas that could not be in the hub where we were. And so what is the colleague ambassador? They really evangelize the brand. They spread the word about news. They share LVHN proud, and they motivate and recruit other colleague ambassadors. So bring a friend, tell us about somebody that you think would be a good ambassador and we reward them for that. We wrote 250 personalized notes and mailed them to their homes after that session, thanking them for attending. And if they told a story, I mentioned that in the note and how important that was. And hashtag LVHN proud. We also gave them the colleague ambassador Uniform jackets, LVHN proud pins so they could be identified and they could be proud.

Speaker 11:
And that really was the start of our movement. And we very intentionally laid the groundwork for a year later. We were relaunching our brand, your Health Deserves a Partner was our new tagline. So we wanted these brand ambassadors and all 20,000 colleagues, our workforce and our Salesforce to be partners and live and breathe the brand. So we had pop-up parties throughout the network. And I think most of you in healthcare manufacturing know it’s very difficult for people to leave a patient, leave a assembly line to go to a town hall. So we said pop in, pop out, pop in, get some LVHN loot, watch our new spot. And we’re going to ask you what does it mean to be a partner? A partner always. And how they completed that sentence was has your back. Number one, verbatim response. A partner always has your back.

Speaker 11:
And so we use that language in everything that we communicated, our CEO, our brand launch, we have your back, you have your patient’s backs. And then the unthinkable happened 2020 with March and Covid. And so this unprecedented time was so critical in our culture and the work that we had done to build this strong workforce to face something so monumental. The culture was strong, the colleagues were strong, they were emotional, they were resilient, they were vulnerable, and they connected. And we connected. And I’m just going to let you sit with this photo for just a moment. This is what they were dealing with every day. And it was our job to keep them connected, keep them positive, help them feel valued. And here’s how our team sprung into action.

Speaker 12:
This is a coronavirus update from Lehigh Valley Health Network. Covid-19 is infecting our community and we need your help to stop it. You’re putting yourself and your family at risk when you leave your house. So when possible stay home, you must put physical distance between yourself and others,

Speaker 13:
Your hand.

Speaker 1:
And like we say, during times like that, there’s no blueprint for what happened. It’s that accumulation of all that experience you brought to it, the experience that your teammates brought to it in those defining moments. How were you able to just tap into people because they’re stressed, they’re exhausted to keep that going, to keep that comms coming forward and getting that information out from everybody.

Speaker 11:
Well, it was a 24 hour effort. I mean, hospitals don’t close and our team did not shut down. And it was telling stories, but also informing our community and our colleagues. We had to keep them safe. And it was our job to continuously cascade those messages. Dozen messages a day, talk about information overload, but it was so important. Mask, wash your hands, stay six feet away. All of those things were just so, so critical. And then to tell those uplifting stories in between those critical messages.

Speaker 7:
And that’s a great transition, Pam, to talk about the LVHN Proud Movement. So coming out of the LVHN Brand Ambassador program, the colleague ambassadors launching and our brand launch 2019, our organization was riding a high. We had grown so much, we had brought so many great colleagues and communities into our health network. And then the pandemic hit. And as you all know, because we’ve all experienced the same things as communicators, we were at a low and we were just taking care of our people. We were getting through day by day. But as we came out of the pandemic, it was really our responsibility shifted from keeping colleagues safe and informed and getting them the information they needed to keep our community safe. Shifted from that to really rebuilding that culture and reinvigorating the ambassador movement. So Pam mentioned earlier that we really well to our colleagues, we survey them twice a year.

Speaker 7:
So in the engagement survey coming out of the pandemic, our colleagues told us a couple of things. They reminded us and reiterated that they love what they do, they love who they work with and they’re LVHN proud to be a colleague. But they also told us, I really want to see and hear from my leaders. I want to know they’re listening to what I have to say. I want to feel seen and heard. So with that in mind, in May of 2021, we launched LVHN Insider, which is our branded Firstup experience. Another important thing to note in the video you just watched, you saw some really big numbers. All of those numbers were done by our amazing strategic communications and marketing team all manually. We did not have the Firstup platform during covid. Looking back, it would’ve been great, but we just didn’t have it.

Speaker 7:
So we were really looking for a platform that allowed us to do a couple of things, streamlined the processes for our internal communications team because coming out of covid, we needed to save ourselves some time. We were looking for a platform listening to our colleagues that allowed them to have conversations with one another. So again, we landed on Firstup and it revolutionized internal communications. With the analytics we received from the platform, it allowed us to act like marketers. So our internal communicators looked at data and that set our strategy. We were able to see on a piece of content or in a topic or among an audience, what’s working and what’s not. And we shifted based on that data. So when we launched LVHN Insider, you also remember Pam talk about pop-up parties for our brand launch. We took a page out of that book and we had pop-up promotions for LVHN Insider because to Ashleigh’s point and Shawn’s point earlier, our colleagues are so busy, we needed to go to them and we needed to be present where they were.

Speaker 7:
We didn’t need to rely on them to come to us to learn about this corporate communications platform. So we went to each of our campuses, our communications leads, you see Mike here on the screen in Schuylkill County. They set up outside of cafeterias. We set up tables outside of existing events and we just spread the word and really provided kind of at the shoulder support for downloading the app and taught people how to use the app. So before I get into some of the specific examples, we want to talk about LVHN Insider being an extension of our LVHN Proud Movement, some of the user generated content. I want to give you a current snapshot of our platform. So we’re just over 20,000 active users who are registered in the platform. And that puts us at about 86% of our workforce.

Speaker 7:
We have 92% viewers, so colleagues who are viewing content in the platform. And 35% of our content is user generated. So that’s not content that’s coming from the internal communications team. It’s coming from our 20,000 brand ambassadors. So we believe that great communication, effective communication is a two-way conversation. And Firstup allows us to facilitate those two-way communications with our colleagues. So of course, I’ve got a quick example for you. We put out a call for national Make a Friend Day for colleagues to share hashtag LVHN proud friendship selfies. And we expected maybe we’ll get a handful of colleagues with their buddies at work. But what we got was so much more, we got posts like these. So what you see on the left are two colleagues who started on the same day, 11 years ago at LVHN and remain friends today. On the right, you have colleagues who met just a year ago, but because of the bond they formed and the support they give to each other, say they’ll be lifelong friends. So these types of stories that come out of our platform because it allows colleagues to engage and interact with each other in a very social way, are invaluable to our team.

Speaker 7:
And remember I said in our colleague engagement survey, colleagues told us, I want to hear from, I want to see my leaders. Well, leaders can’t be everywhere all the time. We have 13 hospitals and it’s impossible for our leaders to be everywhere, physically all at once. So what LVHN Insider, what Firstup has allowed them to do is create a digital environment to connect with their colleagues and they are doing it so our authentic leaders are ever present in the platform. Wrong green button. So here on the screen are a couple examples of our executive leaders doing look and listen rounding. So they went to our units, to our departments, and they spent time talking to colleagues, tell me about what’s working, tell me about what’s not, thank you so much for what you’re doing and how can I help you? And then they wrote about it.

Speaker 7:
They shared their experiences on LVHN Insider and shared some photos and even videos as well. And then we have leaders who really take the platform and run with it on their own. So what I have here to show you is a chief nursing officer at one of our hospitals who thought during the pandemic, how can I be here to support my people? So what she did is she scheduled pop-up nurse events. She did not promote them ahead of time. Nobody knew she was coming. She’d simply bring a table, set up some snacks, some decorations, a few giveaways, and of course the LVHN Insider selfie frame, which has become very popular. So she took pictures, she put a post up on LVHN Insider with of course appreciation and thanks for all that nurses were doing.

Speaker 7:
So LVHN Insider, as I said, has been a real extension of our LVHN proud. It gives a place for our colleagues to build those connections to create community and really foster the culture that we’ve worked so hard and we’ve all 20,000 of us have worked so hard to create and it’s made all 20,000 colleagues, ambassadors because we have user generated content. So if we can leave you with four takeaways today, I think it’s important that these takeaways, they’re easy, right? You don’t have to have a certain platform. You don’t have to be a certain size organization or have a certain structure to take these things away and implement them on your own. So identify, celebrate and cultivate your unique cultures. Figure out what’s special about your workplace and what your people like to celebrate and then elevate their voices. Start a movement. So start an LVHN Proud Movement or a proud movement in your organization with as many people who are willing to stand up and say, I’m an ambassador and I’m really proud to work here and do what I do. Build connections. Find opportunities for colleagues, for employees to connect with one another and connect with your leaders. And then finally promote colleague voices. Because more than anything, we know people want to feel seen, heard, and respected, and we’ve been able to do that using Firstup

Speaker 1:
Powerful stories. Thanks for sharing this. Really appreciate it. Thank you. And we’ll start to offer it up here for any questions that you have. But the cultures is a good point, those subcultures, because you have people working together who are delivering babies on a daily basis, people who are seeing death on a daily basis, the two employees who started the same day, you bond. And so as you said, we can’t force one same culture when we’re buying all these hospitals in our system. We have to respect that along the way. Okay, Colleen, thank you. We have a question. Let us know who you are, where you’re from.

Speaker 14:
Hi everyone. My name is Trevor Myers. I’m from Amazon, but before I started at Amazon, I actually worked at Stanford Medicine in California. So I high respect for people who work in healthcare and we love Amazon. Yeah, I was at Stanford Medicine before the pandemic and during the pandemic. So I really understand the importance of communications during a very unpredictable time. I’m just curious, how do you curate content knowing that you’ve got different audiences in your hospital network, whether it’s physicians, whether it’s administrators, non clinical or scientific minded folks to make sure that you’re keeping them engaged and making sure that they’re coming back to your platform?

Speaker 7:
I can probably start and then you can fill in. So I think it starts with the way our team is structured. Our internal communications team is made up of really three people, and we all have clients that we support throughout the health network. So in those relationships that we build with leaders and departments across the health network, with nursing, with physicians, we support them with communications plans throughout the year. So like Ashleigh said, we’re really relying on their expertise and we’re sharing our expertise with them as well. So that’s maybe the first piece. And then the way that we have our topic structured, and maybe we didn’t talk enough about this, but our approach to topic management completely different from Avison Young, but two very successful programs. And I think that’s part of the beauty of the Firstup platform is you take it and make it what you need for your organization. So we have about 20 topics. They’re all managed by our internal communications team and primarily they’re around topics or areas of interest. So we’ve got health tips and we’ve got news and updates, but we also have regional topics. So all of those hospital campuses I started with on the map at the beginning, they each have a channel or a topic in Firstup, that’s managed by their local communication lead and they work very closely with the local leadership to engage colleagues there. So what’s important to those colleagues and they’re making sure that content’s

Speaker 11:
There. And I think part of that too is the communication planning is sharing the insights and outcomes. So I meet with those leaders quarterly, Kirstin and the regional leads are meeting all the time. And I show them those metrics and I talk about the outcomes and what’s next and kind of build up the team and their vision. And that helps because they’re all about the numbers,

Speaker 1:
Right? Having that governance committee to talk about the high level decisions and points that come up. Any other questions? We’ve got a couple more minutes. Oh, right next to our Amazon guest.

Speaker 15:
Hey, I’m Leanne, and I’m with Ochsner Health in New Orleans, Louisiana. We met yesterday. Great presentations, both of you. Thank you. My question, and we are new to Firstup, we’re about 30 days into our full congrats

Speaker 1:
Launch. Yeah. 30

Speaker 15:
Days. It’s been great and we’re learning a lot every single day. But for user generated content in particular, how do you keep that content from not overshadowing some of the more important critical business news that you’re trying to get out? And I am thinking particularly in the healthcare space with physicians who we are trying so hard to get engaged with the platform and we’re being very cautious about not giving them information that they don’t need and want. And so curious how you’re doing that, both of you actually, because your platforms are very different and how you might be approaching that.

Speaker 11:
Do you want me to take this one? Sure. Okay. So we have a channel dedicated to LVHN Proud and that’s where all the user generated content lives and people opt into that. So if they want to see it, they will see those posts. If they don’t, then they don’t have to. Of course we would love everybody to participate and want to see those posts, but it’s very popular. 30% of our content is user generated. And so the way that the channels work, you’re really seeing what’s most relevant to you. You’re either opting in or if it’s network news or specific to your campus. Eventually we’ll be opting people into campus news.

Speaker 7:
And I’ll just add that through the platform you have the ability to feature content and that always appears above other content in the platform. So we’re very intentional about making our news and updates and the most critical and relevant information featured. We also use the micro app through Firstup that feeds our intranet homepage and that also displays our featured content. So if colleagues who we know are on the intranet looking for other things, see nothing else from the platform, they’re at least seeing the featured content, which is most important.

Speaker 1:
And those are those embedded links that you can still being in studio and use an omnichannel.

Speaker 11:
And we do have a channel for our employed practices. So they do have their own specific channel that is hyper relevant to their work every

Speaker 1:
Day. We’re down to the final minute time for another question. Okay. To your right, Colleen. Right there in the back row. See? Thank you.

Speaker 9:
Hi everyone. My name is Hillary Young. I work with Wegmans. We’re an east coast grocery store.

Speaker 7:
We love Wegmans too.

Speaker 1:
It’s an experience. Me too.

Speaker 9:
Thank you all for presenting. This was an amazing session. Thank you so much. And thank you for being vulnerable and telling your story. I think that’s a beautiful thing. Thank you. You spoke a little bit about video and kind of when you kicked off how to turn out, you were turning out, it sounds like maybe a lot of storytelling videos. I was curious how large of a team you have dedicated to that type of work. Any video content?

Speaker 11:
So we have a director of multimedia design who is a videographer, and while he manages, he also goes out and captures footage and edits. We also have a dedicated videographer and editor as well. That being said, our social team, our internal comms team, and soon our communications specialist. It’s not unusual for them to capture video on their phone in the moment, the more authentic type and make reels out of those or internal videos. But we have the more user generated by our own team, plus the more polished

Speaker 1:
And we are at time. So round of applause. Pam, Kirstin, and Ashleigh. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Chuck. So the next sessions of the breakout start at 10:30 and let us know if you have any questions on the agenda. Thanks again everybody for your time.