Lights, Camera, Employee Engagement!
July 30th, 2008 by Christine Palma
When I began my internship with Insidedge this summer, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I would be doing.
Research and writing? Sure.
Building media lists? Of course.
Media monitoring? Absolutely.
Taking on the role of office video historian? Not exactly…
On my first day as an intern, Edward introduced me to a new company wide initiative called “Real People. Real Stories.” It’s basically a YouTube-style intranet site intended to bring over 500 GolinHarris employees from around the world together by sharing their stories of people, trust, ideas, pride, winning and collaboration experienced in the office.
So for the past several weeks, I have been filming different people in the New York office as they share their stories. Some videos are funny, while others are more serious. Most of the videos are less than a couple of minutes long. In fact, a few people have managed to produce blooper reels longer than the final videos themselves!
For so many reasons, this experience is an illustration of employee engagement at its best. GolinHarris employees are connecting with colleagues all over the world in a way that has never been possible before (thanks to subtitles, they actually understand each other). They are prompted to reflect on their experiences, either to reminisce about a successful project or thank a cubicle buddy for daily encouragement. It’s also an excellent opportunity for management to listen to their employees – and ultimately respond.
As a shameless member of Generation Y, I am excited to see this kind of activity taking place in the office. User-generated content is an increasingly important factor in the world of communication and bringing the phenomenon right to your employees’ desks provides the empowerment, accountability and conversation that the modern professional craves in the workplace.
Tags: employee communications, employee engagement, entertainment, peer-to-peer, Social networking, video
July 30th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Hey Christine,
Great post. As the temp RPRS coordinator, this initiative has proved to be an interesting tool for me as well.
I have learnt so much about GolinHarris employees and operations across the globe. I actually feel like I personally know these people, even though I’ve only seen them on minute-long videos.
Needless to say, I find myself surprisingly “engaged”!
-Simran.
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
[...] the summer, Insidedge intern Christine blogged about working on “Real People, Real Stories”. In a recent PRWeek article (subscription [...]
September 25th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
[...] found this article about an international company, GolinHarris, that developed an intranet site similar to YouTube, [...]