As an organization that values relationships and the prosperity of people above all else, Luck Companies’ Communications Team’s strategy revolves around a central idea: bringing associates’ voices and perspectives forward. Amid the rapidly changing environment brought on by the Coronavirus pandemic, this strategy has never been more important. During times of uncertainty and social distancing, it’s our charge to keep people feeling connected and informed.
Over the years, we’ve learned a great deal about what it takes to keep people inspired and connected to our mission through ongoing dedicated research and through the results of our Associates Engagement Surveys each year. These findings, paired with our corporate vision to provide people with the tools they need to perform and lead at their best, highlighted a communications gap that many companies face – How can we reach and connect our workforce more effectively using technology?
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Jacob Morgan, an expert on the future of work, explored the factors driving true, long term associate engagement at best-in-class organizations around the world. “When organizations make real gains, it’s because they’re thinking longer-term. They’re going beyond what engagement scores are telling them to do in the moment and redesigning employee experience, creating a place where people want, not just need, to work each day.” Morgan identified three environments that matter most: “cultural, physical, and technological.”
With nearly 900 associates, spread across five states, working in a variety of environments – we are reliant on technology to communicate with one another. Like most organizations, every associate at Luck Companies has a company-issued email address and we’ve established a series of distribution lists that allow us to reach specific groups and departments. But, what we really needed to discover was our opportunity to leverage technology to communicate with each other in a way that felt less formal, more dynamic and fun, and in alignment with our culture.
So we created an app. An internal app that functions like a social network and links to our company’s HR system, allowing every single one of our associates to have a profile, post content, “like” what they see/read, and engage with one another.
We decided to call the app GreenRoom.
By definition, a greenroom is a space where performers can engage more informally when they’re not performing. We were inspired by this concept and really liked the idea of naming our app GreenRoom because it serves that same function for our associates.
After launching GreenRoom to the company just over a year ago, we have seen incredible results and recognized two remarkable things: 1) People want to participate and share what matters to them 2) That putting the voice of our company in the hands of our company – not just our corporate communications team or senior leadership – has made for some of the most authentic storytelling, creative photography, and idea-sharing our company has ever seen. In fact, 83% of associates are contributing to the success of the platform by consistently sharing content and connecting in ways they’ve never been able to before.
In these last few weeks, as our teams have adopted new approaches to accomplishing our work and serving our customers, GreenRoom has continued to serve as a way for our associates to share what’s happening at their locations, to stay connected, and to inspire each other to move forward together. How is your organization leveraging technology to keep people connected?
