Company: Prevea Health
Timeframe: 2006, ongoing
Prevea Health prides itself on being a good steward of the community. But this health-care organization, which was born 10 years ago and operates in 12 medical health centers, wanted more.
"We wanted to take it to a new level, do something to get our employees more excited about giving back to the community," says Kristin Bouchard, public relations specialist at Prevea. "Health care
organizations are always being asked to be sponsors, which we do, and we donate to a number of campaigns, but those decisions were always made on a higher level. That is important, but we wanted our
employees to get more involved; we wanted to get them engaged and excited about giving back to the community."
Mike Milligan, the organization's vice president of marketing and communications, adds: "I'm on our leadership team, and it's part of my job to be involved in the community, but we wanted to make
sure the effort is across the entire organization. It doesn't matter what your title is. We have 1,300 employees - what better PR than to have them all be ambassadors?"
For Prevea, spreading the good will beyond the C-suite and throughout the organization demonstrates who Prevea is, as an organization. It also sends the right message to employees and physicans
that Prevea cares enough about the community to encourage them to give back and let them do it during their workday. "We're putting our money where our mouth is," says Milligan. "This is how we show
our support."
The development of the Circle of Giving campaign involved a handful of challenges, some of them quite basic. "With health care organizations, you have people from all walks of life, and at all pay
scales," says Bouchard. "We have learned through surveys that not everybody can give money, so we wanted to emphasize choice."
Employees participating in the Circle of Giving can give money through the United Way, but Prevea also encourages them to give volunteer time through its Dollars for Doers program, which donates
$100 to a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization after an employee has volunteered there for 20 hours.
"We understand you are on a tight budget, but why not give of your time, even if it's just five hours a year?" Bouchard notes. "As we went through the details and talked it through, we became
excited about how it would work with the employees."
The Moving Parts
There are a few components to the Circle of Giving program. Bouchard notes that the mantra of the campaign is "Give Time, Give Money, or Give Both," to emphasize the element of choice. The United
Way and Dollars for Doers are the first two options the campaign offers for employees to give back to the community. But there are a couple of unique ways they can contribute, as well.
The Family Fund is an internal "bank" that helps Prevea employees who need financial assistance during emergencies in their lives, such as a family death or serious illness. Bouchard tells the
story of an employee whose mother was very sick. While the woman had to take extra time to take care of her mom, she needed to take still more time off to deal with a surgery that she needed herself.
"She requested a donation from the Family Fund, and the committee provided her with a monetary contribution to keep her afloat while all this was happening in her life," says Bouchard.
Similarly, people might not always have accrued the time off they might need in an emergency, and to take care of them, Prevea developed the PTO Bank. Employees can donate some of their own paid
time off to this fund, which is then distributed to employees who have used all their paid time off but cannot afford to take unpaid time in traumatic times.
The program creates goodwill among the employees who already work for Prevea, but one bonus benefit is the way it attracts recruits. Says Milligan: "We know from feedback from employees that it's
a positive recruitment tool for us. It demonstrates that this is an organization that means what it says." That, in turn, boosts employee satisfaction rates.
To create the campaign and get the word out, the leadership developed a committee to set the strategy. It was crucial to choose people who were considered opinion leaders within Prevea, and not
just from the leadership team. "It had to be a group of people that could go to the masses of employees and say 'I'm involved in a group that's doing great things,'" says Bouchard. "We wanted to make
sure this group was talking it up."
Milligan says that choosing the people for this committee was among the best practices represented by the campaign. "We looked at 'key influencers,'" he says. "One person, Holly, who was a nurse,
had been in the organization for a long time, she knew a lot of people, and she has positive relationships and is very positive herself. She isn't a traditional 'mover and shaker,' but she was
someone people could identify with."
Spreading the word was likely the biggest challenge the group faced. Given a system of 12 clinics, how do you get word to everyone? The organization had always held rallies for the United Way,
which produced results, but not on the scale Prevea now wanted. The committee felt they had to do something unique and exciting, to get the word to as many people as they could. "As we were talking
about how to communicate, the idea of a video on the employee intranet came up," says Bouchard.
Milligan notes that the committee decided early on that to keep it real, the video should be "attractive, but not overly polished." And, says Bouchard, although Prevea would ordinarily have its ad
agency work on a video, this time the group chose not to go that route.
Keeping It Real
"We had our people write the script and help with the production of it," she says. During the brainstorming sessions, the committee came up with the idea of doing a take-off on the television show
"Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." Bouchard says she figured it would either be a blast, or Prevea would be the laughing stock of the community.
Prevea's director of information systems, Mike Fisher, took the role of Ty Pennington, the TV host of the show. "He really got into the role," says Bouchard. "He watched the show, and he tried to
imitate what the real Ty would do. He did makeup for an hour, spiked his hair and everything. He was very excited about making sure this would get everyone else excited."
The committee kept the details of the video secret, while at the same time building buzz by dropping strategic hints. The employees knew that something was coming on October 2, that it was unique,
and that it had to do with film - and they probably also noticed that the IS director was looking a little different.
Serendipitously, the real "Extreme Makeover" show was taping in nearby Fond du Lac while Prevea was working on its version in Green Bay, Wis. Because of that coincidence, the team was able to
capitalize on the attraction the show was generating in the local media. Television crews were only too happy to spend some time filming and interviewing the real Ty Pennington, then add some
coverage on a local organization's efforts to create a video simulacrum.
Milligan says they allotted a day to shoot the video. Bouchard notes that the committee did ask a professional videographer to do the taping and help with production. "He got into it," she says,
"watched the show a couple of times, and figured out how to use some of the special effects and camera angles they use on the show. He was very flexible in working with us. Honestly, having a day to
produce a 10-minute video, he did fantastic work."
Once it was edited, the group formatted the video to include on its intranet. They posted the video to the intranet on Sunday afternoon and scheduled a blast e-mail to staff for the next day that
would encourage employees to view the video and consider giving. More than 90% of the staff and physicians saw video that day, and e-mail responses were overwhelming. Meanwhile, Prevea's "Ty
Pennignton" was circulating in the office and signing "autographs."
An automated feature kicked in after people had viewed the video, making it extremely easy for them to answer the call to action. "Once people view the video, it pops them back into an online
donation form to easily fill out with their choices of how they want to give," says Bouchard. "They checked boxes online, which were then forwarded to our spreadsheet."
The results of the effort were impressive. More than 90% of the staff viewed the video. United Way donations tripled, raising more than $21,000, compared to $7,000 the year before. More than 100
hours of paid time off were donated to the PTO Bank, and more than 25 people signed up to participate in the Dollars for Doers volunteer program. More than $5,000 was raised for the Prevea Family
Fund, and employees are asking for the Prevea "Ty Pennington" to speak at their meetings. The organization added an incentive to the campaign, too: If people signed up to donate either time or money
by a certain time, they were treated to a lunch with Prevea's Ty, or received tickets to see the Green Bay Packers, or other gifts.
All of the efforts are continuing to grow, as well. There's already talk of a five-year celebration T-shirt, and a group of the leaders participated in a Habitat for Humanity build in December, an
event they plan to repeat. In addition, the Circle of Giving could be incorporated into the orientation sessions for new employees. The committee just keeps coming up with new ideas.
Prevea's Circle of Giving campaign is a finalist in the PR News CSR Awards program. A breakfast ceremony on March 23, 2007 at the Press Club in Washington, D.C., will celebrate the winners and
present a panel on "Making Your CSR Efforts Relevant to Consumers," featuring Dan Butler, vp, merchandising, retail operations, National Retail Federation; Eileen Dunn, vp, corporate communications,
community relations, CVS; and Mike Lawrence, evp, Cone Inc.
Contacts:
Kristin Bouchard, 920.429.1762, [email protected]; Mike Milligan, 920.429.1765, [email protected]
The PR Essentials
One of the most important elements of the Circle of Giving Campaign, according to Mike Milligan, vice president of marketing and communications at Prevea Health, was the fact that it actively
involved a disparate group of people from all over the organization. Nothing about the program was dictated to the participants, and their creativity and choices were key to its success. "We
presented it in such a way that they could take ownership and develop the program," Milligan says. "It didn't come from the PR department, although we were part of it. We guided the people who made
the decisions. That's the best way to get people on board."
The choices of people to participate on the committee and help spread the word were critical. Among the "key influencers" were nurses and other employees with whom the rank-and-file would
identify. And information systems director Mike Fisher, Prevea's "Ty Pennington," is someone who is well respected across the organization, does his job well and is well-liked. More importantly, he
is positive about the organization and about being committed to community service. The committee members were united by their good attitude and contagious enthusiasm.
Feedback and relationship building became important components. Kristin Bouchard, public relations specialist at Prevea, notes that the committee took it upon themselves to make it an effective,
workable campaign, and something they could get excited about. The group devotes time to answer questions and talk about the campaign to generate additional positive relationships. She jokes, "I
could spend half my day answering questions."
Knowing their audience was a major benefit, adds Bouchard. "We used online video, and it sounds so simple, but we really debated how to communicate," she says. "We talked about getting everyone
together as a group, making a DVD, and other ways to communicate with everybody." That discussion was important, she says. Because of variations in the staff's schedules, and the fact that they were
dispersed across 12 locations, they needed to have access to the video on their own terms - something a group meeting wouldn't accomplish. The video was easily accessible for the staff.
Last but not least, both Bouchard and Milligan stress the role played by leadership buy-in. All of Prevea's executives were very supportive and excited to promote the campaign. Milligan notes that
the group's CEO went out of his way to make sure he was visible with his support for the program, taking a role in the video. "If you have buy-in from the top, you will succeed," says Milligan.