Winner: Prevea Health Care
Campaign: Circle of Giving
Prevea Health Care engaged its employees in a "virtuous circle" with its Circle of Giving program. Under its Dollars for Doers initiative, Prevea encouraged staff to volunteer
at nonprofits, earning donations in their names; it also urged them to participate in the United Way and established the Prevea Family Fund, which helps employees who need
financial assistance. Finally, the Prevea PTO Bank let employees donate unused paid time off to benefit other Prevea workers.
To promote the campaign to its internal stakeholders - its employees - the PR team created an intranet video based on "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" to introduce the
campaign. Tapping the organization's IS director to represent "Ty Pennington," the video presented the details of the new program and issued a call to action. The intranet
facilitated participation by providing easy click-throughs to allow employees to check off boxes representing their choices of how to donate, whether through time, money, or
both.
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 initiative. More
than $5,000 was raised for the Prevea Family Fund, and employees have been asking that the Prevea "Ty" speak at their meetings. The organization added an incentive to sweeten 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.
Honorable Mentions
Three years ago, a group of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) employees at Ernst & Young formed an employee network known as bEYond, in order to call attention
to and support LGBT-inclusiveness. By establishing the "Above and BEYond" campaign, which included brochures, posters, T-shirts and ads that were featured in Out Magazine and The
Advocate; assembling an LGBT Inclusiveness Roundtable in NYC that included participants ranging from JP Morgan Chase to Viacom; and producing a video documentary about the bEYond
network to post on their Web site and to leverage with media, Ernst & Young has been able to spur over 60 news articles in various media outlets and has become a leader in
LGBT issues in the workplace.
In an effort to extend aid to Honeywell employees who were devastated by the heavy rains that caused a dam to break in Juarez, Mexico in July 2006, the company launched the
"Honeywell Humanitarian Relief Efforts" campaign, which worked to rally other employees, raise money, and rebuild homes and lives. Chairman and CEO Dave Cote and President of
Honeywell Hometown Solutions Tom Buckmaster spread the word by sending a message to all Honeywell employees in August, explaining the situation and describing the devastation, as
well as asking for donations and support. This resulted in widespread employee fundraising efforts totaling nearly $75,000 along with clothing, perishable goods and medical
supplies.
The employees of Lockheed Martin have volunteered nearly 1.9 million hours in community outreach programs, and the corporation donated amounts in excess of $20 million in 2004
alone; however, external audiences had no real knowledge of these facts until the PR team at David Grossman & Associates found ways to get the word out with the "Building a
Community Relations Strategy for Lockheed Martin" campaign. The PR team formed a cross-functional Integrated Process Team, or IPT, of internal experts from across the corporation
to develop and employ a more tactical method of improving CR at Lockheed Martin. Using research findings, the IPT set criteria for all CR programs and implemented them efficiently
to achieve their goals.