Humor and personalization: Highlighting winners of Ragan’s Employee Communications Awards

Employees are the lifeblood of any organization, shaping its unique identity and culture. Making the most of employee passions requires creatively engaging them, however, which ultimately goes a long way toward making an organization a great place to work.

We’ve identified several winners from the 2023 edition of Ragan’s Employee Communications Awards who delivered some of the most innovative initiatives to their workforces. To apply for this year’s edition, remember to apply before the September 20 deadline.

Best Humorous Video: Salesforce, “Marketing Cloud Edge TV”

The background: Humor is a great way of presenting information about the business in a style that resonates with less senior-level audiences. It can also break through the monotony of corporate emails that employees are used to receiving.

Salesforce decided that a little bit of levity could go a long way with their internal comms when the company created “Marketing Cloud EDGE TV”, a humorous video series that intersperses valuable content with jokes and entertainment.

The presenters on the program aren’t actors or C-suiters either — they’re rank-and-file employees at Salesforce, an intentional choice to create recognition and relatability. Program highlights include voiceovers of animals delivering sales tips, and the “Competitor Heartbreak Hotline”, where employees discuss customers that are considering leaving for competitors.

The show resonated, with 78% of first-time viewers returning for more. In a post-video survey, 100% (you read that right!) of respondents reported that the content mix of humor and education was valuable for information retention.

The takeaway: When done with restraint, humor is a great way to help your employees remember valuable work-related information, along with providing much-needed “brain breaks”.

Best Intranet Design: symplr, Internal Comms Team

The background: From email blasts about corporate developments to workplace safety messaging put into the physical world, internal comms is an all-encompassing pursuit. But understanding that a well-designed intranet can bring it all together in a hub of activity for internal comms, healthcare software organization symplr made connectivity a central goal of its new intranet design. Built to reach over 1,800 employees across the globe, the platform, symplr IQ, launched in 2021.

As a one-stop destination for employees, the intranet needed to reflect symplr’s identity. By working with MangoApps, symplr was able to customize the intranet to its unique needs. Leaders and managers were also encouraged to build pages for their teams that aligned with the company’s larger goals for a better employee experience. This collaborative approach helped  HR, IT, legal and finance departments to work together to ensure that the documents and policies every employee needs were easy to find on the platform.

This smart strategy paid off in a big way, with symplr IQ boasting a 97.6% engagement rate. Rather than just a simple online directory, it’s now an integral part of the symplr employee resource package.

The takeaway: Customizing your intranet as a vibrant, interactive destination rather than just a repository for announcements will drive collaboration across business functions and positively impact engagement.

Best Employee Engagement Campaign: CBRE, “Connecting Our Employees Wherever They Work” 

The background: Employee comms can be a challenge, even when you’re not charged with trying to reach employees across the globe. With 115,000 employees worldwide, commercial real estate company CBRE combined tech, smart comms strategy, and well-executed content to bring its employees, who are located in over 100 countries, under one cultural umbrella.

Commercial real estate employees take their work to many places including their desks, meeting rooms, real estate sites, and on the road. CBRE needed to find a way to give these employees the information they needed to succeed no matter their location. This led to the inception of the “CBRE in Your Pocket” campaign.

The initial campaign included images of devices accessing “CBRE Connections”, the company’s mobile internal content platform for employees, cleverly referencing styles of dress that reflected the organization’s global employee population. Additionally, employees were encouraged to participate in monthly raffles and a scavenger hunt that helped employees discover new features and win prizes at the same time.

The campaign was a major success, with posts earning 70,000 unique views and reaching 60% of the workforce. In addition, CBRE In Your Pocket saw a 28% increase in visits and a 215% spike in engaged users.

The takeaway: Internal comms that are branded and personalized to the style of your employee population know no limits — and when you’ve got a mobile, worldwide population, customizing the branding of these materials is another way to ensure you bring the message to them directly. 

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports and hosting trivia.