2013 winner: Midlands Co-op, New Employee Engagement - case study

Mission to success

Midlands Co-operative Society’s ‘Mission Firefly’ employee engagement campaign breathed new life into a tired initiative, ‘Helping Hands’, with outstanding outcomes.

The voluntary scheme involved colleagues from the Society’s Business Support Centre being deployed around the Society’s stores during the busy pre-Christmas trading period.

With colleague interest in the scheme at an all time low, a new approach was required to re-ignite interest and engagement. Mission Firefly was born and the project team became ‘Team Firefly’.

Leading Lights and Fireflies

Two complimentary tactical strands were employed; ‘Leading Lights’ to inspire colleagues and ‘Firefiles’ to engage them in the volunteering process. Using this approach the team managed to implement an employee engagement programme that has brought the head office closer to the frontline, engaged employees in the Society’s core businesses and demonstrated measurable improvements in business performance.

Taking an integrated approach, the campaign drew in expertise from across the Society and used a wide range of activities, events and communication routes to fire colleagues’ enthusiasm.

The first phase of Mission Firefly started with a series of hands on management led initiatives to help stores increase performance at key trading times whilst inspiring colleagues and creating engagement.

Phase two focussed on the sign up and deployment of colleagues into the Society’s food, fashion and home and floristry stores. The tone was light hearted and fun and the
Society’s full suite of internal communications routes were utilised to great effect. The result was a campaign which delivered impressively against all of the set objectives.

The results speak for themselves – massive increase in participation and employee engagement, a clear articulation of the learning points for future success plus a clearly demonstrable link between the internal communications activity and a dramatic rise in sales.

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