Gold Quill Awards: Judging
The Need to Know
by James D. Lynch, American Express, New York, USA
Sometimes you just need to know.
You need to know what others think about your work. You need to know how you stack up. You need to know if you, well, can win.
That’s why our business-to-business employee communication team at American Express applied to the Gold Quill Awards in 2009. We wanted feedback, comparative insight and recognition for our executive and what we thought might be considered a break-through internal blog.
No matter where people work, they yearn for dialogue, relish feeling “in the know” and follow leaders who are remarkable, not boring. Our vice chairman, Ed Gilligan, knows this, practices this and challenged us to find a new way to connect with more than 21,000 employees in 140 markets.
Our answer, and ultimately our winning entry for a Gold Quill Award for writing, was called “Ed’s blog.”
“Ed’s blog” was the first intranet-based employee blog introduced at American Express. It blends Ed’s authentic voice with low-cost media to drive employee engagement and to create dialogue. We found that Ed’s blog was a unique way for one of our top executives and his communication team to help employees know how they could contribute to business goals, to reinforce organizational values and messages in authentic and innovative ways, and to create opportunities for two-way exchanges between business leaders and employees.
Our internal results were very compelling. We achieved high click-through rates, high awareness of key messages, high satisfaction scores and most of all, great dialogue. In response to Ed’s straightforward and personal writing, employees spoke up—they shared what was on their minds and their hearts. They shared their ideas and their concerns. It was powerful, and during the economic crisis, absolutely necessary. We were winning internally—for our executive client, for our employees, for our customers and for our shareholders.
Our results were more than enough. Did we really need the recognition of a Gold Quill Award?
Yes. We needed to know what we could do better, and how to continue to raise the bar on our performance. The judges’ comments on our entry gave us valuable insight to be able to do this. Colleagues at other companies took notice and we started new collaborative partnerships together. And we’ll admit it—when we won, it felt great (amazing actually) to “need” to make space on the credenza in Ed’s office for the Gold Quill Award.
Start preparing your Gold Quill Award entry today! The early-bird deadline is 27 January 2010, and the final deadline is 3 February 2010.
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