Companies combine forces to use engagement as an asset in Corona crisis. On the initiative of Herculean Alliance, Tobania, Duval Union, Branded.Careers, SocialSeeder, #ZigZagHR, Nespresso, Made With Love and Microsoft combine forces.
Together with experts, with none other than Conny Vandendriessche as chairperson, we launch a new initiative. The goal is to play out employee engagement in companies as a key factor in their survival strategy in the midst of the Corona crisis.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast
In this VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world, employee engagement is a top priority for HR professionals and business leaders. This was confirmed by the HR Barometer 2019. Now more than ever, we believe that culture is crucial for our companies to overcome this extreme crisis.
And let corporate culture be our thing. Overcoming a crisis together is a “moment that matters“. Once the crisis is over, it will also be that culture that provides extra connection. We want to collect lessons learned and share best practices within the business world. But we also want to celebrate successes together, no matter how small. We commit ourselves to 3 actions: Measuring – Organising – Sharing.
No repeat of 2009
For the non-Millennials among us, this past week feels like a trip down memory lane. The start of the financial and economic crisis in 2009 is engraved in the collective memory. Let’s not make the same mistakes as we did back then. Since the start of the recession, employees have been asked to make extra efforts. And they did so en masse. The recession continued for several years and took a heavy toll. With a high degree of burn-outs as a result…
An important lesson learned. Hence this call to use the current crisis to strengthen just that commitment that has been so carefully built up in recent years. With a sense of solidarity and in the general interest. To be able to organise a rapid recovery after the crisis, with each organisation’s specific corporate culture as its strongest asset.
3 actions: Measuring – Organising – Sharing.
Action 1: Measuring with Engagement Index in Corona Crisis
The free anonymous employee engagement index was launched in 2019. Thousands of people in Belgium participated. The index surveyed company cultures and confirmed the worldwide trend around employee engagement.
Since the start of the Corona crisis, the index has been expanded with new questions. The answers to these questions should provide insight into the attitude of employees around burning current themes, such as structural teleworking with children at home, or the influence of the crisis on employees’ state of mind.
How to participate in the Corona index from Wednesday 18 March?
- Fill these out here and contribute to a view on the current situation in our country. The survey is anonymous.
- You can also fill it in as a company. You can get your own dashboard, to follow the situation yourself and keep a finger on the pulse in your own organisation.
Action 2: Organising Employee Engagement Awards
Herculean Alliance is organizing the Employee Engagement Awards on June 25 with partners like Tobania, Duval Union, Branded.Careers, SocialSeeder, #ZigZagHR, Nespresso, Made With Love and Microsoft.
The original intention was to launch the Employee Engagement Awards through the kick-off event on 26 March. There the jury would be announced and the starting shot would be given to submit engagement cases. Due to the Corona virus, the launch event cannot physically take place. But this does not detract from the announcement of the professional jury next week, nor from the launch of the Call for cases.
The chairperson of the jury will be female entrepren Conny Vandendriessche. She attaches great importance to employee involvement. The other members of the jury will be announced next week.
In the light of Corona, the Employee Engagement Awards take on an extra dimension. We’re not just looking for stories from organizations that show how they’re committed to Employee Engagement. There is also a specific focus on how companies respond to pressing issues of maintaining connection, culture and engagement. This at a time when the Corona virus is raging in all its ferocity. After all, a strong culture and commitment of employees – even in the event of technical unemployment – will determine the survival strategy.
Action 3: Sharing – Our platform available free of charge
Organisations are currently setting up all kinds of actions, ranging from close solidarity actions to specific calls or the setting up of webinars. Many initiatives do not reach enough people or are limited to isolated actions.
We want to open our platform to all experiences around the theme. Herculean Alliance is happy to offer that megaphone, with a reach of +100,000 business people in Flanders alone. In other words, a form of crowdsourcing.
Do you have a story or best practice to share? Would you as a company like to support this initiative? Contact us and we’ll give you access to our platform, so you can reach more people. #sharingiscaring
*At this very moment we see that more and more events have to be cancelled in the spring. At the moment, there are no indications that the Awards (in the outdoor Hercules Village) cannot take place at the end of June. Of course, the situation is being closely monitored and the date for a possible postponement to autumn is an option.