Gamifying Internal Communications: St. Luke’s University Health Network Employees Earn Branded Gear by Staying Informed
// By Jane Weber Brubaker //
If you’re a big, distributed health network with multiple locations and thousands of employees, how do you make sure your employees keep you top of mind when they’re out in the community? One way is to capitalize on what they already love.
“We’re a large 10-hospital network — soon to be 12 — with over 15,500 employees,” says Mary Beth Golab, director of internal communications at St. Luke’s University Health Network in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. “It’s a little daunting to get information out to every single employee, just based on the breadth of our Network.”
Mary Beth Golab, director of internal communications, St. Luke’s University Health Network
To tackle the problem, St. Luke’s chief marketing officer, Ken Szydlow, convened a group of hospital leaders to brainstorm ideas on how best to communicate good news across the enterprise and engage and enlist employees to become brand ambassadors. “We not only had the COO, but presidents of the hospitals, human resources, IT, purchasing, and marketing,” says Golab.
Szydlow introduced Donna DeMarco, co-founder and vice president at Bethlehem-based Viddler, Inc., to the group. Viddler provides online, on-demand video technology and content delivery services for health care organizations. “What eventually came out of it was utilizing these short, fun videos that our employees would watch and share,” Golab says.
When employees watch the videos, they earn points that can be redeemed for St. Luke’s branded gear. Neither Golab nor DeMarco anticipated how popular the incentive program — Star Points — would become, or how quickly.