A well crafted company culture possesses the remarkable ability to captivate employees, instill unwavering loyalty, and provide the necessary support for achieving personal and business aspirations. Yet, building and sustaining such a culture is a delicate endeavor, as it can be broken easily with just a few bad decisions. Nurturing your employees with care and ensuring ethical practices are followed can yield astonishing results for your organization’s bottom line.
Let me share a project I worked on as the information architect and initial designer named “100 for Good.” The endeavor was a tribute to our company’s centennial celebration, manifested in the form of an exclusive progressive web app accessible only to our employees. This innovative platform encouraged them to contribute “100 acts of good” within their communities. Defining an “act of good” was intentionally broad, recognizing the challenge of precisely delineating such a subjective concept. Some participants submitted profound gestures like assisting a disabled neighbor with shopping, while others recorded seemingly simpler deeds like pulling a weed from their lawns.
The underlying objective was to further embed a culture of positive action within the State Farm employee community. The app used elements of gamification where individuals earned points and “badges” as they progressed through various levels. To foster healthy competition and camaraderie, we developed a dynamic leaderboard showcasing participants’ rankings. This really drove engagement. Streamlining the user experience, the process of recording an act of good was optimized into three quick steps, minimizing the need for extensive typing.
The success of the app surpassed our expectations, with its popularity skyrocketing from the very beginning. While we had planned for a specific set of points and levels to what we believed would be enough for six months of usage, we quickly realized that participants were reaching upper levels at an impressive pace. Responding agilely to this unforeseen demand, we swiftly introduced additional levels and badges to maintain user engagement and momentum.
The extraordinary growth and engagement of this internal facing app were unparalleled in the company’s history, and accomplished in record time. What might have typically taken a year to achieve was, remarkably, completed in about five months. Such an outcome was a result of our exceptional team—talented, dedicated, and wholly aligned toward our common vision, and our leadership’s role in reducing bureaucratic and technical obstacles, which significantly contributed to the project’s resounding success.
In conclusion, fostering a thriving company culture and cultivating employee engagement can be a valuable journey that reaps substantial rewards. Drawing from my experience, you should treat your employees with care and respect, as well as aligning their endeavors with meaningful purpose, to build a lasting and prosperous organization.
