Colleague Engagement Programme
Partner: Sainsbury's
The Challenge
Sainsbury’s asked us to come up with a concept for a national Colleague Engagement Programme that would involve all 150,000 colleagues across their 900 stores, depots and head office.
It had to engage all their colleagues in Sainsbury’s’ five core Corporate Social Responsibity values and encourage active participation from among as many people as possible.
The Solution
After years of Make The Difference Days being launched in Sainsbury’s stores, using ideas dreamt up by Sainsbury’s HQ, we suggested a new plan – ask all 150,000 colleagues to create the next generation of actions and events.
So, we launched a competition asking Sainsbury’s colleagues what simple action they would ask all 150,000 colleagues and 19 million customers to do to change the world.
We introduced the competition with an animated film featuring We Are What We Do co-founder Eugenie Harvey and Sainsbury’s CEO, Justin King, which was shown to every Sainsbury’s colleague and put posters and postcards in the 900 stores and warehouses.
Suggestions were collected by text, web and postcard in in-store dropboxes.
We were inundated with great ideas, over 1000 entries – from starting carpools in store, to holding Recycle Your Bra events, from going vegetarian for the day, to showcasing Sainsbury’s colleagues’ hobbies and talents instores.
One person wanted a giant game of tiddlywinks.
The authors of the best 60 ideas were invited down to the Sainsbury’s head office in London where they worked with key figures from around the Sainsburys business (including community, charity, sourcing, packaging and environmental experts) and specialists from the We Are What We Do team, to develop their initial thoughts into fully fledged initiatives that could go on to be future Make The Difference days held nationally in all Sainsbury’s stores.
Read how one of these ideas, Recycle your chargers, was brought to life here.
Impact
The overall campaign and competition reached all 150,000 colleagues directly and at least 5,000 participated in generating over 1,000 new ideas, with a further 60 colleagues taking part in a creative day at Sainsbury’s HQ. Feedback and focus groups during these activities demonstrated that Colleagues substantially increased their awareness of the company’s values and felt empowered and genuinely consulted on the future of the Make The Difference Day programme.
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