Engaging Staff with H.Engage (aka Airbo)

A snapshot of the tiles we used for the kick-off. 

Today we launched HEngage. H.Engage is an easy and fun tool to inform our staff about programs, benefits and other news and happenings. We actively use our intranet to share information with staff and compliment this with face-to-face meetings, Facebook, blogs, Twitter, bulletin boards, text messages, etc... (We do our best to meet people where they are.) But, staying on top of ASHA business in addition to professional news leaves many of us feeling like we're drinking from a fire hose. We've launched H.Engage to help us reinforce key messages in a fun and engaging way. 

Staff from all over the building contributed content for today's launch. One of the things that made our Mediterranean Lifestyle Challenge engaging was having so many people share content and their experience. We're hoping to leverage that strength again with H.Engage and have lots of staff contribute content.

For those of you interested in the back story, read on... I met Vlad Gyster at the Human Human Resource Executive Health and Benefits Leadership Conference in April. Vlad is the CEO and Cofounder of H.Engage. In May, I lead a round table discussion on social media at the Alliance for Workplace Excellence annual event. Caroline Wizeman from Near Infinity said they created a tool to gamify social media sharing to encourage employees to share content and build their employer brand. I was intrigued by this idea. I got in touch with Vlad to see if he knew of any tools that would allow us to do something like this. As we chatted, we decided the H.Engage platform might do the trick. And, my timing was great for once, H.Engage was launching a pilot and invited us to participate. 

Vlad did a demo for a group of staff and they recognized the potential and jumped on board to create content for the launch. The content is presented in the form of a "tile."  Each tile consists of: 

• Image
• Headline – 45 characters
• Supporting content – 300 characters
• Question – The question a staff member will answer about the content to earn points.
• Link – A web link for more info or to seek the answer to the question. 

The tiles have a nice clean look. Kate Bernier at H.Engage has been exceedingly helpful in reviewing the tiles we've created and giving us feedback. She's been monitoring the activity of our staff since we launched at 11:00 a.m. and making adjustments as she sees how people are interacting. 

Every two weeks, we will hold a prize drawing. Participants earn points as they answer the questions on the tiles and these points are translated into raffle tickets. We'll do our first drawing on August 1 for a Jambox by Jawbone. 

We're looking for content contributions, prize ideas and general feedback about the tool during the pilot. I'm optimistic that H.Engage will be a helpful tool to have in our communication arsenal.