Mayo Clinic’s Shields: The next generation of an employee publication

In late 2011, Mayo Clinic set out to redesign its employee magazine, Mayo Today. The new publication, Shields, features a design that’s clean, attractive, and easy to read, with compelling articles on Mayo Clinic’s work, workforce, changes, and challenges. It’s a rare employee publication that one can imagine reading whether you work for Mayo or not. All of which makes it a deserving winner of Ragan’s 2012 Employee Communications Awards in the Best Employee Magazine (Print) category.

Shields, which runs about 30 pages every quarterly issue, is packed with profiles of Mayo employees, facts and figures on the clinic and its fight against illness, photos of the people at work in its facilities, and articles on the issues and problems confronting health care in the 21st century. A story in its Summer 2012 issue, for example, provides fascinating detail on three of Mayo’s newest health centers specializing in challenges and treatments “once reserved for science fiction.”

Response to the redesign has been positive. Employees opt in to receive the magazine, and by the delivery of its Fall 2012 issue, more than 1,000 workers had opted in to receive new subscriptions, compared to only 53 new subscriptions for Mayo Today in 2011. It’s an achievement the redesign team led by Carol Benson and Jessica Fenske can be justly proud of.

To view the winning work, click here and here.

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