Inside Northwestern Mutual’s culture-reviving online town hall event (VIDEO)
A new headquarters is cause for hoorahs. But how do you take it beyond the usual cookies-and-punch groundbreaking? Learn how one firm united its nationwide staff in an online celebration.
It was an employee town hall for the ages.
In 2017, after opening a new headquarters in Milwaukee, Northwestern Mutual decided it was time to shake things up.
The financial services firm hosted an event with the pizzazz of New Year’s Eve in Times Square—and streamed it to its branch offices in New York, Arizona and its other Wisconsin locale.
Join Olivia Hare, Northwestern Mutual assistant director of corporate strategic communications, in this free video session as she details how the company hosted its live, interactive broadcast to link a workforce of more than 4,000 through MediaPlatform’s enterprise video platform.
In “Hello, Future: Transforming Culture Through Video,” Hare relates how she planned a series of activities to inspire its workforce to celebrate the way new workspaces enable new ways of working.
Northwestern Mutual hosted the first-ever onsite happy hour in its 160-year history. It held a series of tryouts to land an employee emcee to host the event, and it boosted enthusiasm by getting staffers to write their answers to the question, “What are you most excited about for the future?”
You’ll learn how Northwestern Mutual built anticipation through interactive polls and promotions, and how it followed up with useful lessons from corporate.
Hare also tells how the firm:
- Created a “head and heart” town hall that unified employees across the country through its webcast event
- Got people to dig into bite-size learning through an online app
- Jettisoned its rule-driven culture and urged people away from their desks, encouraging them to play games and return to their work stations inspired
- Used MediaPlatform to enable people on different campus locations to engage with each other
- Ushered 10,000 guests through its new center in downtown Milwaukee with a low-cost, high-yield follow-up event that included families, retired employees and others
- Reaped enviable metrics for its events
Watch the presentation now.
