Business London, June 2002

Strategy + Creativity = Great Communications
The 2002 IABC Virtuoso Awards Gala showcases
communications talent in southwestern Ontario
By Max Morden, IABC/London

Hiram Walker & Sons Limited recently learned that good employee communications can be fun and save money at the same time. Using colour-coded Lego bricks, more than 350 employees spent half a day building ‘towers of waste’ and then tearing them down to rebuild ‘towers of waste reduction’.

The purpose of the interactive learning game was to teach employees about reducing waste and encourage them to come up with their own ideas, says Karen Mingay, manager of PR & Communications. “The result was $1.3 million worth of new ideas on how to reduce waste in the business.”

Bringing Lego to Life – Involving Employees in Reducing Waste is one of 20 winning projects being honoured June 6 at the IABC London Virtuoso Awards at Sunningdale Golf & Country Club. This entry, which won an Award of Excellence in the category of Employee-Member Communications, has another claim to fame: it’s also a winner at IABC’s Gold Quill, the same awards program but at an international level.

The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) is a worldwide professional association of 13,000 members in 52 countries dedicated to fostering excellence in communications. The London Chapter of IABC consists of a wide range of communications-related professionals throughout southwestern Ontario – experts in fields like public and community relations, corporate communications, marketing, fundraising and creative service industries such as graphics design, video production and writing.

Organizations today have a wide variety of stakeholders and business communicators are charged with communicating effectively with all of them. IABC recognizes that the success of an organization can depend on good communications in many contexts – getting buy-in from employees to a new program, dealing with the media in a crisis, marketing a new product, raising funds for a vital project, or delivering both good and bad news to shareholders.

IABC London is known internationally for the quality of its award program, open to members and non-members alike. Entries are not judged against each other bur are judged against a strict set of criteria that take into consideration all phases of the project, from initial strategy to implementation and results. This year the judging was done by a panel of communications experts from the Ottawa IABC chapter.

As a first entrant to an IABC award program, Mingay found the process to be a valuable learning experience. A key benefit of winning an award is the support it can build for your programs within the company, she says. “When your work is recognized for excellence by professional communicators around the world, it says a lot about what you are doing.”

The Ragan Report May 12, 2003

Benchmarking File

It’s Your Move - Hiram Walker turns a key business message into a big game for employees – who play it all the way to $1.3 million worth of new ideas.

How’d you like to see your co-workers scrambling around with a bunch of Legos, trying to build a tower?

Hiram Walker & Sons Limited employees had that pleasure recently. The company closed down business for half a day so workers could play a game called “Bringing Lego to Life – Involving Employees in Waste Reduction.”

In random teams of eight, employees worked together to match LEGOs – each worth $25,000 – to cards that each listed one of six categories of waste at Hiram Walker. Once they figured that all out correctly, the group built LEGO “Towers of Waste”. The key, of course, was then building a “Tower of Waste Reduction”.

After everyone had a chance to play the game, the company’s President issued a challenge to employees to come up with $500,000 worth of ideas to reduce waste. Within the six weeks that followed, every department held a meeting to discuss specific ideas for reducing waste in their areas. Ideas were gathered, researched and summarized and then sent to the finance department for analysis.

“Waste is nobody’s friend – it adds no value to the business,” explains Karen Mingay, manager of PR & Communications for Hiram Walker & Sons. She created this and other learning games for the company. “Management had a general understanding of the extent and cost of the waste throughout our plants. But they knew that front line employees had a better grip on the source of waste in their work environment. Their challenge was to involve employees in identifying and then eliminating the sources of waste.”

We’d say it worked: A total of $1.3 million of new ideas for reducing waste were collected from employees, she says, adding that within one year, more than $300,000 savings were realized as a direct result of these ideas.

Why? Employees liked playing the game, so they got into it. “There was an overwhelmingly positive response from employees with 98 percent saying that the game was interesting, enjoyable and informative,” Mingay says. One of the most common comments, she adds, is that workers enjoyed the opportunity to meet different employees from other parts of the plant and office.

Injecting some fun into the workday

The “Waste Reduction” game was the third hands-on learning activity created for Hiram Walker employees. The first two were based on classic board games and focused on themes of “Cost Savings” and “Process Busters”; both, Mingay says, were very positively received by employees.

The reason: “Traditional communication tools such as presentations, newsletters and meetings focus on sharing information – they are strictly one-way telling,” she says. “In order to involve employees, we needed them to truly understand the issues, which is a giant leap beyond simply having the knowledge.”

Mingay points to the Chinese proverb that says, “I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand.”

“The game became the “DO” Factor,” she explains.

But is was also critical that the games be fun for employees, she adds, explaining that “when people are relaxed and comfortable they are open to participate. It is through this participation in the discussion and challenges that the understanding is built.

The fun takes the work out of learning and turns it into play.”

The “Waste Reduction” game was so successful, it was adapted by Hiram Walker’s sister company in Scotland. But it was also well received on this side of the Atlantic: “Waste reduction” – which Mingay will discuss in detail in a session at IABC’s International Conference in June – won a 2002 Gold Quill award.

© 2003 Lawrence Ragan Communications, Inc.
From The Ragan Report, www.ragan.com 312-960-4100

The Windsor Star, August 8, 2002

Game Aids Company in Waste Reduction
by Brendan Richardson,
Star Staff Reporter

Trimming corporate waste doesn’t have to damage employee relations.

In fact, it can improve them.

By playing a simple Lego game, employees at Hiram Walker & Sons Limited were able to devise waste reduction strategies amounting to $1.3 million.

Using colour-coded Lego bricks, more than 350 Hiram Walker employees spent a half day building towers of corporate waste and then tearing them down.

In the end , the goal was to reduce waste in areas such as packaging materials, raw material in the distillery process as well as productivity waste.

Problems were identified and solutions were developed, said Karen Mingay, manager of Hiram Walker’s public relations and communications, who also created the game.

“There’s a Chinese proverb – I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand,” said Mingay.

When an employee experiences a company’s initiatives and efforts firsthand, the company becomes less abstract and more accessible, she said.

“The whole purpose of the interactive game is to involve employees in the learning, so they can become more involved in the business. Our employees who work day to day are the ones who know the business, and who are in the best position to contribute,” said Mingay.

The game also improves employee morale as people get to know each other and feel a part of a team effort, she said.

Mingay captured an International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Gold Quill Award of Merit award for the game. Competing among her peers in 19 countries, she was honoured at a banquet in Chicago two months ago.

Mingay’s game was so successful that it was adopted by Hiram Walker’s sister company in Scotland.

Windsor Star, November 27, 2003

New Look at Hiram Walker
by Ted Whipp, Star Staff Reporter

Recent changes at Hiram Walker & Sons Limited involve two of its most well-known people moving from the Walkerville distillery…
In recent weeks, Karen Mingay, the company’s media and community representative, has left the company after 18 years to start her own business.

It’s based on her recent work to develop entertaining and educational games as corporate learning tools for Hiram Walker. Her efforts helped the company achieve substantial cost-savings and have also received acclaim from the North American business communications community…

Mingay’s new business involves developing games that can teach a company’s staff about their corporate community and encourage and challenge them to come up with ideas.

“Creating the learning games at Hiram Walker was a labour of love for me,” said Mingay whose Windsor-based company is called Bizz Buzz Communications. “I realized the skills I had developed were marketable in helping develop ways to engage employees.”