McCann Synergy wins big at the CIPR Excellence Awards

The CIPR Excellence Awards is a firmly established prestigious public relations event celebrating its 38^th year of recognising success around the globe in the communications and relations industry.

Winning the Best Staff Wellbeing Initiative award with Aon

We won the Best Staff Wellbeing Initiative for our work with Aon Plc. We worked with Aon to bring their wellbeing strategy to life through a 21-day kindness campaign that encouraged thousands of acts of kindness across the business.

Like many global companies, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted Aon’s employees, so recognising a need to improve wellbeing, we worked with Aon to create an immersive campaign that brought their wellbeing strategy to life. The strategy for this campaign centred around the single-minded proposition ‘United in Kindness’.

The campaign’s first phase was to make employees aware of Aon’s commitment to wellbeing. To kick off the campaign all employees were gifted a ‘kindness day’, – a day off work to recharge, relax, and be kind to themselves. The kindness day was an activation tactic that embodied the kindness journey Aon was about to take their colleagues on. 

Following the kindness day, we started a 21-day challenge to spread kindness across Aon. Employees were encouraged to share acts of kindness with others at work, within the community or simply be kind to themselves.

Over 5,100 acts of kindness were from employees, and more than 600 employees shared personal stories of giving or receiving kindness. Stories were plotted across a map where all acts of kindness around the globe were captured, driving over 22k page views.

Gemma McGrattan, Managing Director of McCann Synergy, said, “The United by Kindness campaign was a perfect example of how we can achieve results with impact when we collaborate. Aon’s leaders led the change and delivered on their commitment to wellbeing by gifting all employees a kindness day – a day off work to recharge and be kind to themselves. This was the springboard for engaging Aon’s people to engage in the kindness challenge – something we all need sometimes.”

VP of health Transformation at Aon said, ‘We haven’t had leaders take part in something like this in years”.

Mark of Excellence in Employee Engagement and Experience with Aldi UK

We were also awarded the Mark of Excellence for Employee Engagement and Experience for our work relaunching the Aldi UK app.

‘MyALDI’ is an employee portal app used across the business for all internal comms, including payslips, rotas, updates and policy documentation. It’s Aldi’s key employee engagement tool and helps improve business performance. And in 2021, employees shared feedback that they felt they were missing out on the opportunity to be better informed due to the useability of the MyALDI app.

Following app enhancements, we worked with Aldi to design a launch campaign to encourage colleagues to download MyALDI 2.0 and start reaping the benefits. With quantitative data and direct insight from Aldi employees, our single-minded proposition for this campaign was for Aldi employees to feel “MyALDI 2.0 will make life easier for me.”

We launched with a high-impact video that included Aldi colleagues posing for teaser posters and displayed them in every Aldi location to build anticipation. While mirrors and floors in communal spaces were decorated with stick-on clings asking if colleagues had got the ‘Aldi 2.0 glow’.

The app achieved effective results with over 12k Aldi colleagues viewing the MyAldi 2.0 launch page, 81% watching the launch video and 42,070 employees signing up to the app. Feedback from one Aldi employee said, “I loved all the features and how easy it is to use. I find it very engaging and a one-stop-shop for all things Aldi”.

Congratulations to the team behind the success at McCann Synergy; celebrations are in order. You can find out more about our award-winning work here.