Using Social Media: An Organization That’s Doing It

Last night, I had the opportunity to attend a truly inspiring event.  The St. Louis Children’s Hospital Employee Gala.  This is the highlight of the year for the entire hospital from an employee recognition standpoint.  It is a chance to come together to celebrate each employee and the contributions we each make to do what is right for patients and their families.  Why was this an inspiring event?  Several reasons:

• First, any time an organization spends time, money, and effort to recognize and thank employees for the work they do, it’s a great thing.  More and more, we’re hearing that companies are not doing this for a variety of reasons.  For me, it was inspiring not just to have an event to get the employees together, but to take time out to recognize milestone anniversaries of five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, and forty years of service.  Yes, I said FORTY years of service with St. Louis Children’s Hospital.  That is amazing.  No only that, there was one employee in attendance who has been there for fifty-eight years!  How many companies can boast longevity like that?
• It was also a night to honor the Leadership Award winner and the President’s Award winner.  They used FaceBook pages to highlight each nominee and made time to talk about each person while showing their “FB page” on the screens for the audience.
• The emcee talked about the new iPhone app “Kid Care“.  Click the title to link to the app.
• The theme of the evening was “Connecting the Best” and every part of the presentation portion of the night was centered around using social media.  As you can imagine, I was thrilled.

Here are a few examples of how social media fit into the evening’s festivities.

It may be a bit challenging to see, but for those people who use Twitter, I’m sure you can see that there is a Twitter profile up on the screen at the event.  They showed us the @STLChildrens active profile on Twitter so we could see what was being talked about online.

When you’re running a 24/7 hospital, there are always going to be employees who have to work and are not able to participate in events like the Employee Recognition Gala.  So, they arranged to use Skype and gathered some of the employees together so we could talk with them live during the event.  That’s what is being projected on the screen in this picture.  It was certainly fun for the approximately 1,300 in attendance to see live.

I’m proud to work where we’re using social media.  We are on the path and I’m sure we’ll hit some bumps along the way, but at least we’re out there….CONNECTING with the Best!

Thank you and kuddos to the planning committee for the Employee Recognition Gala.  Be sure to check out the St. Louis Children’s Hospital FaceBook page and become a fan!