Tetra Pak gives employees a programme to LiVE for

By Kelly Kass

Every morning somewhere in the world two Tetra Pak employees are preparing to do something they have never done before in their lives.  They are about to present and facilitate an event which will amuse, educate, delight and engage 100 of their colleagues for 4 hours.
 
LiVE Tetra Pak has so far been attended by about half of Tetra Pak’s global workforce of 21,000. And the results have exceeded all expectations of the core team that includes Khaled Ismail, Corporate Brand Director and Maria Andren, Director Corporate Communications.

“LiVE Tetra Pak has been extremely successful. My biggest surprise is how employees so far have embraced the LiVE Tetra Pak experience. When we started rolling the programme out we weren’t really 100 per cent sure what their reactions would be. The spirit and passion that we see amongst our employees when the experience is rolled out has been amazing,” Maria observes.

The project started out as a further stage of getting employees involved as a result of the redevelopment of the Tetra Pak brand by Ogilvy & Mather in 2007 and renewed core values.  As the project developed it grew in scope as senior management decided to use the initiative as a perfect opportunity to let employees better understand the company strategy, communicate its renewed Core Values as well as generate better awareness around the brand Tetra Pak.  This to result in allowing all employees to LiVE Tetra Pak. Tetra Pak turned to simply experience – the London based employee engagement company - and sister to simply-communicate.
 
“Tetra Pak already had extremely high employee satisfaction scores,” explains Marc Wright, Strategic Director of simply experience :
 
“There was a real risk that we could help Tetra Pak run this programme but the outcome would be only a small tick increase in an already highly-engaged workforce. But when they explained just how much their world was changing in terms of rising competition and customer demands, we suddenly had the key to the programme. People love working for Tetra Pak; it’s a unique organisation. 
 
“That sounds like a cliché but in their case it’s true. Partly I guess because it is one of the largest privately-owned companies in the world, which is incredibly successful with a wonderfully consensual management style that derives from its Swedish roots.”
 
Not your average presentation

LiVE Tetra Pak is a four-hour event that is delivered in a variety of venues from Tetra Pak factories and gymnasiums to canteens, hotels and conference spaces around the world.  It consists of a story that takes the delegates through a roller coaster of emotion and theatre to involve them in the company’s stories and ambitions.
 
Simply experience Creative Director, Gerard Brown reflects :

“LiVE Tetra Pak was an evolution of a concept. We wanted something that was simple, powerful and could translate easily right around the globe.     

“Emotional engagement is everything. Giving audiences an experience that takes them on an emotional journey sits at the heart of programmes like this. We all love strong stories. Our company's - where we all work - provide those stories. Telling them and sharing them is what its all about.

“We very much wanted this to be a ‘bottom-up’ story, with real examples straight from people within the company from factory to office. For example for the Core Values section we spent a great deal of time finding exceptional examples of people living the values with passion and then went all over the world to capture them. We wanted a realistic, edgy video style which put the personalities first whether they were helping the slum dwellers of Cairo to recycle packaging or improving the way the ink flowed in a printing factory in Brazil."

Simply experience and Tetra Pak spent approximately one year putting the content and production of the show together and then piloted and tested it with both factory and office audiences in Sweden and in Turkey until the level of involvement was just right.

The 4 hour experience includes games, dialogue, videos, interviews, Q&A session and of course presentation. Early on is a film called “The Winds of Change” that uses the voices of external experts such as economist Professor Stephane Garelli of the University of Lausanne alongside sector journalists and influencers who point out all the areas that threaten Tetra Pak, whether from economic, environmental or market forces.  Marc Wright, simply experience Director of Strategy explains:
 
“We wanted to get away from corporate ‘bullshit’ about how wonderful we are, and to bring the critics inside the organisation to galvanise the audiences.  They saw that the company did not necessarily have the automatic right to lead the market in the future.”
 
Other techniques used at the shows include a board game of ‘dilemmas’ to help staff debate their newly refreshed Core Values, as well as an auction where the presenters sell iPods and Mont Blanc pens to the highest bidders for real money to demonstrate the added value of premium brands.

Having a ball

In addition, the simply experience creative team developed the concept of the LiVE Tetra Pak Ball - an iconic solution that plays well to a variety of visuals in different media used and adds to the physical engagement of the experience.  The ball empowers individuals to have a voice throughout the experience in a fun and involving way.

All employees receive a smaller version of the ball as a souvenir. Gerard says, “With a programme that crosses so many cultures we have to be very sensitive in what we offer as a 'giveaway'. We opted for a small LiVE Tetra Pak ball because it was fun and universal and crossed office and factory audiences alike. The mini ball absolutely captures the spirit of the experience and that is really important to us.”

To keep the spirit of the experience going, Tetra Pak and simply experience have worked together to utilize a variety of communication channels to create excitement about LiVE Tetra Pak.

Gerard considers this to be a crucial part of the engagement process:

“We run a four part -teaser campaign in a market that is about to deliver the LiVE Tetra Pak experience. The campaign targets offices through emails and posters and factory sites through site banners. What we have discovered is that as the engagement programme rolls out over the year, word of mouth has also been a great influence. The excitement generated by countries that have had the LiVE Tetra Pak experience is infectious. “

There is also a bespoke community site for LiVE Tetra Pak that showcases the events as they happen worldwide through photographs and testimonials, as well as poster artwork teams create as part of the brand session. “The site provides a great focal point for the programme as well as develops a unique archive.”

Communicating to local audiences

Each LiVE Tetra Pak experience is delivered in the local language of that particular location - whether in Shanghai or Lahore, Tokyo or Sao Paulo. To ensure that the company delivers a consistent message to each Tetra Pak employee some parts of the LiVE Tetra Pak experience are necessary, however, local teams are also empowered to make the necessary tweaks to localize the show’s content and present an experience that better resonates with employees.

Measuring the success of LiVE Tetra Pak

So are employees truly getting it? Khaled and his team have been measuring the programme to find out.

“We put some basic key performance indicators in place that we are continuously tracking as they are deployed into the company. This is also giving us insight as to what we need to update as we go along. When you are running a programme for over a year, things happen, things change. So we need to be able to adapt and have the flexibility to give employees a fresh and current LiVE Tetra Pak experience. We can only do that by tracking how we are progressing.” 

And what do the numbers say? Looking at the global evaluation programme that is executed at the time of the experience, which asks audiences to rate the engagement and understanding they have gained with LiVE Tetra Pak, the marks have been quite high.

Project Director and simply experience MD, Ruth Pavion keeps a keen eye on the global feedback and is thrilled with the results coming in:

“On a rating of 1-5, with 5 being excellent, we have regularly scored in the mid 4's across all territories which has been fantastic and very motivating for us and our client.”

Meeting the challenges of a worldwide engagement programme

While LiVE Tetra Pak has been garnering rave reviews among employees, unsurprisingly, delivering such a large global initiative isn’t without a few challenges. 

Ruth and the simply experience production team work hard to avoid technical difficulties, making sure they deliver a smooth-running experience for all.

“As a global rollout, visiting a variety of countries with varying technical support and expertise, we had to design a simple 'stand alone' experience that could be serviced easily by the client with our support. So we developed a presentation contained in Keynote that includes the main presentations and 17 films, all of which are embedded in the Keynote and were specifically created for LiVE Tetra Pak.”

For Tetra Pak, the challenge of delivering a programme like LiVE Tetra Pak lies in the logistics. However, allowing a little flexibility goes a long way.

“Trying to achieve delivery of an experience like this to over 20,000 people in over 50 countries in more than 25 different languages, there are certainly going to be obstacles. But just being flexible and positive about making sure you’re giving people what they need will result in employees taking it onboard and delivering the programme with passion,” Khaled explains. 
 
The ingredients for achieving successful employee engagement

So what are Maria’s words of wisdom to communicators who might want to initiate an engagement programme like LiVE Tetra Pak?

“The advice I’d give to any other company embarking on a journey like we’ve just experienced is to give yourself time. This is not something you can develop in 6 months; you need at least a year. A little bit of patience doesn’t hurt either,” Maria says.
 
Khaled agrees.

“This is not something you expect to finish and be valid and relevant 12 months down the road. So again a little flexibility and agility as a team working together is one of the key ingredients for a successful event that will make your experience relevant from Day 1 to Day 365.”