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Challenge
With 20,000 employees, IPG Mediabrands is dedicated to creating a workplace environment where diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) — and supporting local communities — is prioritized. But much of the responsibility to plan DEIB events for IPG Mediabrands’ global workforce was falling on the shoulders of employees who sometimes had trouble finding time to plan engaging events.
Visit.org was tasked with streamlining IPG Mediabrands' programming management and equipping the company’s CSR team with tools and expertise to host meaningful experiences.
Strategy
Prior to the Visit.org partnership, many IPG Mediabrands DEIB events involved hiring well-known speakers for panel sessions on inclusivity topics. Jillian Morgan, IPG Mediabrands’ director of community and wellness, wanted to redirect the company’s social impact funds to the people and nonprofits working boots-on-the-ground to support local DEIB missions.
Jillian and her dedicated Visit.org account manager worked closely to create programming strategies around key observance dates, such as Pride Month. Additionally, Jillian gathers input from IPG Mediabrands’ ERG leaders around the world to select specific experiences.
Result
IPG Mediabrands has hosted virtual social impact experiences ranging from self-compassion workshops to inclusivity terms lunch-and-learns to drag queen bingo. Jillian easily books experiences using the Visit.org platform and measures the success of each event by calculating employee participation and individual anecdotes from Visit.org’s post-event survey tool.
“If someone got a lot out of a Visit.org event, I consider that a success,” she explains. “The way that some experiences resonate with our employees is really beautiful.” With Visit.org, Jillian now knows that every CSR dollar improves employee belonging and invests in the wider community.
About IPG Mediabrands
IPG Mediabrands is a holding company composed of marketing agencies located around the globe. Jillian Morgan, IPG Mediabrands’ director of community and wellness, is tasked with upholding the company’s commitment of creating an inclusive work environment for its 20,000 dispersed employees.
“We really want people to bring their full selves to work knowing that we are multifaceted individuals with intersectional identities,” explains Jillian. “We want to create a space for people to feel seen, valued, and heard.”
Jillian relies on Visit.org to plan scalable virtual social impact experiences that anyone in the company can join — regardless of their physical location.
Visit.org absorbs the burden of DEIB social impact event management
Prior to working with Visit.org (and before Jillian joined the team), IPG Mediabrands had a dilemma. While the company was dedicated to promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, it was a challenge to plan engaging events on a regular schedule that the whole company could enjoy.
“Everybody wanted to attend social impact events, but the work of coming up with activity ideas, managing registrations and RSVPs, planning an activity, and measuring its success was overwhelming,” explains Jillian.
Many of the events were centered around hiring well-known DEIB speakers for panel sessions. While these talks were illuminating, Jillian preferred that IPG Mediabrands’ CSR budget be directed toward the communities where employees live and work. “Before Visit.org, our DEIB programming didn’t feel impactful to the groups we were trying to serve,” she adds.
With the Visit.org partnership, Jillian has a team of experts who help her generate experience ideas, and manage the planning, promotion, execution, and reporting of events. Jillian now knows that every CSR dollar improves employee belonging and invests in the wider community.
A wide range of DEIB experience types
To date, IPG Mediabrands has hosted multiple virtual social impact experiences focused on inclusivity and mental health.
To decide which experiences to host, Jillian meets with Employee Resource Group leaders from each of IPG Mediabrands subsidiary marketing agencies every month. She presents the group with several Visit.org options, and together, they select the next experience to host for their employees.
Jillian uses the Visit.org platform to book experiences herself. “Once I book the experience, everything is taken care of,” she says. “My account manager is so amazing — I literally have to do nothing. Visit.org’s team is so detail-oriented.”
Oftentimes, social impact programming is based around important observances that surface and center the experiences of marginalized groups. In June, for example, Jillian and her team of ERG leaders chose to honor Pride Month by offering two experiences: one educational experience that taught employees about inclusive terms and a fun, celebratory drag queen bingo experience.
After both experiences, she received a flood of positive emails from participants. There are myriad ways Jillian measures the success of each social impact experience. While employee participation is certainly a top metric, she also considers anecdotal feedback as well.
“If someone got a lot out of a Visit.org event, I consider that a success,” she explains. “The way that some experiences resonate with our employees is really beautiful.”
Exploring in-person experiences
While IPG Mediabrands has only hosted virtual events for its employees, in-person experiences are not off the table — especially as some workers start returning to their office location several days per week.
Offering engaging in-person social impact experiences may be one way to ease the transition from remote work to hybrid. Because returning to the office can surface complex feelings for many employees, Jillian is exploring in-person experiences that highlight the benefits of office life, such as team-building and bonding during the holidays.
“I would highly recommend a Visit.org partnership to any social impact professional to make this process more seamless and fun,” says Jillian.
Learn how Visit.org can help your company provide engaging social impact volunteering opportunities for your employees. Schedule a demo today!