How Can You Engage Your Community to Celebrate Staff?

What You’ll Learn

After Lorri Freeman asked members for valentines, her co-op was overwhelmed by more than 500 handmade and heartfelt valentine cards. She shares this idea and other ways utilities can celebrate staff throughout the year.

Guest Speaker

Lorri Freeman

Show Notes

Transcripts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Intro: A production of Pioneer Utility Resources. StoryConnect, helping communicators discover ideas to shape their stories and connect with their customers.

Megan McKoy-Noe: How can you engage your community to celebrate staff? That’s what we’ll be talking about on this episode of the StoryConnect Podcast. Hi, I’m Megan McKoy-Noe, one of the storytellers at Pioneer and your host. I am joined by Lorri Freeman, manager of public relations and marketing at Singing River Electric Cooperative in Mississippi. Lorri, thank you so much for joining me today.

Lorri Freeman: Thank you for inviting me.

Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah, I am really excited about this. Could you share how your utility invited the community to shower your staff with love on Valentine’s Day?

Lorri Freeman: Yes, I would love to. We actually creatively borrowed this idea from another co-op in Mississippi, Southern Pine Electric, which is in Mississippi, had posted on Facebook a call for homemade valentines for their linemen. And we loved the idea, so we asked them if it was okay if we did the same. And, of course, they said yes, that’s the co-op way. And so we post around January 20th a call for valentines, thinking that maybe we would get 40, 50, maybe 100. We have 85 linemen total. So that was kind of the goal we were working towards. The response, however, was overwhelming. We got between 400 and 500 homemade, sweet, precious little valentines. And depending on the age group of the students, the artwork, the storytelling, it was just amazing and precious and humbling and all-inspiring. So it makes you feel good. It makes you feel loved. You know, they took this. It was church groups. It was schools. It was just even precious little students where their parents had seen the social media post, some of our lineman’s children. It was a truly remarkable response.

Megan McKoy-Noe: Well, and I love this so much. And for folks who aren’t watching us on video, we’re going to add pictures from your Facebook post so that folks can see them on our website at Pioneer.coop. But I was wondering, like, did you just put it out on Facebook? Or was there anything else, any other channels, to get this kind of a response?

Lorri Freeman: It truly was just social media, and it was shared a good, good many times. We tagged a few of our linemen wives that were teachers. But honestly, that was all it was. You know, we do have a decent following on, what we showed. We shared it on other, I think Instagram and Twitter. But really Facebook is our main social media channel. But we just really were overwhelmed by this. And, you know, our employees have great commitment to the community. And so it was kind of sweet because like one of our, it used to be our Gautier district engineer, which is our southernmost office. He got one of the kids he coached in baseball, their valentine. Just, you know, it was just random. And then one of our retired employees, he was a serviceman in the county that I live in. His granddaughter has Down Syndrome, and we just adore her. She goes to our church. Well, another coworker who goes to our church got her valentine just randomly got, and she was like, “I got Elizabeth’s valentine.” So, you know, we recognize these names because we live and work and volunteer here. And so that was an extra special unintended bonus that happened.

Megan McKoy-Noe: Love that, that you’re actually recognizing the names of the kids sending in these valentines. How did people get the valentines to you? I mean, this started out on Facebook primarily. Did y’all include a way for them to send?

Lorri Freeman: Well, after we posted it, and it seemed like it was really kind of taking off locally, I edited the post to give a deadline for when the valentines needed to be returned by. And then I let people know that they can give them to employees, or they can drop them off at the office, or they could mail them, and I gave an address. Most of the valentines were dropped off. I would come in to work and Stephanie, another one of my coworkers, and there would just be a pile of valentines on our desk, and sometimes we would know what teacher or classroom. And they were from all over; from the northern most part. We serve seven counties in Mississippi and two in Alabama. They were from schools all throughout, all throughout. I mean, just overwhelming. It was very humbling and so, so appreciated. Some of them were from our linemans children and grandchildren. And we tried to make sure those went back to their dads and grandpas. Again, we started out with the linemen, but because we were received so many, we were able to give them to every one of our employees.

Megan McKoy-Noe: I was going to ask, how many employees do you all have total?

Lorri Freeman: We have a little over 200. And like I said, we have, what is it, 85 linemen. So when we got so many, we actually were able to give multiple cards to everyone. And it was sweet because some of them were from little bitty tiny children, and then others were from elementary school children. So they each had – some of them had stories. You know, like I showed you. They folded out, and they had written stories. And so we really did read each and every one. And it just a lot of our employees, they were going around the office on Valentine’s Day with huge smiles on their faces, telling each other about the artwork of the card, the handwriting, the way children had spelled things that was so endearing or a story. It was received so well. It was just, we just kind of did it because we thought it was cute and public relations and marketing. But it really made an impact on the employees.

Megan McKoy-Noe: Man, I mean, stories do that right? Especially when the stories are coming when you –

Lorri Freeman: And especially from children.

Megan McKoy-Noe: Yes. Yes. Did you have a favorite story from one of these valentines that you could share?

Lorri Freeman: Well, several of the ones that I saw, and I saw, I think I read just about every one. And I don’t know whether they were, but they were stories of them seeing the lineman in their yard. I saw you, and you came and you fixed my power. And you know, you are a light in my life. They would say that. They would say phrases that had something to do with electricity. Just the most touching, heartfelt, childlike wisdom that, you know, it’s just in its purest form.

Megan McKoy-Noe: I love that. So that is for Valentine’s Day, and I bet you’ll probably be doing this again in different iterations of this.

Lorri Freeman: We might, because it was so well received, yes.

Megan McKoy-Noe: So I’m wondering, how else have you invited the community to celebrate Singing River staff?

Lorri Freeman: That’s a great question. Well, you know that we’re down here on the Gulf Coast, so we do have a few hurricanes that hit us on occasion. The last one was Zeta, I believe. And so we’ll have businesses that automatically like McAlister’s, just brought gallons of tea, and here have tea on us. And pizza places have brought pizza, and a catfish place brought catfish. And they’ll bring it to the office to thank the employees. So that happens on occasion. But we also initiated on our end, we try to remember there’s days to recognize almost every department that you have. IT, HR, you know, accounting. So we try to Google, get the date, write it down. And one thing we’ve done is purchase the little cookies that you can put writing or decorations on them, and they’re not very expensive. And we did that for several years, where we gave each department a cookie and took a group picture on their day. And we posted it in our employee news, and we have an internal e-newsletter. And so we would just kind of, it just made them feel a little bit appreciated. And they seem to like, even the guys seem to like the cookies. So nothing works every year if you repeat it. But those type of things, if you sprinkle them in every few years, are just well received.

Megan McKoy-Noe: I like that. Well, we are always on the lookout for fun ideas to celebrate staff, and a lot of folks did some really cool stuff this year. I also heard our friends at CDE Lightband in Tennessee. They use Valentine’s Day as a fundraiser. Staff ordered $1 candy grams, and then they sent them to each other. Right? And the money went to Project Help, which was fun. I think they raised over $1,800 dollars just with staff celebrating each other and making it a fundraiser.

Lorri Freeman: I love that. It makes me think of high school.

Megan McKoy-Noe: It does make you think of high school.

Lorri Freeman: We used to do that, you know? Candy grams.

Megan McKoy-Noe: Candy grams.

Lorri Freeman: I know [inaudible] electric in Mississippi, they took it as an opportunity to celebrate and show appreciation to their membership. So they were like, we love our members for Valentine’s Day. And I thought that was a really great idea and correlation, too.

Megan McKoy-Noe: What did they, did they do anything special? Hold an event for the members?

Lorri Freeman: In the past, they have invited members. Maybe, and they had some type of food or giveaway at the office, but I don’t recall what they did this year. I just remember seeing the the artwork and thinking that was a great idea.

Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, why limit the love to staff? I mean, I get geeked out about staff because internal communications, that’s something we focus so much on the members. We forget sometimes to make sure to lift up our staff as well. But man, I mean, you know me, I love members and finding ways to celebrate members.

Lorri Freeman: And we did. When we posted on Valentine’s Day, we made sure we posted photos of the valentines. We posted photos in the comments of our lineman receiving the valentines. And I tried to make sure that the “thank you” was the first thing that you really saw was, you know, thank you to our teachers. Thank you to our educators. Thank you to our moms, our grandmas, our church volunteers, whoever it was that encouraged and sat with and enabled these children to create these valentines. You know, I wanted to make sure they felt thanked. I had originally wanted to thank the schools, but the problem was we, like I said, we would come to work, and there would be a pile on our desk and not always did we know where they were from. So the thank you had to be generic, but I hope it came across as heartfelt.

Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah, well, the posts that I saw, I think you shared it personally. And then I saw the post for Singing River, and I think that message came across loud and clear. Again, we’ll make sure that we include links to those pictures.

Lorri Freeman: Good.

Megan McKoy-Noe: On our website because they are just so sweet. Now, you mentioned that there are so many other days throughout the year to celebrate your staff. Engineers Appreciation Week is in February. Line Worker Appreciation Month is always the big one. That is in April. But I think it’s also important to make sure you’re celebrating the rest of your staff too, you know. Customer Service Appreciation Week is an October. There are weeks for IT Appreciation, HR Appreciation, so many more. I want to make sure folks know we do list a lot of these opportunities in Pioneer’s Content Planner. It’s free on our website, but it’s just chances to think about ways to celebrate the staff. Are there any other ways, picnics or meals or anything else that Singing River does to celebrate your staff throughout the year?

Lorri Freeman: Well, we do a breakfast for lineman appreciation, but I was going to mention one thing that I just remembered. You know, customer service week is a big one, and we try to do something different. This last year we bought huge coloring posters, and we put them up in the different areas where we have MSRs, and we encouraged them to color with. We gave them each color pencils and asked them to use it as a stress reliever throughout the week. And then the fifth day was like, groovy. Our customer service is groovy, and they got to dress up seventies attire. And then another time with MSR week, we gave everyone Tootsie Rolls, and we had big posters in the Tootsie Roll colors that said, “Great service is how we roll.” And so we have fun with that week every year. Because that, you know, other than linemen, that’s probably the second largest department or group of employees that we have. So we kind of do bigger things for the larger groups, but we try to recognize by photographs, you know, personalized cookies or just some other little thing with the like you said, IT, engineering, accounting, HR. There are days for every group, so look it up.

Megan McKoy-Noe: Days for every group, and a chance to celebrate everybody on your team. Celebrate their story. Before I let you go, is there anything else that you want folks to think about as they look for ways to celebrate their staff?

Lorri Freeman: Share. Share what you’re doing. Share. Because that’s how we get our ideas. We get our ideas from our other Mississippi co-ops. We get ideas from co-ops across the whole country. And when you talk about it, you know, that’s how others get the idea, too. And any time anybody wants to do anything that we’ve done, you’re welcome to it. That’s the co-op way, is to creatively borrow or admire and acquire or whatever you want to call it. So thank you so much for having me.

Megan McKoy-Noe: Of course. Thank you for sharing your story with our family of utility pioneers. She is Lorri Freeman, manager of public relations and marketing at Singing River Electric Cooperative. And I’m your host, Megan McKoy-Noe at Pioneer. Until we talk again, keep telling your story.

Outro: StoryConnect is produced by Pioneer Utility Resources, a communications cooperative that is built to share your story. Storyconnect is engineered by Lucas Smith of Lucky Sound Studio.