Increase Engagement with a Food Drive & Logo Building Contest

Increase Engagement with a Food Drive & Logo Building Contest
Team Activity Contest
Team Activity Contest

Increase Engagement Contest with a Food Drive & Logo Building

Charged with building employee engagement, Kendra Rodgers, Vice President of Culture and Engagement at Trilliant Health, organized a food drive and logo building contest for her organization.  Not only did they collect 10X the food they collected previous years, they also noticed more engagement between teams via Slack after this event and had record-breaking attendance at their holiday party.

Trilliant Health has about 100 employees, half of which are remote. Finding ways to build connections across teams and between remote and in-person workers is a challenge. Ms. Rodgers wanted to create an experience that would get people working together towards a common goal so they would “see people as people” and give more grace when work is challenging.  Ultimately the goal was to bring people from across the organization together while serving their local community.

In order to increase engagement, Ms. Rodgers utilized the company’s Community Impact Team of 6 people to centralize the planning and execution of the Food Drive and Logo Building Contest. The event involved everyone in the organization, including part-time employees and interns.

For one month, teams collected food for a local food bank, and on the final day used their collected food items to create their company logo.

Increase Team Engagement
On the final day of the contest, the teams built their organization logos using their collected food items.

Here are the steps they used to organize the Food Drive and Logo Building Contest:

  1. Divided all employees into teams mixed with remote and in-office people across 6 teams with a mix of people from each department (management, product, sales, IT, etc.)  Each team had 18-19 people.
  2. Assigned captains for each team (was a member of the Community Impact Team).
  3. Set up dedicated Slack Channels for each team, where they communicated about progress, plans, deadlines, and successes.
  4. Each team was given a box to fill with donated foods.
  5. Remote people could order food online and have it shipped to the office for collection or make monetary donations.
  6. Shared simple rules about the contest to keep it light and focused on connection and service.
Team Activity Donations
The teams more than filled the six boxes they were given with donated food items.

On the final day they gathered to count their items and build the logo using the food items.  Then the team who collected the most food items and the team who had the best logo was named the winner.  No prizes were given.

For the final day Ms. Rodgers and her team:

  1. Used painters tape on the floor to divide the room into 6 areas.  Each team was assigned a specific area to build their logo with their food.
  2. Displayed the company logo on a large screen.
  3. Gave the teams 15 minutes to create their logos.
  4. Invited two objective judges to take pictures and decide the best logo replica. 
  5. Announced the winners of the logo contest and the winners of the food (who collected the most). 
  6. Shared pictures on Slack with the remote employees.
Food Drive Activity
Here is an example of a logo created with food products from one of the teams.

Food Drive Team Activity
Here is another example of a logo created with food products from a different team.

The event was a huge success because it created a fun, yet competitive environment which enabled people who don’t normally work together to interact. They collected close to a thousand pounds of food, tripling the amount collected from the year before.  There was a noticeable difference in the amount and types of Slack chats after this month-long event, and attendance increased at their holiday party, even with people who are remote and needed to travel.

This event can be done with an entire organization, like Trilliant Health, or a smaller work team.

Summary

A fun way to connect teams or organizations and serve your local community is to have a food drive and then create a replica of your logo with the food items.

About the Author: Leigh Ann Rodgers, Founder of Better Teams, Team Consultant Academy, and FORWARD, is an IAF Certified Professional Facilitator with 20 years of experience in the human development field. Leigh Ann is a skilled meeting facilitator, trainer, and coach working across the globe to help leaders cultivate teams that are happy and high-performing.

Learn. Share. Practice. Move FORWARD.  Join the Better Teams community, FORWARD, to network and grow with some of the most experienced professionals in the field of team building and facilitation.  LEARN MORE

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