In the fall of 2012, Bayada COO Linda Siessel challenged her organization to conduct market research and find a solution to identify and capture the innovative thinking taking place in BAYADA’s 260 service offices across the country. The solution: Create an online community .
BAYADA is a trusted leader in home health care, providing medical care to children and adults of all ages in the comfort of their homes. Over the years, BAYADA has attracted other like-minded health care professionals, who now comprise a team of more than 18,000 home health care professionals serving 25 communities from 260 offices.
In response to Linda's challenge, BAYADA used a virtual community to develop a general community innovation initiative for a test group of approximately 300 employees, this initiative was called BrightIdeas.
BrightIdeas was spread through email communications, specially designed advertising flyers for the website. Word of mouth was the main way people got involved.
BAYADA also took steps to customize its employee online community site and organized its process for reviewing ideas. Its branded site was organized into campaigns that offered ideas and solutions for its respective business units (specialty practices) and also customized ideas that reflected BAYADA's culture.
The online community was a huge success
More than 400 users got involved and shared more than 110 ideas, 730 comments and 2000 votes.
It resulted in 100% engagement without using an incentive campaign.
A Pin it program was introduced to recognize employee contributions.
Company-wide changes included: new social media policies, employee macedonia phone number classes, automated notification systems, an open program, and more.
Linda shared her comments about the great minds within BAYADA,
“We want to create an environment that encourages all staff to share their ideas to improve our work, performance and results. One person’s idea may spark another’s and so on . We want to support and inspire innovative thinkers who are the key to discovering what’s new, what’s better and what’s next to help millions of people worldwide!”
The online community will help BAYADA with the next iterations of BrightIdeas as they continue to discover innovative ideas that help them fulfill their mission of enabling millions of people around the world to experience a better way of life in the comfort of their homes.