STM Keepsake photo album on the pandemic’s impact
Target Audience: The keepsake album project was aimed at the STM's 10,500 employees. Nearly 8,000 of our workers are directly affected to our bus and métro network operations. They have continued providing the same level of service since the beginning of the pandemic, despite the fear, the health restrictions and the drastic drop in ridership. Other employees have been working remotely since March 13. They have adapted to a new reality, many of them balancing family life, and continue to uphold their responsibilities to maintain STM activities. All our employees have overcome major challenges, whether on the ground or at home, and this project was for all of them.
Strategy Objective:Recognition is an important value at the STM and, in the current context, more needed than ever. Our goal was to create a movement of pride around a unifying project that underlined our employees' solidarity and commitment to their company and community. Our strategy: - Collectively build a photo bank of images taken by employees, illustrating the impact of the pandemic on public transit and daily life. We launched a photo contest in mid-September, inviting employees to submit photos taken since March up to October 16. - Share these moments as seen through our employees' eyes in the form of a printed keepsake album, given as an end-of-year gift exclusively to STM employees.
Situation Challenge: Montréal and Quebec were hit hard by COVID-19. Strict health guidelines were imposed in March prohibiting all gatherings. Faced with the situation, the STM was unable to hold our traditional holiday party, our biggest recognition event attended by over 1,000 employees each year. Our corporate communications team, which normally organizes the party, wanted to create an end-of-year project that would maintain that feeling of togetherness—if only in the figurative sense—and acknowledge our employees' hard work while fostering a sense of pride. The exceptional, historic situation that our employees experienced in 2020 could not go unmentioned and should be inscribed in our collective memory.
Results Impact: Participation in the contest was successful, with over 350 photos submitted. Many had been taken in the months since March as employees spontaneously captured striking moments, not yet knowing there would be a contest. Titled 2020 Visions: A keepsake album inspired by our photo contest, the commemorative album included roughly 50 photos, with accompanying dates and a few simple captions. All the photos will also be saved in our archives. After it was mailed to our 10,500 employees, the gift inspired a great sense of pride and many emotional reactions. Employees were touched that we included messages of thanks from the management committee and the chairman of the board. These qualitative results are taken from many comments that we received from employees (see examples in appendix).
Why Submit: The keepsake album is a unique collector's item that showcases beautiful photos taken by our employees and illustrates striking moments in an historic year. These tableaux allow us to relive the emotions that we have felt over the past several months, together. The project was supported by an internal communication campaign rolled out after the contest to rally anticipation for the project. We held a participation prize draw, assembled a selection committee, presented a copy of the album to the employee whose photo made the cover, and revealed select photos in the CEO's end-of-year webcast. This album was a gift to ourselves. It made us proud to have made it through the year, with resilience and solidarity, providing the essential service of public transit.