The Problem
Klick Health—a Toronto-based health marketing agency—normally holds a glitzy company-wide town hall to cap off the year. The holiday-season tradition doubles as a celebration of talent and a retrospective on the year’s achievements. The firm hires big-name entertainers and invites clients to speak, employees bring their spouses and partners, and team leaders present milestones to brief coworkers on their progress. “We always took it as a moment to express gratitude to our people,” says Klick CEO Lori Grant. “It’s the event of the year.”
It’s normally held at a high-capacity venue, like Toronto’s Rebel nightclub, but COVID made it impossible to do in person. And since a Zoom call with more than 1,000 participants didn’t seem like a feasible (or pleasant) alternative, the company had to reckon with abandoning a morale-boosting mainstay in an already trying time. Instead, it found a way to harness in-house talent to bring the town hall into a pandemic-era format that still felt like a celebration.
The Solution
A virtual town hall was the obvious alternative to a rollicking night out, but the challenge was running a full-day event without inducing the dreaded screen fatigue that plagues virtual office workers. “Screen fatigue is very real, and we wanted that to be respected,” says Grant. The solution involved a little help from Klick’s in-house virtual reality team, which normally works on medical simulations. (The pandemic has been an especially busy time for the VR side of the business, given restrictions around in-person learning—recently, Klick built a virtual teaching environment for doctors learning to patch tissue during open-heart surgery.)
The VR team spent three months building a 3D event space that runs on the same Unity game engine that supports medical simulations. With the help of a green screen, keynote speakers appeared on a futuristic concert stage set against a flashy stadium-like background. And to further mitigate the aforementioned screen fatigue, the normally one-day event was spread out over a week, with an hour and a half each day.
“We broke up all the business content with high-energy entertainment,” says Grant. The virtual event just capped off its second year, where the star-studded lineup included Sheryl Crow, TikTok dance troupe Basement Gang and singer-songwriter Justin Jesso, among many others. To increase a sense of engagement, attendees received snack packs to munch while enjoying the entertainment. Meanwhile, a 1,600-strong Slack channel ran alongside the presentations and performances. “The energy in that channel was palpable,” says Grant. “It had around 2,000 posts a day. People were just so energized.”
“Klick is amazing at curating a unique talent experience that attracts and retains A players,” says Brian Black, Deloitte Private Partner and Klick’s coach for Canada’s Best Managed Companies program. “All Best Managed companies of this size have good compensation and other attractive table stakes. But Klick goes out of its way to create experiences where I think: Wow, that would have been really fun to participate in as an employee. And is it more money in the pocket, or a bigger bonus? No, but it puts a smile on people’s faces. That focus gives Klick an edge when it comes to retaining talent.”
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