Case Studies
GSK Spirit Online
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical company, was formed in December 2000 through the merger of two global powerhouses Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham. GSK India, one of the country’s largest consumer healthcare and pharmaceutical company, has set an ambitious growth target for itself. It plans to become a Rs 10000 crore company by the year 2010.
Background
GSK was conscious of the fact that the merger of two corporate entities is more than just the combining of two financial statements. It is as much, if not more, the coming together of two sets of values and fusing into one common culture. This fusion, if not nurtured well, could lead to utter chaos and conflicts, as the cases of many global mergers have shown.
GSK India was aware of the high targets it has set for itself and realizes that such miracles cannot be pulled off without the active participation of its employees in the corporate vision. Such participation had to be manifested not only in achieving individual targets but also displaying a certain culture that results in synergistic rather than organic growth. It had formalized this culture under the name of GSK Spirit.
In order to make the GSK Spirit more than a set of finely written words, GSK India put in place a program to communicate and reinforce the values associated with the GSK Spirit. This included town-hall meetings, seminars, off-sites, picnics, etc. But over a period of time, GSK India found that it was getting increasingly difficult to assemble a large group of people under one roof. And unless it dealt with a large group of people together, it would be difficult to reach out to everybody in the organization. The second problem that GSK India encountered was that even if it did manage to mobilize large groups of employees, such events were few and far between. This rendered the communication of the GSK Spirit difficult. Moreover the top management was not sure if with its current level of communication efforts, the message of the GSK Spirit was being embedded deep enough in the organization’s psyche.
It was then that GSK India turned to Brahmaputra Infotech for assistance.
GSK Spirit Online
Brahmaputra Infotech’s solution was the creation of an online culture-building portal that would consistently communicate the message of the GSK Spirit through-out the organization. Brahmaputra Infotech told GSK India that the portal would have content that would attract employees to it regularly; and while they browsed the content and interfaced with the various interactive elements hosted on the portal, the message of the GSK Spirit would be quietly reinforced at every step.
What could be so compelling enough that it encourages employees to visit it regularly? It has been seen that people react to interactive content far more than static content: computer games and chat engines are good examples. GSK Spirit had a whole host of interactive elements such as:
- Online Games: that while fulfilling an entertainment purpose also reinforces the 8 values associated with the GSK Spirit. This would not be obvious to employees while playing the game. Only at the end of it would the employee be given a feedback on his performance and how such performance supports or deviates from the GSK Spirit.
- Caselets: illustrating everyday situations, and not necessarily business situations. None of these caselets had a clear-cut “right” answer. Employees were encouraged to submit their solution to the issues raised in the caselet. After a specific period, maybe a week or a month, some senior member of the GSK management should offer his/her solution to the caselet and how it illustrates behaviours that most closely mirror the capabilities in the GSK Spirit. The employee whose solution came closest to the solution provided by the top management would receive a prize.
- Quizzes: on GSK’s history, products, brands, markets and people. It also tested an employee’s instinctive responses to words, phrases, associations and situations connected with the GSK Spirit. Employees were given an immediate score on completion. Quizzes were drawn from a huge database and therefore an employee could take the quiz several times. Over a period of time (weekly, monthly, etc.) the person with the highest percentile score could be given a prize.
- Sweepstakes: a personal scoreboard on performance in the various sections of the GSK Spirit. Users could see who is leading in what category and the prizes won so far. This created a desire to visit the portal regularly.
Many of the values that GSK was talking about were values that transcended the limits of the organization. For instance, take the GSK Spirit value Performance with Integrity. Therefore the portal also had content that celebrated these values in a global content and thus provided the inspiration to extend these values to one’s life outside the organization. In the section on Performance with Integrity for instance, there was an extract from Profiles in Courage, a book for which former U.S. President John F Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize. The book contained Kennedy’s tribute to a handful of senators who stood up against the dominant sentiment of their times for a cause they believed was right. As a result these senators lost everything—their political position, public acclaim, goodwill of friends and relatives—but they never let go of their beliefs.
GSK Spirit website was so designed and content so selected that the employee could never for a moment think that he or she was being manipulated into demonstrating a certain behaviour. The objective was to encourage employees the GSK Spirit portal for fun, not for getting lectured on what is right or wrong. Of course the reinforcement of the values had to be there, but it had to be done in the most discreet manner. The spin-offs from these fun-oriented activities got multiplied several-fold by adding elements of friendly competitiveness and rewards for good performance. To ensure that users return again and again to the site, content was updated, and prize rewarded, on a regular basis.
Although the initial plan was to add a lot of rich multimedia content (audio and video), it was later dropped due to bandwidth considerations.