Emmes End-of-Year Celebration
Emmes is a global clinical research organization serving the public health sector. Founded in 1997, the organization is dedicated to supporting the advancement of public health and biopharmaceutical innovation, and it conducts clinical studies across a significant range of therapeutic areas.
In its work, Emmes collaborates with a variety of other organizations – including biopharmaceutical, government, nonprofit and academic institutions – and in its specific type of work, Emmes is frequently discovering and sharing innovations and clinical research with its clients. That same type of communication is also needed with its employees. As an organization in a fast-moving sector and with employees located all around the globe, Emmes requires frequent – and virtual – company meetings to update employees on everything going on with the company and the industry in general. JDC Events assists Emmes with these virtual company updates, which often occur multiple times each year.
The JDC team has worked with the organization to develop a run of show for these virtual meetings, which are held to provide the needed updates in an organized, methodical fashion. Though these company updates are short meetings that are only a few hours long, each one requires significant planning and coordination as most content is live, not pre-recorded. In addition, the content and agenda for these virtual updates typically cannot be determined more than a couple of weeks prior to the scheduled event. Moreover, sometimes the content for these virtual agendas cannot be planned more than one week in advance.
Because of the often tight timeline, the JDC team has worked with the Emmes team to streamline the entire planning process to ensure that all objectives can be met quickly. The JDC team instituted clear lines of communication with Emmes’ in-house team and create a framework for information sharing that leads to reliable methods for content finalization with each virtual event. As a result, all deadlines and objectives have continuously been met with each virtual event, and the live event has never experienced any technical issues.
Typically, the organization provides a required agenda for each virtual meeting that includes a variety of company topics that serve as “basics” for each update: an introduction from the company’s CEO, followed by speakers sharing a variety of news topics pertaining to the company, including new acquisitions, scientific highlights, goals for the year, and any charitable work being done by the company.
With this type of information serving as the basis for each virtual meeting, the JDC team knew agenda additions were needed that would lead to more attendee engagement and excitement around coming together as a team – even if it’s a team that is spread out globally. This addition was especially needed for the virtual meetings, considering that the event is not interactive, and no networking or social options were included. The JDC team put together a plan for the agenda that would provide the pertinent details as required by Emmes in a way that was most engaging for viewers and encouraged attendees to get to know their fellow employees from around the globe as much as possible while meeting in the virtual arena.
The JDC team landed on an idea that sought to celebrate and highlight the many countries and regions in which Emmes employees were located by putting together videos from employees all around the world and then showing them throughout the event. Emmes very much liked the agenda addition, and the JDC team helped strategize and organize the entire process. These videos were self-recorded by specific Emmes employees to introduce different regions, share what their area is like and what it’s known for, and answer questions provided to them in advance. The videos were interspersed throughout the agenda. The videos were a huge hit, increasing engagement and helping build true connection between Emmes employees among its different regions.