The American Red Cross is a non-profit humanitarian organization that prevents and alleviates human suffering in the face of emergencies by mobilizing the power of volunteers and the generosity of donors. The organization’s workforce includes over 30,000 employees and more than 500,000 volunteers.
15Five BENEFITS
Fostering open communication with staff and especially volunteers, where attrition rates can be high, is critical to running non-profit initiatives. Managers don’t always know about the challenges their employees face, nor about their successes and achievements.
Jono Anzalone, a Division Disaster Executive, needed a better way to communicate with his teams. Team leads were not collecting feedback from front-line volunteers. With volunteer attrition rates running at 30% a year in non-profits, the Red Cross is continually looking for ways to keep volunteers engaged.
Overseeing disaster relief and preparedness for 10 regional chapters in 11 Midwestern states, Anzalone needed a simple, systemized way to collect staff feedback from over 116 full-time staff and 5,700 volunteers.
“15Five serves as a reality check on the entire organization, because, for the first time, I can see all sides of an issue from everyone’s point of view."
JONO ANZALONE DIVISION DISASTER EXECUTIVE, AMERICAN RED CROSS
Anzalone rolled out 15Five to his immediate team, simply inviting (but not requiring) his employees to answer a few questions about their jobs and share ideas each week. Employees loved being “given a voice” and organically adopted the platform. Soon, other managers began asking to implement 15Five, too. Two years after Anzalone’s experimental rollout, dozens of Red Cross managers now use the tool to communicate with hundreds of employees throughout the country.
“I use the dashboard to drill down into 15Fives at the director, manager, and employee levels. Before, directors and managers were far removed from volunteers on the front line. Now, feedback gathered in 15Five shows what volunteers are seeing and feeling in the community.”
Managers review their employees’ 15Five each week. They pass up reports to Anzalone and flag any issues to senior leadership for unfiltered and prompt review.
At the American Red Cross, 15Five has directly led to high-level organizational changes. For example, employees who directly interact with volunteers and clients often come up with ideas of how to administer programs and allocate funds to clients more effectively.
“15Five has unleashed the democratic voice of our staff, directly impacting how we serve clients. Because of suggestions we received in 15Five, we now get money into the hands of clients faster in fire disasters, and we respond to 70,000 fires a year, so this is a big change.”
Some of the questions managers ask their team members include:
“Quite simply, 15Five gives employees a tool to share what matters to them, and that helps managers keep on top of everything. With 15Five, I find out what I didn’t know, I didn’t know.
Learn about how 15Five can improve performance management at your organization.