People deserve to be recognized for doing their best work. That’s the whole philosophy behind Maritz, a company that creates corporate incentive programs. So when Maritz decided to move to Office 365, they also wanted to empower their people to change their behavior and work smarter with their tools. And they wanted a way to measure that change.
To help its 4000 employees successfully migrate to Office 365, Maritz called in Brennan Handley, a marketing and communications specialist on Maritz’s IT Services team, to lead the charge.
Jumping into her new responsibility, Brennan faced a major challenge: the wide range of Maritz’s users. Some were overwhelmed by the prospect of adopting new software, while others were eager to try Office 365—so eager that the company’s only IT trainer couldn’t keep up.
But Brennan soon realized that by partnering with BrainStorm (and leveraging BrainStorm’s on-demand learning platform), she could meet all her users’ needs. The only challenge was to get people fully on board.
“When trying to communicate to the employees at Maritz about an upcoming change or a rollout of a technology, we have to kind of think about two different groups of people: Some [who] are really ready for change and . . .[others who] are kind of resistant to that change."
Brennan’s campaign to introduce BrainStorm started out small. First, she promoted monthly QuickCasts, short productivity events that helped users learn a new Office 365 skill in the BrainStorm platform. After seeing a positive user response, she also started sending out QuickTip emails—short messages focused on a single skill—and watched user engagement continue to rise. Along the way, BrainStorm’s client success manager offered insights and suggestions to help Brennan maximize Maritz’s Office 365 investment. And that led to a lightbulb moment for Brennan.
“Now I realize that we can really customize to what Maritz needs,” Brennan said. “We can put together our own customized learning experiences based off an upcoming project or initiative. Or, we can assign specific content based off what’s happening at Maritz here and now.”
“Brainstorm really is there to help. They’re always asking us, ‘What do you guys have going on that we can help you with?’ or ‘Are there any problems that we can help you solve?’ I really feel like they have our best interests in mind and really just want to help Maritz as a company.”
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