The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) is a government organization that ensures educators are meeting the teaching standards set by federal policy. They provide teachers-in-training, current teachers, and school principals with resources and self-assessment tools to help them meet the requirements and keep their licenses active and develop as professionals. 

In the winter of 2020 (winter in Australia runs from June to August), during the height of the pandemic, the team in charge of AITSL’s Jostle platform wanted to find a way to connect staff and improve morale. With lockdown protocols in place, many staff members were also feeling disappointed about having to cancel their usual winter travel plans. Not to mention, since the pandemic had sent everyone to work from home, 20 new hires had joined the organization. This meant that AITSL had reached the milestone of 100 employees, and a fifth of them had never met anyone face to face! 

To celebrate reaching 100 employees, and to get staff comfortable posting on their employee platform, the AITSL team created a #100Stories campaign. Here is how they did it: 

• Employees were paired up for a one-on-one video coffee chat, where they were to share a story about their favorite vacation they’ve ever taken. This helped staff connect and gave them a non-pandemic topic of conversation (perfect escapism). 
• After the chat, staff were encouraged to write up a News Article about their coffee chat partner’s favorite trip. A standardized header image was made available in their Library.
• Once the article was ready for publication, participants reached out to their intranet team for a date to schedule the post. Their intranet team wanted to ensure there was a steady stream of this content. 

Staff connected and loved getting to know each other better in such an informal way. Not everyone who participated wrote an article (in the end they generated about 20 stories), but some of the staff loved flexing their creative muscles. One staff member wrote the story of their partner’s trip like a Dr. Suess book! The stories that were shared became very popular and helped newer staff members see that their Jostle platform was more than just a space for policy updates. 

One tip their team noted for their next campaign: let people opt to tell a shorter story in the Activity feed! For some employees, the idea of writing an article can feel a bit overwhelming. 

Interested in learning more about AITSL? Check out their case study here.