2000 Ad

Communication World, April, 2002 by Catriona Byrne, Janet Houen, Margaret Seaberg

Delivering the Olympic Games to the world's stage is a monumental task. In 2000 the workforce communication team for the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games designed and implemented programmes to inform, involve and retain employees and volunteers for the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games. This article--part two in a series of three--examines the role that a powerful workforce communication and recognition programme can have in galvanising a huge, disparate workforce.

Diversity was the defining characteristic of the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games workforce. By Games-time, the 110,000-member workforce included paid permanent staff, volunteers, contractors working for the organising committee, contractors with other organisations and a host of sponsor staff.

The Sydney 2000 Games workforce represented people of all ages, educational levels, nationalities and interests, with a mix of experience, expectations and motivations.

Paramount to the Games' success was having the workforce operate as a united front. The "one team, one tent" philosophy was strongly encouraged in the development of the organising committee culture during the years leading up to the Games. The challenge was maintaining that culture as the workforce grew exponentially.

With an estimated viewing audience of 3.5 billion and thousands of visitors converging on Sydney for the Games, it was vital that the workforce project a cohesive image. Externally we were to be one--even though internally we were many.

FINDING COMMON GROUND

As the years counted down to September 2000, it became apparent that an overarching identity encompassing all workforce groups and acknowledging a shared vision would be essential.

Up to this point the Games workforce had discrete sections--volunteers had their own "Volunteers 2000" brand, paid permanent staff were known as "SOCOG," and the staff of contracting organisations rightfully identified themselves with their own company (e.g., IBM).

Despite these differences, there was one commonality: to help fulfill a dream-- the dream of athletes to compete for their country, the dream of Australia's people to host the best Games ever and the individual dreams of thousands who wanted to be a part of the Olympic experience.

With a workforce that could fill the stands of the Olympic Stadium, we needed a brand to sum up who we were and what we were about.

To recognize our common goal and our collective power, GamesForce 2000 was born, with the accompanying tag line "delivering the dream."

An identifying brand helped galvanise the workforce, says Claire Houston, former manager of workforce training for SOCOG. "It united the volunteer, paid and contractor staff into one group with set objectives and vision--it was about one GamesForce with one clear goal--no matter where you came from," she says.

It made operational sense for unity and clarity around defined shared goals. And as a handy by-product, there was finally a collective noun to sum up the team (previously it took several lines and a darn good memory to rattle off all the Olympic workforce segments).

In the 18 months leading up to the Games, GamesForce 2000 internal branding was used extensively on invitations, training material, commemorative pins, T-shirts and more. The GamesForce 2000 logo design was readily identifiable as "Olympic" in style and complied with the strict protocols governing Olympic branding--it paid homage to the "Volunteer" logo of the past and put athletes at the core of the image. The workforce brand worked because it dovetailed with the familiar Sydney 2000 Olympic Games look.

Nevertheless, a "buzzword" cannot create a culture or unite a team--no single name will suddenly create a workforce if the training, communication, organisational structures, policies and procedures, and a billion other considerations are ineffective. Nevertheless, it can serve as a useful "peg" on which to hang the whole thing.

HITTING THE MARK WITH PUBLICATIONS

To promote unity and cohesive operations, tangible communication tools were needed to overcome the logistical challenge of dispersing information to an army of volunteers. For the Sydney 2000 team, logistics problems were compounded by being restricted to non-electronic means of keeping volunteers up to date on planning progress, training and more. In the initial planning stages for the Sydney Games, the Internet was not nearly as advanced as the online world that awaited the Salt Lake City Organising Committee (SLOC). Salt Lake planners took full advantage of the quantum leaps in Internet capability, successfully using the Internet as a main vehicle for communicating with volunteers. SLOC's Team 2002 web site was established specifically for the volunteers, who were assigned access ID numbers.

"It was very successful and well received with our volunteers," says Nancy Volmer, senior communications manager, SLOC. The Team 2002 volunteer site, however, was only a fraction the size of SLOC's public web site--the largest event web site in sports history.