This article was first published on Response Source, 26 March 2015. Read original article here.

A unique peer to peer best practice sharing event and award, which showcases innovative employee engagement projects from multi- sector internal communications teams has drawn acclaim from participants.

The fifth IC Showcase, hosted by the internal communications practice of specialist communications recruiter VMA GROUP, attracted 13 teams from a variety of sectors including financial services, utilities, charities, life sciences, telecoms, publishing, IT and engineering.

Each of the teams are given the opportunity to present their biggest success story from the previous 12 months which are then peer judged against three criteria: contribution to overall business strategy, contribution to the increase of impact and influence of internal comms within the organisation and the style of the presentation itself.

The winner was NN Group for their project “How to make an IPO relevant for employees”, which charted the internal communications team’s challenge to engage a global workforce of 12,000 employees in 18 countries to an IPO. As Head of Internal Communications Marije Scholma explained “An IPO is a very complex process. It is also the result of the hard work of everybody in the business so we tried to engage all our employees by communicating every single milestone. NN Group is the Insurance and Investment business of the former ING Group, that split its banking and insurance/investment management activities. Employees had gone through an enormous amount of change already – not least a new name – and a new brand. We wanted to involve every single employee in what was the one of the largest European IPOs in 20 years. Working with 18 internal communications teams around the world we developed a campaign with several initiatives. It all culminated on the day of the listing in a unique live broadcast from Euronext, the stock exchange in Amsterdam, so that all 12,000 employees could celebrate at the same time.”

“The fact that this is peer to peer voting makes it very special,” continued Marije. “It’s really interesting to see what others in your field are achieving and it’s also a great learning and networking opportunity.”

Her thoughts were echoed by Deborah de Satge, Head of Internal Communications at AXA PPP Healthcare who said “You can read case studies of successful internal communications projects but hearing them first hand, from the people who have been responsible for implementing them really brings it to life.”

Northumbrian Water was runner up with its story book presentation of how in 12 months it built its internal communications team from just one person to a high performing team delivering integrated employee communications to 3000 employees.

Third place went to LV for the design and development of its bespoke interactive company intranet.

Andrew Harvey, Director of VMAs Internal Communications Practice sees the event as a real value add to clients. “It’s a real opportunity for internal communications teams to invest some time in professional development for themselves as individuals, for their teams and for their businesses by sharing best practice ideas with each other in an informal, fun – yet professional environment. There’s such a wealth of fantastic work out there and so we thought why not give a platform for it to be showcased – and then be judged by peers . We make it a fun day and the atmosphere is collaborative as well as competitive. We’re looking forward to next year’s already!”