Toward the end of the 20th century, businesses began to think differently about human resources. Companies were already aware of how crucial employees were to their progress and success, but now they went a step further, coming to see employees more and more as ambassadors.

What did it take to be a good ambassador? Having a sense of engagement, taking pride in belonging, and staying current with what is going on in the company. Thus, in addition to managing relations with shareholders and the media, public relations and communications teams began investing time and energy in strategies and tools for communicating with employees.

It was in this context that Lassonde set up its employee recognition program at the beginning of the 1990s as we saw in a previous column. However, as the years passed and the company grew, employees began to feel that they were out of the loop. It’s easy enough to share information with a hundred or so people, but what happens when the list of employees keeps getting longer and the company’s operations expand beyond local boundaries?

To address this issue, Lassonde published its first annual employee report in 1997. For the first few years it was mainly given out to the staff at the Rougemont plants, but then began to be distributed throughout the company. It contained information about the acquisition of new subsidiaries and new equipment, about sales results and changes in management and about innovations – in short, the latest news about the life and culture of the company. It remains an essential source of information which employees look forward to reading each year in mid- December.

Next column: Top marks…