The department of human resources of the publishing house SM held an event for all its Spanish employees last November.
To hold a seminar for hundreds of people, in which the idea is to collect data through real-time question/answer exchanges, is impossible without using an interactive voting system. This was something that was very clear in the minds of everyone working in the department of human resources of the publishing house SM when they broached the possibility of holding an event last November. It was an enormous challenge for the organisers, since, in the words of Adolfo Crooke Llop, head of human resources, it was the first time that the company had assembled “all SM Group’s employees in Spain under one roof.”
Interactive quiz
Taking advantage of the fact that the company was updating the group’s corporate values, both the directorate general and the department of human resources hit on the idea of assembling all the group’s employees in Spain at a large one-day event. “The aim was to reflect on company policy and spend a day with all the group’s employees,” Crooke explains.
The venue chosen was the Casino de Aranjuez (Madrid), where several presentations were programmed. Representatives of the group’s directorate general explained the department’s role and its future lines of action to those present, while the department of human resources set out the company’s programme as regards work/family reconciliation. “As we didn’t want it to be a normal presentation without any type of interactivity, we engaged the services of a specialised company to carryout a type of quiz with questions about the company.”
The event was held at the fabulous Casino de Aranjuez, with the deputy director as compère. Three volunteers from the audience were invited on stage to participate in the quiz. Nevertheless, all the employees were given a voting pad so as to be able to opine about the questions put to the contestants. “In this way, both the contestants and the audience were able to vote. In addition, a prize was given to the member of the audience achieving the highest number of correct answers,” Crooke adds.
According to the head of human resources of SM, this was all possible thanks to the interactive voting system, which facilitated the active participation of everyone “and enlivened an activity that, without the voting pads, would have been limited to an onstage quiz.”
In the opinion of Crooke, the audience’s degree of implication is proportional to the user-friendliness of the voting pads. “Response levels depend to a great extent on the voting system, since it awakens the audience’s curiosity, encouraging them to participate and helping them understand the messages,” Crooke is quick to stress.
Positive experience
The event was doubly challenging for the department of human resources. On the one hand, it was the first time that the publishing house had assembled all its employees in Spain. On the other, it was also the first time the company had resorted to PowerVote’s interactive system. “We were slightly concerned about using the tool because we were first-time users. Although we did have the chance to familiarise ourselves with the system at Expomanagement, and we liked it. We saw that it was simple and easy to use. This was the reason why we chose the voting pads. In addition, PowerVote provided excellent support, clearing any up doubts and solving any problems,” Crooke explains.
Despite the system’s simplicity, SM’s head of human resources confesses that “to carry out the setup, programming and co-ordination on our own would have been difficult or impractical.”
About the SM Group
The SM Group is an independent Spanish publishing house with a strong presence in Spain and Latin America – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic – and one of the leading publishers of textbooks and children’s literature.
