Manitoba Hydro has a presence across Manitoba, on Treaty 1, Treaty 2, Treaty 3, Treaty 4 and Treaty 5 lands – the original territories of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples – and the homeland of the Métis Nation. Manitoba Hydro acknowledges these lands, and pay their respects to the ancestors of these territories. The legacy of the past remains a strong influence on Manitoba Hydro’s relationships with Indigenous communities today. Manitoba Hydro remains committed to working with Indigenous communities by integrating Indigenous relationships into their top strategic goals. As leader of the Manitoba Hydro Creative team, we were tasked with developing the strategy and the creation of an anti-racism and Indigenous cultural awareness campaign.
The concept of Respect is deeply personal. So we designed the campaign to be interactive, asking the team to share their perspectives on Respect. The campaign is meant to reflect the diversity of cultures and opinions at Hydro. Rather than speaking about what respect means to us, we asked the team “What does Respect mean to you?” This is the question Manitoba Hydro asked of its 5000 employees. The result: A highly visible initiative highlighting our similarities rather than our differences. So What do we all have in common? And how do these values connect us all?
Respect is one of the seven indigenous teachings gifted to us from the Grandfathers. And respect is about perspectives: Indigenous perspectives, Employee perspectives, Project management perspectives, and Individual perspectives. We ensured the representation of each.
But respect must also begin with the self. So we encouraged employees to literally look in the mirror and to ask: "What does respect mean from my perspective?" We captured their answers. And we shared and featured the thoughtful employees who lived the values and behaviours of respect every day. This was at the heart of the Respect campaign, which led to an unparalleled authenticity, and created a legitimate interest as employees literally saw themselves represented in the campaign.
We set clear expectations and modelled the right behaviours with specific employee-led examples of respectful behaviours. We provided a way for all employees to show their support by physically wearing respect: a stylish collection of work wear apparel for employees to show off at the office and on-site. We also provided and promoted a channel to help employees anonymously report harassment and discrimination.
We also included an interactive installation where employees could participate by writing, posting, and displaying their feedback on notecards. This allowed employees to actually answer the question asked of them during the campaign: "What does Respect mean to you?" Content from the cards were collected monthly to be used in new cycles of the campaign, creating a positive feedback loop of ongoing content.
The Respect Campaign was highly successful, and led to a remarkably sharp decrease in incident reports, employee turnover, and workplace dissatisfaction, from a high of 106 incidents in 2017 when the campaign was launched, to a low of 18 incidents in 2020.