80 Years of Crawford – a global family unites in celebration
Nearly 2,500 employees from 38 countries logged on and engaged as Crawford marked its 80th anniversary with the first virtual Founder’s Day Celebration, which was held over four days in May.
The virtual Founder’s Day Celebration was created to recognize global employees who have made Crawford’s success possible, celebrate 80 years of industry innovation and enhance Crawford’s purpose and values among employees. The challenges everyone has faced over the past 18 months gave special significance to the event, which above all was designed to bring people from across the organization together.
“It was important to remind people we are all here for them, we are One Crawford and we are all working towards the same goal,”
explains Ariela Grossman, Brand Director at Crawford, who played a key role in bringing the event to life.
The virtual celebration began with opening remarks from Joseph Blanco, President, and Rohit Verma, CEO, and an interview with Jesse C. Crawford Jr., Crawford board member and grandson of Jim Crawford, our founder. Over the next four days, employees around the world enjoyed presentations from senior leaders, educational sessions on Crawford’s strategy and business units, plus games, challenges, wellness tips, video messages and ‘speed networking’, which repeatedly brought people from different countries, teams and seniority levels together in small virtual groups.
“A key component of the event was to help employees learn more about each other and increase their knowledge of the wide range services and products provided by Crawford,” Grossman explains.
This was achieved through informative and entertaining sessions on how loss adjusting, TPA, on-demand services and managed repair operate and were delivered in creative ways, including staged claim scenarios. In one, Crawford TPA in US, UK and Australia came together to demonstrate all the different ways they could help a fictional supermarket chain.
“If you work in one area of Crawford, you may want to know more about another part of the business and the opportunities available,” Grossman points out. “The content and networking gave everyone a window through which to boost their understanding of the services offered by Crawford around the world.”
The virtual celebration also included a recurring feature entitled ‘Fuelling the Positive’, where employees shared positive experiences and highlighted the work done by colleagues in the past year in video messages. Dozens were posted through the week, with messages coming from 21 countries. “It’s easy to forget to share positive stories, so we want to keep this going,” Grossman says.
In all, the event racked up 25,771 site engagements over its four-day run. Importantly, it also raised an incredible $58,674 for Crawford Cares, which provides financial assistance to Crawford employees experiencing hardship.
Much of the content produced during the event will now also be repurposed as recruitment and training material for use online and within Crawford Educational Services, where it will be used when onboarding new hires and be available for anyone who wants to learn more.
The celebration also gave everyone a chance to reflect on Crawford’s values and how they have evolved over the decades.
“The value I see as being most relevant to the way we operate today is empowerment,” Grossman says. “Since the RESTORE values were introduced, the shift in the company culture has been dramatic. People are empowered to feel they can make decisions, take responsibility for how they do their job and that they are trusted.”
