Internal Engagement & Workplace Culture Workshop —
Staff Satisfaction & Trust Building

Creative Direction, Facilitation, Experience Design, Analysis

Post-COVID-19, Hamilton County Tourism conducted a series of staff engagement surveys that revealed a significant decrease in employee satisfaction and trust over a six-month period. Leadership tasked me with analyzing the survey results and using the anonymous data to design an interactive session. The goal of this session was to identify actionable opportunities for increasing staff satisfaction by improving culture, trust, and engagement.

Rather than delivering a traditional presentation or feedback session, I approached this as an internal design research project. Using creative facilitation methods and unique collaborative activities, I was able to foster honest conversation and surface new ideas for change.

Process & Approach

This research aimed to learn what had caused the dip in workplace satisfaction and generate ideas to improve staff engagement. Knowing that this team struggles with unknowns, I designed inherently “silly” activities to affect a sort of make-believe mindset and encourage truly divergent thinking.

I approached this project with intentionally creative facilitation in mind. To shift the tone away from blame or corporate-style “fix-it” language, the entire session was planned to be an exploratory, playful experience. Based on my knowledge of individuals’ comfort levels with creative thinking and wild ideas, I strategically grouped team members, encouraging them to think beyond current limitations.

Using metaphors helped the team abstractly articulate how an ideal workplace culture might feel and identify ideal trust-building behaviors. The activities allowed the team to imagine positive future possibilities while surfacing concrete pain points and needs.

The session combined:

  • Imaginative exercises

  • Data storytelling (visual survey maps)

  • Collaborative group work

  • Guidelines to encourage psychological safety

  • Facilitated reflection and synthesis

My Role

  • Survey Analysis: I reviewed engagement data to identify core pain points and opportunities

  • Workshop Design: Full concept, planning, and facilitation of an interactive staff session focused on building trust and culture

  • Content & Materials Development: I designed a full suite of workshop materials, including:

    • Activity worksheets to spark imaginative thinking and encourage creativity

    • Visual "Survey Maps" to make engagement data more accessible

    • Session Rules & Creative Process guidelines to establish a psychologically safe space

    • Facilitator agenda, group assignments, and pacing structure

  • Experience Facilitation: I led the session, guided discussions, and synthesized insights into actionable recommendations

Outcome

The session generated clear, actionable insights and shifted the tone of the conversation around culture. Key outcomes included:

  • Surfacing core pain points around communication clarity, trust, recognition, and work-life balance

  • Generating a wide range of employee-driven ideas and requests for improving culture and engagement

  • Providing leadership with a concrete map of bottlenecks and opportunities (documented in the Staff Engagement Session Insights report)

The session notably modeled a creative, participatory approach to internal culture planning that can be built on for future initiatives.