Learning Series | WeHero Select with Jenny Douville

Ben Sampson: Jenny, thank you for jumping on the WeHero Learn series on the other side of this wall.

Jenny Douville: Appreciate

Ben Sampson: It. For those of you that haven't been a WeHero hq, Jenny's on the other side of this wall

Jenny Douville: And Ben is right there.

Ben Sampson: Yeah. And we're not fancy enough to have the camera equipment to do in person meetings quite yet, but we're getting there and you watching this is helping us get there. So yeah, thank you. And today we wanted to have Jenny on the WeHero Learn series because we wanna talk about our program. WeHero Select, which is really a program that we have to help companies and teams that are trying to engage their employees throughout the year and make impact throughout the year in a really strategic way. Jenny manages all of our WeHero Select clients, helping those companies accomplish their social goals and really helping them reach their engagement targets. And so wanted to bring her on today. So Jenny, welcome. Thank you for taking the time.

Jenny Douville: Thanks for having me Ben. I'm excited to chat about it.

Ben Sampson: Yeah, and I think a good spot for us to start is what is WeHero Select? Like let's actually talk about what the program is and what the benefits are. Yeah. And why then we can kind of get into like why companies should consider doing this. But yeah, what are the benefits and what is WeHero Select?

Jenny Douville: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So WeHero Select is basically, it's a program that we design for companies that are looking to do routine engagements, multiple events throughout the year to, you know, engage their teams, do volunteer experiences on a more regular cadence. And this is the best way for us to support those clients by being more of an extension of their team. So it's basically taking what our standard curated events look like that we would do on a one-off basis and adding additional benefits for being in a larger annual partnership essentially.

Ben Sampson: Awesome. And let's talk about some of like the juicy benefits, like the quarterly strategy means that we have the ability to offer our clients preferred pricing because we're able to plan so far in advance .Like let's talk a little bit about that.

Jenny Douville: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so I would say, yeah, we'll talk about the pricing piece there as well is like the discounts that we're able to provide for our select partners is significant because we're able to plan in advance and we're able to identify what those experiences are going to be throughout the year. It also locks them into that pricing from when they sign up for that annual partnership. So any like price fluctuations and increases, they're exempt from all of that. As well as a fully virtual group rate pricing, which this is particularly important for companies and our select clients who are going to do fully virtual no material events where we can offer one experience for many, many people but offer it at a one single flat rate fee. So the pricing there obviously is, is great to be able to offer those discounts.

Jenny Douville: But there's so much more that goes into the partnership than just the pricing piece. You mentioned the like quarterly strategy sessions. So that's another big piece that, I mean personally, obviously I love this bebecause I get to do this with all of our clients. So it's a meeting with your account manager who in this case is for all of our selects now is me, but in the future, maybe other folks as well. And we meet once a quarter or at whatever cadence is best for the client. And we get to talk about the, the fun stuff, which is why are you doing these events? What are your goals around these experiences? Is it team building? Is it employee engagement? Is it engaging your global audience? What does that look like and how can we best support you? And then diving into what experiences we have matched with those and do we wanna create custom experiences?

Jenny Douville: What type of engagements are you looking to do? And really get in depth into the strategy of the why behind everything. And then actually get to kind of plan out the fun stuff, which is the, what we're actually gonna be doing for them that year. So we do that in kind of a, like in chunks. So just the once a quarter, once a month, whatever that looks like for all of our partners are a little bit different in the strategy piece. But those sessions are really, really fun for me to get to do with them. I love them and it gives us such a great ability to help them in a more detailed way and just be more of that extension of their team that can help them kind of figure out what's best for their, for their groups.

Ben Sampson: We can help so much on the strategy piece just because we work with so many companies on their engagement, on their volunteering. Andso we can take those lessons, learn and what's working, what's not working, and really guide these companies, which I think is huge. And just like you said,like being that extension of their team. We know so many folks that are trying to do this. They're short staffed and for us to jump in and provide dedicated staff on our site to work with them throughout the year, I think super beneficial and has been proven to be beneficial for a lot of folks that are participating.

Jenny Douville: Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's a really, like, super key part of this as well is like they get, they get access to me, they get me as their dedicated event, account manager, but then they also get their dedicated event manager. So they have basically two people from WeHero who are on their team essentially to really help guide them and help them execute on these things. And that's been awesome too because then when other teams reach out from those companies, then they still get just me and the event manager so there's no confusion and we just really get to know our clients on a much deeper level ,which is so nice and we get to really understand their strategies, their goals, and help guide both them and their teams in the right direction. Yeah, and then definitely using like other partners as great examples of like, oh yeah, like I've done this with this other partner of ours and this is how that went and oh, they had similar challenges to you and this is what we did to, you know, overcome those challenges. And it's, it's really helpful to use that industry knowledge from our other partners as well.

Ben Sampson: Let's talk about like what companies and teams are really good fits for this. Like what are the teams and what are the companies that should be considering WeHero Select as an option?

Jenny Douville: Yeah, I would say there's, there's like a few main criteria that really help fit someone into the WeHero Select program. I would say the number one most important is just looking to do multiple experiences. Obviously we do have our one-off volunteer events, which companies can absolutely do and that's still a great option, but if they're looking to do more than just one, one-off, then that is ultimately where that select comes in is how many events are they looking to do throughout the time that they wanna be a partner, whether that's a couple, you know, half of a year, a full year or quarter, whatever that looks like. So that would be the big one is number of engagements that they're looking to do. And then also needing that additional help like so those companies that do want the extension of their team that do want that extra additional strategy support from the WeHero team.

Jenny Douville: And then also another piece which has come up a lot for many of my select clients is that they're not only looking to engage on a like company-wide level. Like for example, we wanna do three or four events this year for our whole company and we're gonna open it up and offer to multiple people. That's obviously wonderful and we can do that. But then there's the other piece which is we want our teams to be able to initiate this themselves and they get access to WeHero and they get access to a custom branded experiences page where those teams can come on and book directly with WeHero and provide that really like seamless partnership with us. So I would say it's twofold. It's obviously employee, you know, employee engagement on a hig hlevel, but then also giving teams that autonomy to book these experiences themselves.

Ben Sampson: So. Perfect. So awesome. We'll pause there and if people have specific questions or wanna see case studies of this actually working for companies that are in the WeHero Select program, reach out to us. But Jenny,thank you so much for taking time out of your day to just really pull back the curtain on what WeHero Select is. In the past we've really just offered, WeHero Select to a select handful of clients and now we're trying to educate more people that this is an option and there's ways that we can help you that where we're truly that extension of your team and it can really help reach those social impact goals and those employee engagement goals. So again, people have questions, reach out, you'll probably talk to Jenny and she can be there to support you.

Jenny Douville: Yeah, thanks so much Ben.

Ben Sampson: Okay. Bye everybody.

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