And the winner of the Melcrum 2010 Employee Engagement Award is...

By Roz Topolski, Melcrum conference producer

It was a thrilling day in Atlanta, Georgia, last week when Melcrum announced the winner of the 2010 Employee Engagement Awards. After a careful review of entries from companies around the globe by our respected judges, we were thrilled to announce that Deutsche Post DHL submitted this year's winning entry.

Congratulations to the entire team that worked so diligently on this effort. Our judges were really impressed with the company's "beautifully executed campaign" and, more importantly, commented that, "DHL has mastered what few companies do when managing change - they engaged the middle management layer and fully utilized them in the process."

At a time when most organizations are experiencing some sort of change, DHL should be praised for its impressive effort to help its employees understand the business context for change, as well as how they could influence it.

It takes a real commitment to enter an awards program where other fellow professionals judge your work. I'd like to recognize the companies whose entries made it onto the shortlist: Citrix, Endo Pharmaceuticals, and Natural England. The judges found each one of these entries full of fantastic ideas for sustaining a committed workforce during (and following) a major change. It puts engagement strategies to the test - and these firms showed that communication can change behaviors that have a measurable impact on the business.

Thank you also to our fantastic judges - Bob Kelleher, Terry McKenzie, and Jodi Hutchison for carefully reviewing each and every entry.

Receiving external feedback of your work is a great way to further demonstrate the value of communications with your leadership. Keep this in mind when you see information about the 2011 awards. We hope you'll participate in the process and get some well-deserved praise.

But don't worry if you missed our US Employee Engagement conference, just make sure you book onto Melcrum's London Change Communication conference being held next Tuesday and Wednesday March 9th to 10th with speakers from some of the UK's biggest companies including British Airways, The Post Office and Aviva.

And, in a Friday special - for today only - book onto the change conference and receive Melcrum's Essential Toolkits for Communicating Change worth £275 ($445) absolutely FREE. Call now!