Connecting colleagues across Germany

“The idea is fantastic. Practitioners and theorists get to exchange ideas in a way that wouldn’t even be possible at a conference. If you think a little outside the box, you can take something away from all the different fields that will help your own work move forward. Getting a clearer view of your own organization by gaining insights into other groups and their priorities and processes "in private" is priceless.” 

Caritas Coffee participant 

Challenge 

Almost 700,000 people work full-time for Caritas. In addition, there are hundreds of thousands of volunteers throughout Germany. Their areas of operation are wide-ranging: from care for older people to childcare to emergency care and psychological counseling. Each and every individual contributes on a daily basis to helping people, especially those in need. 

Due to Caritas’s geographical distribution and different fields of operation, however, there is little opportunity to establish contacts beyond the individual regions, in spite of the fact that all parts of the organization stand for the same thing: helping people on the ground. 
 
In 2022, we celebrated a milestone anniversary – 125 years since Caritas was founded. To celebrate this special year, we launched a campaign under the motto “We do this together.” But how do you create a feeling of community in an organization like Caritas? How can we connect all the employees and volunteers together so that they can share their experiences? And how can we make the spirit of Caritas more tangible for everyone?  

Solution 

With so many locations and employees, hosting an on-site event for everyone was impossible. Instead, we were looking for a digital solution to connect our employees in a fun and informal way. That’s how Mystery Coffee came to our attention. With Mystery Coffee, we were able to move the process of getting to know our employees into the digital space, which solved the problem of being physically scattered. 

By randomly matching employees, they all had the opportunity to meet those from fields of work that they would not normally encounter in their day-to-day jobs. In order to ensure that employees got to know each other nationwide, the algorithm was adapted to exclude the possibility of matching direct colleagues by comparing the first two numbers of their postal code. 

The only other fixed matching criterion was accessibility. Not all employees are on duty daily or have computer access. Thanks to the Mystery Coffee platform, this wasn’t a problem. Employees could indicate when they were available and, for example, when they were on vacation. 

By advertising the platform via traditional means like flyers, social media, and newsletters, as well as internal word of mouth, the number of participants increased quickly. Our Caritas Coffee Call was then successfully launched, bringing together colleagues from all over Germany for 15-minute conversations. 

Impact 

The participants of the Caritas Coffee Call were quick to realize and praise the initiative's benefits. From feedback, we could see how much our employees enjoyed exchanging ideas and looking beyond their own horizons. 

We received reports of friendly and interesting conversations between colleagues from different disciplines. This positive feedback was supported by the number of matches generated. On average, employees were matched for a Caritas Coffee Call five times over the course of a year. However, some highly engaged employees had more than 15 Caritas Coffee Calls that year. 

While we were unfortunately not able to get all association members on board for the Coffee Calls during the year of the initiative, it brought us much closer to the motto of our 125th anniversary year: "We do this together." 

 

 

About Caritas 
The German Caritas Association is a union of 6,200 legally independent organizations. All of them are united through their commitment to serving people in need. Caritas sees its mission as meeting people with love and respect, regardless of their origin, status, or religion. It performs this service nationwide in around 25,000 centers and institutions. 

You can find more information about Caritas Germany here.