Stryker Case Study: Increased Team Engagement by 40%

How Jennifer achieved a quantifiable, measured increase in team engagement (hint, the only thing she did was use Slides with Friends).

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The Short Story

Jennifer runs regular team meetings for her coworkers — in other words, she does the unspoken work of keeping a team working well together and productive overall. Managing these team meetings was taking a toll on her: they took time and effort to manage. She started using Slides With Friends to run meetings, team connection activities, information sessions, and more. The results was an immediate improvement in her team's self-reported engagement and morale.

“I love this product. It has made my life measurably and appreciably easier.”

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The Challenge: Running productive, engaging meetings (without doing hours of prep)

Jennifer Purdue is in charge of running meetings for a team spread across the U.S., Canada, and India. As a Scrum Master at Stryker Corporation, keeping everyone engaged, on the same page, and productive was necessary, but tough:

“Creating something engaging and interesting every month that really got people excited to be in a meeting was a drudge for me. It was difficult. It was complicated to try and find things that would work for everyone.”

“Spending even an hour on one of these [events] was really cutting into my day and time.”

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The Search: Finding something to help meeting presentations

“I found [Slides With Friends] on a Google search, to be honest with you. I looked for ‘Help with creating presentation,’ I think. —

“And it was one of the best Google searches I've ever done in my entire life.”

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The Solution: Time saved, team happy

Finally, Jennifer “really got people excited to be in a meeting.” First, instead of spending hours planning, she could now use pre-built templates that saved her hours of prep work. Slides with Friends gave her “out-of the box [solutions] that I could select from, and that would be interesting and appropriate for my team.”

And then it grew into something more. “Initially they were just icebreakers, and they were a great start for that. But then they just became a lot of fun” for other things. “It isn’t just an icebreaker” : Jennifer started using Slides With Friends as a core part of her meetings, and started to see real results.

“They now have transformed into these camaraderie events that people get excited about, that people look forward to, that people like so much that twice out of the year, we take a whole meeting just to do a Slides With Friends event.”

She incorporated Slides With Friends into her workflow in several ways:

• Team meeting management: The slide deck presentation format helped her keep the meetings structured, and the interactive content kept everyone super-engaged.
• Icebreakers for her all-remote team: The pre-made game deck content helped her international team build connections across time zones.
• Budget (but effective) team building: Twice a year, they replaced regular meetings with full team-building activities. It was international team building at a fraction of the budget (and with commensurate results).

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The Results: Measurable increases in productivity, engagement, and team connection. Decreases in turnover. Plus just a happy team.

“I would say that we are seeing overall increased engagement: in our productivity, in our in our ability to turn out the work, in our ability to come present every day and be aware of what we need to do. All of that falls back to engagement and that engagement is specifically tied to using Slides with Friends.”

Jennifer quickly saw measurable improvements in her team’s engagement and productivity, and she traces it directly back to Slides With Friends.

• Overall workplace improvement: “Productivity goes up. Turnover goes down. Your people are just more ‘there’ every day.”
• 40% increase in engagement: “Engagement has definitely gone up. I would say it’s gone up around 40% to be honest with you.”
• Increase in productivity: “We just did a survey at work, which is why I have those numbers right off the head like that, and the biggest improvement was in ‘I have the tools to do my job effectively.’ And I deeply think that that is reflective of the fact that we're closer and more cohesive as a unit. And that is a direct benefit of using Slides With.”
• Better team connection: “It really engaged my team to the extent that they’re closer now.”
• More enjoyable meetings: “People look forward to these meetings now. They talk about what we’ll do next month.” “I couldn’t kill this icebreaker now if I wanted to. They’d rise up with pitchforks and torches if I tried to get rid of it.”

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Conclusion: Slides With Friends brings teams together, improves work overall

For Jennifer, Slides With Friends transformed her meetings from obligatory to engaging, effective, and fun. She no longer wastes time building her own engagement tools, and her team benefits from a stronger, more connected work environment.

“I love this product. It has made my life measurably and appreciably easier.”

In remote teams, fostering engagement isn’t just about morale—it directly impacts productivity and efficiency. And for Jennifer, Slides With Friends provided exactly the solution she needed.

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