The Hydro magazine Hi! has been selected as the best multilingual internal magazine by the Federation of European Business Communicators' Association (FEIEA).
In the autumn of 2003, Hydro developed a new, global internal magazine in connection with the launch of The Hydro Way. The magazine is published 6-8 times a year in Norwegian, English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Italian - and from next year also in Chinese and Hungarian.
"The magazine is an important communication channel, as more than half of Hydro's 36,000 employees are involved in production and do not have daily access to computers and the intranet," says Cecilie Ditlev-Simonsen, head of Corporate Communication in Hydro.
"We try to raise issues that are relevant for employees regardless of where they work and whether they are part of Aluminium or Oil & Energy. We intend to keep the employees in focus, to foster a sense of community across national and business area borders, and to provide an opportunity for dialogue between management and employees," she says.
The magazine is produced by journalists and designers from Hydro's in-house communications bureau Hydro Media and the British communication bureau item. The editor is Tone Dahle from Corporate Communication, who is responsible for internal communication in Hydro. The magazine concept was developed by Dahle together with Hydro Media and item.
A long road towards victory
FEIEA is a 50-year old umbrella organization with 5,000 members in 13 national communications organizations. FEIEA is a Pan-European network for business sector communicators with the objective of promoting professional support and increasing its members' skills and knowledge.
The organization arranges an annual "Grand Prix", a competition for the best internal publications in Europe within six categories – magazines, newsletters/newspapers, multilingual publications, annual reports and electronic newsletters. It is only possible to enter one category.
The Hi! magazine had to pass through a number of stages before it could enter and win the competition. First a national jury assessed the applicants for that country. Hi! won the British competition for multilingual magazines and was then moved up to the European semi-final and later to the final.
"We are very proud that external experts have found our magazine to be the best in the European business sector," says magazine editor Tone Dahle.
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