
Padre Dam achieve open and honest dialogue with staff
Padre Dam Municipal Water District (Padre Dam) has 139 employees, many of whom spend the majority of their workday offsite with employees working in the field or in satellite offices. Staying connected can be tricky for them. However, they’ve made communication a priority with the implementation of the Jostle® intranet.
They’ve had great results since rolling out their new platform, but recently took this to the next level with a noteworthy Jostle intranet campaign. This campaign won first place in the Jostle Awards 2016 Employee Engagement Initiative category.
“Padre Dam is recognized as a leader in the water industry. The Jostle platform is a key component to maintaining and exceeding that level of performance.”

Allen Carlisle
CEO/General Manager
The challenge
In 2016, Padre Dam’s leadership team began to notice that the dialogue from employees on the Jostle platform and during their quarterly all-employee meetings (GM Dialogue Sessions) was consistently positive and upbeat.
While this may not seem like a problem, Padre Dam has a realistic view of workplace culture and strives for a healthy environment. They knew not everyone could be in agreement about everything. Yet, the comments they were receiving didn’t demonstrate any differences in opinions. Padre Dam wanted staff to ask questions if they didn’t agree with (or understand) something. They also wanted employees to feel empowered to make suggestions.
The solution
Padre Dam launched an experimental, ongoing article called “Ask Allen” (Allen Carlisle, General Manager) two weeks after a GM Dialogue Session occurred. They chose a funny image related to a company inside joke in order to grab attention and create buzz.
The article provided opportunities to garner quality feedback on unanswered questions from the last GM Dialogue Session or new questions that had arisen since the session.

Padre Dam uses the Jostle platform for an honest two-way dialogue
A courageous member of the team initiated the process by posting thoughtful questions on issues that were close to employees’ hearts. Allen provided timely and honest answers to these questions.
This was a breakthrough moment. It opened up the floor to questions, and suddenly employees who had never commented before were weighing in with great suggestions and follow-up questions.
The results
Padre Dam already had extremely high participation rates on the Jostle platform (98% of employees sign in each month), but this initiative did something even more powerful: it encouraged honest and open communication. Padre Dam believes that input from all employees is vital to a successful workplace culture, and the Jostle intranet is the key component for these discussions.
This campaign is just one aspect of Padre Dam’s overall strategy for improving communication via their intranet.
Using water industry terminology, they personalized their intranet by naming it the “Stream,” and that’s just one piece of their “Pipeline” (their Workforce Partnership philosophy that encourages broad-based participation in the organization’s decision-making processes).
Overall, the Pipeline consists of:
The Basin (a filtering system)—An oversight committee that manages Pipeline performance.
Laterals (water pipes)—All working committees that collaborate to solve business issues.
The Stream—The flow of information; it’s the place to see and be seen.
“The Jostle platform complements our collaborative culture and even helps strengthen it.”

Allen Carlisle
CEO/General Manager

Padre Dam’s Pipeline
About Jostle Corporation
Jostle’s People Engagement® platform is helping organizations around the world become extraordinary. It creates connected and vibrant workplaces by connecting employees, enabling communication, and driving workplace culture. We make it easy for companies to engage their employees. This allows our customers to achieve employee participation rates of over 85%—that’s over 5X industry norms. For more information contact info@jostle.me or visit us online at www.jostle.me.