Internal Communications, Real Impact, Real Results conference

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From strategy and planning to Yammer and ROI, the ‘Internal Communications, Real Impact, Real Results’ conference, was a fantastic one-day event with nearly 30 fast-paced presentations, brilliant speakers and best practice tips aplenty.

Couldn’t make it? Then here’s a round up of our favourite bits…

Case study: Creating an engaged workforce worldwideWho: MetLife, an insurance and investment company.

The big issue: MetLife needed to engage 5,200 employees in 31 countries where only 25% of the workforce work in English.

What they did…Phase 1:1. Used a cultural map to assess cultural

differences including language, products, geography and culture

2. Developed a flexible plan by adding what they call ‘local water’

3. Created a visual roadmap and asked people to have small meetings (10-20 people)

4. Trained leaders to present this and made the roadmap into a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece told a specific part of the story. Every time a leader picked up a piece, employees could discuss and ask questions

5. The roadmap appeared on screen savers, wall art and mouse mats

What they did…Phase 2:MetLife are now moving from small meetings to a series of strategy days across the region, focused on four enablers. These strategy days will involve local content and engaging the employees interactively with breakouts and market action plans.

On organisational culture...MetLife shared four big lessons:

1. Preparation and training are essential

2. Keep things flexible for local markets

3. Translate where needed and stay focused

4. Be mindful of costs - the strategy days cost £100k in the UK alone

/ Top tipDon’t confuse happy with engaged! MetLife wanted engaged employees – the blend of being happy, engaged and motivated.

/ Useful statEngaged employees are 22% more productive. Source: Gallup study

/ Useful statEmployee turnover is 65% lower when employees are engaged. Source: Gallup study

How to… measure your Return on Investment

Data and metrics alone can’t build the case for internal communications. You need to factor in feeling.

IC needs to support business objectives and strategic goals. Make IC accountable.

To analyse ROI on internal comms, use metrics that are valuable to your organisation. There is no one size fits all. Be specific about targets and be prepared to stand by them.

Remember to pilot. Communicate messages to a proportion of your audience, measure impact and compare with a control group whom you haven’t communicated with. It can be risky talking to some not others about a change initiative.

Before and after, assess understanding, sentiment, and behaviours. Re-measure aspects – but remember to ask at the beginning!

Who: Carnival UK, owners of P&O and Cunard, the UK’s leading cruise brand.

They say...“We believe measurement is the blend of facts, knowledge and gut feeling that gives you the real picture.”

Five tips for measuring ROI 1. Make internal comms accountable: use hard metrics and

data to demonstrate value in a way that’s meaningful to the organisation. (Carnival UK uses the Gallup Q12 and Net Promotor score)

2. Be practical with your tools and measurement

3. Qualitative is just as reliable as quantitative

4. Get out there, listen, get the broad themes then form your polls and surveys based on this face-to-face insight

5. Focus on ‘think / feel / do’ – make sure any questions are grounded in what people are thinking, feeling and doing as a result and don’t forget to measure the intangibles – use the power of personal testimony

Case study: Be in tune with your cultureWho: ITVThe issue: ITV has many remote workers and is generally very informal, social and mobile – it’s a non-office based culture. But their culture wasn’t being reflected in their internal comms approach.

What they did…The team started having more fun in their internal comms and focused on two big areas:

Focus 1: Tone of voiceITV created a tone of voice that was informal and social – losing the management-speak and using humour in small doses. They used this change to tell their strategy through the eyes of the people delivering it. This has been so important that they now have a team delivering ‘tone of voice’ workshops.

The results:“It was amazing how this one difference transformed our communications.”

Focus 2: Mobile communicationsITV has an intranet and an app so that employees can view intranet content on their mobiles. Employees were already great contributors, so when ITV launched two new channels and had 48 pages of content to launch, employees were encouraged to tweet about it themselves.

The results:Managers’ bulletins open rate has gone from 51% – 84% and we have over 50 contributors now.

Case study: Our Yammer JourneyWho: RSA InsuranceRSA are well on their way in their Yammer journey. Here’s the story so far…

How it all began…The team began with no real rules because they wanted to see how Yammer would settle organically. Later, they introduced leaders to the process before recruiting Yammer writers. They focused on welcoming and helping people to use it before they started to shape conversations. Once they’d got the ball rolling, they created a social media policy.

And 2.5 years later…This year Yammer went global, with 9,962 activated users and 14,500 engaged users (posting and liking every month).

And the business value?Collaboration: People are using it to solve customer problems quickly – particularly important because RSA is so big. It’s transforming the way they help people and work together.

Noise reduction: Using Yammer reduced the volume of email traffic by 15%.

Crowd sourcing ideas: When RSA needed to save money, they gathered ideas through Yammer. Over 400 ideas were posted.

What’s next?They’re now getting real customers on Yammer for a ‘YamJam’. They’ve had 1,000 people asking these customers questions.

Case study: Introducing YammerWho: British Gas

The pilot: British Gas started out by piloting the free version of Yammer with 200 users. They then use its success to ask for the budget to install.

Roll-outThey kicked off roll out with 500 engineers in the field to see if there really was an appetite for Yammer. Within just three months 500 users had turned into 5000, using word of mouth alone. Only then did they go to the senior management team and MDs.

BenefitsBritish Gas now uses Yammer to share knowledge, innovate, give people a voice and reduce email. Specific areas include:

1. Q&A with senior leaders at the full and half year financial results.

2. A campaign where employees got ‘Five a day’ – tips, features, guides, function, competitions for 30 days.

3. A 101 group where they posted 2/3 page PDF guides on various things to do with Yammer such as ‘how to’s’ and guides.

4. CEO YamJam tips

ResultsBritish Gas now has 27,000 users (90% of employees). 80% are engaged and using it day-to-day.

Make it your own… Running a Leadership Q&A through YammerTime: Allow 1-1.5 hours per session

Questions: Put in a couple of questions to get people going. British Gas found they then received around 25/30 questions in the hour.

Focus: Make sure your CEO stays focused on answering the questions.

Topics: Start specific to help the leadership team relax e.g. financial results, overtime etc. After a while you’ll find they relax enough to use it as an open session.

“Employees value moving from what they know to what they can share.” British Gas

Case study: Connecting employees to customersWho: Nickelodeon

The researchThey brought kids of different age groups into the office for ‘immersion days’: spending time with them to really find out more about what they want and what they’re interested in.

The approach included staff induction videos which were all about the here and now – what do kids want? “We connect. We Innovate. It’s Kidology.”

The issue: After a tough business period, the Nickelodeon team knew they needed to do something different: it was a do or die situation. They launched Kids Connect – an engagement initiative for all employees to really get back to their core business about kids. How? To engage employees to think like a kid.

Success is built on knowing and understanding the audience:

Kids now drive everything they do, even in terms of recruitment (some of the recruitment questions are written by children including ‘How long can you jump on a bouncy castle?’) and they’ve put a lot of emphasis on experiential activity for employees.

Engagement was a key solution. Senior management team’s statement was to put the audience at the heart of the strategy. Kids Connect was the tool.

Three key employee touchpoints: research, recruitment induction and experiential.

Nickelodeon’s experiential employee events• Reading to children at school

• Bring your kids to work days

• Each staff member going to Nickelodeon land for the day to observe kids and their families

• Working with a kids charity nominated by employees

• A strong relationship with a local infant school: taking part in various activities, volunteering, bringing the children in and holding staff meetings in the school assembly hall

The results of putting children at the heart of what they do1. Six consecutive years of growth

2. Employee turnover down from 17% to 12%

3. Employee satisfaction up from 76% to 84%

4. Time to hire reduced from 13.5 weeks to 10 weeks

5. This initiative was key to taking Nickelodeon forward

• Involve people in all areas of your business – even legal etc

• Involve employees with idea generation

• Be brand relevant• Engage employees with employees

Make it your own…

How to… future-proof your internal comms

Big company trends we’re seeing:• Communications have less resource

and less budget

• Everyone is time poor

• Local managers and leaders have local pressures

The skill set for IC is changing – we need to be comfortable across IC and external comms, we need to be able to network, to have journalism skills and to be able to measure. Show that you understand the business and that you’re there during decisions – not just there to communicate them.

How to respond:• Be ready to do more, with less

• Become audience-centric

• Make your messages and campaigns relevant at a local level

• Build your network locally – you need them to be on side and it helps to be culturally sensitive

• Get your translation piece right

• Ensure you have a greater ability to work across communications – (investor relations, corporate comms, internal comms, journalist approaches etc)

Who: GSKThey say...“Do the basics really well”

How to… engaging with hard-to-reach workforce

The big ways Travelodge are engaging with their people:By focusing on informing managers. Travelodge doesn’t have the technology to reach all 9,000 staff so they reach out to their 500 managers in order to reach the rest.

By providing case studies, stories, information and ‘What good looks like’ guides in a way that’s short, sharp and snappy.

By using video (particularly on Google+)

By using their 30th anniversary as a great opportunity to get 20 board members to hit the road, visiting as many hotels as they could.

They documented this and used it as fuel for enabling managers to have conversations.

By always incorporating the why.

By always using storytelling.

By focusing on three things with managers: time (short of), knowledge (what they can provide), skills (upskilling through links with HR).

Who: TravelodgeThe numbersWe have 500 managers and below them 9,00 staff.

We have no technology to communicate and the best method is to reach the 500 and brief them on how to disseminate information in turn to their staff.

Case study: Refreshing your brand proposition to find out what you really stand for.Who: Arriva

In numbersArriva have:55,000 employees in 14 countries

2bn passengers

474 patient transportation vehicles

700 trains

221 metros

Developing the propositionThis ‘panther response’ led Arriva to developing their proposition:• Connecting people

• Shaping every journey

• Forward motion

• Urban mobilityGetting startedArriva asked people, ‘What animal would Arriva be?’They said a panther, describing the company as:

• Agile

• Quiet

• Rarely seen

• Intelligent

They supported this proposition with:

Three story themes: customers / people / environment

An inspirational statement: for each of part of the proposition

The Arriva story: They created and provided the first chapter, then asked employees to help create the rest of the story.

Employee-made films: Based on the three themes, they asked employees to go out and take footage in their world. This created some amazing content that they could use to capture their story visually.

A re-skinned intranet: This included a new leaders’ blog and ‘Ask the Exec’ section plus updated news and a ‘Friday Feed’ to tell people what was on the intranet that week. The biggest draws are news, blogs and ‘10 things’ idea.

The channels

• Line manager packs

• Friday Feed

• 2 x monthly business bulletins

• Webinars

• Quarterly news and views

• Listen/learn/refine – pulse testing how people are feeling in the organisation

This internal branding has been so successful that other areas of the business are now taking this on.

/ Top tipCreate a community of communicators and collaborators who help, support and mentor each other.

How to... overcome cultural challenges after a mergerWho: Manchester Airport, has four airports around the UK and 44m passengers

Take it seriously: and have a change framework in place.

Get educated: The Manchester Airport team all went to Manchester Business School and took their leaders on a cultural impact course so that they could get a consistent way of delivering change: previously they’d each had 90-day change plans but they were all different!

Be consistent: with your tone of voice, it makes a difference. Be open, honest, firm and fair.

Help your leaders: poor leadership will mess up your change programme.

Control the hygiene factors: it ensures credibility. Get hold of that stuff and get it right.

The issue: 80% of acquisitions fail to make their commercial targets. Why? Because of cultural challenges. Manchester Airport recently merged with Stansted, here are their top tips for overcoming these challenges:

Listen and know how your audience responds to messages: it will help you refine them.

Be clear: about what’s not up for debate.

Give the opportunity for involvement: it will create engagement.

Maintain a constant drum beat to create momentum: At Manchester Airport they used newsweaver, held briefings and drop-ins to help people work through practical things like their rosters

Establish good relationships with trade unions

“Good communications doesn’t change a bad message.” Manchester Airport

Case study: The importance of employee researchWho: BAE SYSTEMS, with 88,000 people worldwide

The employee groupThe marine division has a variety of employees, from highly intelligent science engineers to factory workers. 40% don’t have PC access.

ResearchThe team wanted to really understand their employees so they could respond in the right way. They conducted research to find out what would work for people and what would stimulate conversation. Their results told them that employees wanted an evolution instead of a revolution.

ResponseLeadership and face-to-face is still the most important thing so they use town hall briefings for big picture sessions, then ask employees to get involved, by guest-writing pieces, interviewing their peers and seniors etc.

“Ensure you get in early to influence strategy.” BAE

The issue: Engaging 5,000 people in the marine division.

Case study: Analysing your comms channels

The background40% of Roll Royce’s employees are shop floor workers. The comms team wanted to review their channels to make sure they were really working.

The analysisThey reviewed each channel, analysing them on a grid for:

• Telling to talking

• Awareness

• Understanding

• Support

• Involvement

• Commitment

The responseArmed with this new information the team have now:

• Incorporated Newsweaver into email communications

• Created a leadership portal

• Produced digital signage

The benefitsThe analysis and new channels have improved the comms team’s reach, made content more engaging, supported crisis communications, provided cost savings and resource efficiencies, and improved business focus.

Who: Rolls Royce

Case study: Transforming leaders programmeWho: First Group

In numbers2.4bn passengers every year

110k employees

Five divisions, including north America.

6m students a year

1.7m people on business

Only 20 years old but growing rapidly

The issueFirst Group had lots of silos, people felt they lacked direction and didn’t understand why decisions were being made. Everybody needed to be facing the same way, so they created a Transforming Leaders programme.

What they didThey created a story for their 250 leaders. It included a beginning (history and challenges) and middle – vision for the future and values. The leaders were asked to take it away, reflect on what it meant for their business and decide how best to integrate the story locally. They were provided with kits, messages and story updates to help them make this happen. Using a story in this way has enabled the leaders to remain consistent.

Ongoing supportThe team now use neuroscience (SCARF model) in their comms. It’s a tangible, factual checklist for comms and helps leaders connect on a more fundamental level.

Case study: Aligning Employees with Your Brand Values & Vision To Harness The Power Of Employee Ambassadors Who: Crossrail

In briefCrossrail is a £15m railway connection between East and West London, across 21 boroughs, with 10 new stations. It’s the largest construction project in Europe, and a flagship public project for the UK.

The issueCrossrail is a complex meta organisation made up of nine different employers working together as one, until the project completes in 2018. There are also long-term contractors, with thousands of employees working together to ‘Move London Forward’. Engaging this vast audience needed vision and commitment, and a robust internal communication strategy.

What they didFor Crossrail, engagement is less about written word and more about experiences. The team engaged employees by giving them once-in-a-lifetime experiences they want to tell their grandchildren about, such as walking through the tunnel and seeing the progress of the build as part of their Half Way There Programme.

This experiential activity was supported by on-going communications, including:

• A Vision & Values statement, in the form of a handy pink booklet. Values include: Safety, Inspiration, Collaboration, Integrity, Respect

• Values presented in fun ‘Top Trumps’ style engagement mechanic

• Innovation platform Innovate18, getting employees involved in sharing ideas and ensuring the project remains on target

• A successful awards programme which is not about big prizes, but genuine recognition for a job well done

• Onsite magazine, a quarterly publication

• Quarterly videos and time-lapses

• Target Zero is the health and safety programme, which includes regular safety surveys and Stepping Up To Safety Week every six months

What’s next?The Big East West Breakthrough, was the culmination of the tunnelling programme. The systems part of the build is next, with a whole new set of values.

“The most important thing is to have a leadership team that is committed to living and breathing your values, and integrating them into performance.” Crossrail

www.synergycreative.co.ukwww.synergycreative.co.uk/internalcomms

+44 (0)117 962 1534

Gemma McGrattangemma@synergycreative.co.uk

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