A Gallagher Company journal ofinternal communication · working in marketing, managing a team responsible for ‘employer and learner engagement’. There I got the chance to use

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journalofinternalcommunicationVolume 15

Hack your way through the IC jungle to discover hidden culture-cures and potent engagement secrets

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THE JOURNAL OF INTERNAL COMMUNICATION VOLUME 15 INTRODUCTION

Over the years, Gatehouse has helped hundreds of internal

communicators lead their organisations through change: and recently we got a taste of our own cooking when we underwent a transformation of our own.

Just before Christmas, Gatehouse joined forces with Gallagher Communication, the world-class experts in rewards, benefits and HR communications. It’s business as usual, except being part of Gallagher now gives us a global footprint spanning 33 countries – the perfect springboard for creating the world’s leading communication practice.

It’s been a busy time, but it hasn’t distracted us from putting together another great issue of the Journal of Internal Communication for you. If technology communication is on your mind, there are some interesting case studies you’ll want to read and refer back to. Check out the overview of our latest State of the Sector report, where we cover the ‘Office 365 effect’, and the fact that IC people are investing

Simon WrightDirector, Gatehouse

Lee SmithDirector, Gatehouse

more and more in digital channels. You can see how the United Nations Development Programme promoted Office 365 to help people make the most of the tools and features.

Technology roll-outs are always an interesting project – they involve a heady mixture of change communication and influencing methods. If you want to sharpen up your skills, come along to the next Accelerate – the internal communication masterclass we deliver in partnership with the Institute of Internal Communication. Go to www.gatehouse.co.uk/accelerate to learn more.

Hope you enjoy the issue.

Ben ReynoldsManaging Director, Gallagher Communication


PRACTITIONER PROFILE

Vicky Neame................................4After experiencing a largely prescribed working life in the military, Vicky Neame decided to take control of her own destiny and get into internal communication. She shares how she bagged her role and what she loves about it.

OPINION & THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

Looking back at a decade of internal communication research................................9With the largest set of respondents to date, Gatehouse’s tenth anniversary edition of State of the Sector has continued to highlight and underline the trends that exist across our industry.

Spring clean your internal communications.................................................15Jenny Nabben argues that internal communicators should spend as much energy reducing the ‘noise pollution’ faced by their audiences as they do producing content.

We need a communication strategy. And we need it now!........................................20Heard this one before? Then you’re not alone. Uzma Mohamedali offers some tips to avoid slipping into chaos when asked for a communication strategy.

To make a difference, internal communication needs to speak up...........................................................23Shaping the organisation’s narrative has always been our profession’s raison d’être, but it misses the bigger picture, says Marc B. do Amaral in his plea for a broader perspective on internal communication: the communicative organisation.


CONTENTS

CASE STUDY

Integrating an internal communications function and setting it up for future success................43 Natalie Henderson talks us through how she helped to drive a new strategy, brand and channels at Hammerson to take the function, and the organisation, into the next phase of its internal communication evolution.

Helping employees get #ReindeerReady at McDonald’s ...........48In December 2017, Head of Internal Communication Linda McGee partnered the Gatehouse team to launch a bespoke internal campaign designed to create staff excitement around the annual external Christmas campaign.

CHANNELS & TECHNOLOGY

Getting the most out of Microsoft Office 365........................................28Lucy Braun and Sergey Datsenko share their experience running a campaign to help employees of the United Nations Development Programme leverage the full potential of the 365 suite.

Innovating employee communications for a modern workforce ..............................34Senior Internal Communication and Engagement Director Rebecca Gallagher shares the approach she has taken at 2U, Inc. to create dialogue and measure impact.

Treat your IC tools as internal products for sale...............................................38Maja Biernacka reflects on how internal communication practitioners can change their audiences’ attitudes towards internal communication solutions.

THE JOURNAL OF INTERNAL COMMUNICATION VOLUME 15

REWARDS & PENSIONS

Delivering a member-centric pensions website at Rolls-Royce...........54Rolls-Royce’s pensions team turned to Gallagher Communication to enhance the overall service provided to over 80,000 pension scheme members.

Improving employee engagement through a Total Rewards culture............60Director of Benefits & Global Mobility Joanne Jones explains how the Compensation, Benefits, and Internal Communications teams got together to help address employee retention and engagement.


After experiencing a largely prescribed working life in the military, not to mention in her first job in civvy street, Vicky Neame decided it was time to take control of her own destiny. In this article, she tells us how she got into internal communications and what she loves about her new role.

Five questions to...Vicky Neame



How did you get into internal communications?

I’d previously spent an amazing 13 years in the British Army, in the staff and personnel support branch. I took the tough decision to leave when I was pregnant with my second child.

Although the military prepare you for leaving, my sole focus at that stage was on raising my children. I didn’t really consider the career aspect.

Having my strengths recognised and utilised is great but the time had come for me to take the reins. So I quit. I wanted to give myself time to consider my career.

Various online career and personality tests all brought me squarely back to communications-focused roles. I ended up doing a Google search on ‘internal communications career’. This seemed to combine all my passions: people; their development and experience at work; and the ability to use my creativity.

Next stop, the four-day Accelerate course run by Gatehouse in conjunction with the Institute of Internal Communications (IoIC). After this, I was completely hooked. Now I just needed a job to get stuck into.

Tell us about your role.

I started my first internal communication role just a few weeks ago. I’m now Group Communications Manager for Victrex, a FTSE-250 company that provides polymer solutions to the aerospace and automotive industries, amongst many others.

So when the time came to start thinking about work, I really struggled to match my skills to civilian roles. It seems I’d exited the army into a kind of career no-man’s land. My future was no longer mapped out for me.

Fortunately I was very lucky (you make your own luck – Ed) and landed a job at a large Further Education provider with a marvellous Director who saw something in me. Whilst simultaneously studying for a business and management degree, I found myself working in marketing, managing a team responsible for ‘employer and learner engagement’. There I got the chance to use my creative skills and discovered my passion for making sure employees had the best possible experience at work.

As happy as I was, I fell into these roles as the organisation evolved. This felt all too familiar. In the military, they moved me to where they wanted me: to where they could use my strengths. At one point, I had six jobs in the space of two years. This is because I focus on getting the job done, plus I have a natural eye for improvement.



How would you describe yourself?

I’m people-focused and very driven to succeed. But I’m also quite a humble person. I’ve been called ‘the grey man’ a few times…particularly in my management career. In other words, I prefer to sit in the background and focus on getting the work done and to a high standard. I’m not big on shouting about my achievements and relishing praise.

I’ve also been described as ‘unflappable’. When I exited the military, one of the quotes on my leaving plaques was: “For keeping her head whilst all about were losing theirs”.

What do you love about internal communications?

I love the variety. The Accelerate masterclass helped me appreciate that no internal communications role is the same, just as no organisation’s structure is the same.

The role suits my skills and experience perfectly. It not only gives me the opportunity to understand what makes

working mum, especially one that has a husband serving away in the Royal Air Force.

This year, I’ll also make time to focus on continuing my development. I’d like to attend further IoIC events where I can and hopefully take part in their mentoring scheme, as well as keeping up to date with developments in the profession through Gatehouse’s State of the Sector and other research.

Reporting into the Director of Investor Relations and Group Communications, my role is 90% internal communication and the remainder external messaging to investors and other stakeholders. I basically ensure the outside reflects the inside when it comes to messaging. And that both are aligned with overall business strategy.

Over the coming year, I’ll be working on a new and improved group internal communication strategy. One that will help the business get to where it wants to be, with employees taking center stage.

Success for me will come in the shape of a happy and informed workforce – from home workers, to those in regional offices in the UK and around the globe – who know their voices are heard and understand how and why they make a difference.

This role represents a big step for me but I love it. The encouragement and support from my boss and peers is fantastic. As is the support at home from my parents: an invaluable element for a

This role represents a big step for me but I love it. The encouragement

and support from my boss and peers

is fantastic.


opportunity to absorb everything, particularly the stuff around audit of channels, the importance of change and storytelling. The networking was also brilliant.

It’s my firm belief – and experience – that you don’t always have to spend years of your life studying to work in a specific industry. If you’re interested in a career change, or starting out for the first time, it’s highly likely that many of the skills you pick up along the way are transferable.

PRACTITIONER PROFILETHE JOURNAL OF INTERNAL COMMUNICATION VOLUME 15

I understand the power of

communications and the impact

on trust and motivation. I’ve

been on the receiving end

of poor change management

communications so fully appreciate the

negative effects.

people tick and use that to positively influence their experiences at work, but also to use my creativity.

I understand the power of communications and the impact on trust and motivation. I’ve been on the receiving end of poor change management communications so fully appreciate the negative effects. You know I experienced a redundancy situation where everyone was sat in a room, with someone calling out names, saying: “stay seated because you’re at risk of redundancy”.

There’s always a negative message, but there are better ways of doing it.

Any word of advice to people who would like to get into internal communications?

Go for it. Do some research. Read case studies. Sign up for Accelerate – I absolutely loved this course and only wish it had been longer!

The hard hit of theory was invaluable. I’m a total nerd so loved the


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9


With the largest set of respondents to date, Gatehouse’s tenth anniversary edition of State of the Sector has continued to highlight and underline the trends that exist across our industry. We summarise the key standout themes here.

Looking back at a decade of internal communication research


1. The Office 365 Effect is gaining momentum

In this year’s report, we heard how the juggernaut of Office 365 has continued to take our industry by storm, resulting in a relentless push towards using Microsoft products – whether or not we, as internal communicators, either ask or want them!

In 2017, we christened this the ‘Office 365 Effect’ and we are only seeing that continue to grow with SharePoint and Yammer dominating the intranet and social scene – to the exclusion of pretty

much all other technologies. The highly anticipated rise of Workplace by Facebook has been lacklustre and other digital platforms like Slack and Jive have similarly failed to gain ground in the past 12 months.

What’s more, this year we’re noticing correlations between Office 365 usage and other digital practices, with 56% of Office Pack users planning on improving digital channels this year versus 49% of non-users.

2. Impact measurement still isn’t a priority

Although around a third of respondents don’t believe that leaders understand the value of internal communication, we were surprised to see that internal communicators still aren’t prioritising impact measurement. The use of many measurement methods listed in the survey has decreased over the past year, and 12% of respondents say they don’t measure their communication activities in any way.

In particular, independently conducted communication audits ranked as the single most effective employee feedback channel (with nearly 70% of respondents saying it is effective or very effective); however, only a small minority of respondents (14%) have leveraged this in the past three years.


3. Less reactivity, more strategy

Disappointingly, there has been an increase over the past 12 months in the proportions of internal communicators neglecting to evaluate the impact of their communication activity (even after taking into account the influence of North American responses).

Meanwhile, listening practices have decreased, with even the emblematic employee engagement survey being used by fewer practitioners (69%, down from 76%). This is despite survey respondents recognising the effectiveness of such channels for tapping into employee views and adapting activity to their needs and preferences.

With internal communicators seemingly struggling to look back on work they’ve already done and determine how effective it was, is it really any surprise that their outlook on the future is also limited?

Under half of respondents this year told us there is a long-term strategy for

internal communication – 49%, down from 52% in 2017.

There is a silver lining, though – the proportion of people declaring developing / refreshing an IC strategy to be a key priority for the year has increased, and now stands at 37%. Improving measurement is also seen as a more important objective – indicating that 2018 could be the year we, as a profession, shift toward a strategic, insight-led approach from a more reactive one.

In any case, 71% of internal communicators believe their team are viewed by senior leaders as trusted advisors, which is good news (although perhaps not so much for the 30% who are not perceived in such a positive light…). It is clear that over the years the sector has continued to mature: leaders are valuing contribution and internal communicators are further edging forward, increasingly becoming trusted advisors and business partners.

OPINION & THOUGHT LEADERSHIPTHE JOURNAL OF INTERNAL COMMUNICATION VOLUME 15


4. Line managers are still the battleground

Last year we hailed improvements being made around line manager communications – but the joy was sadly short-lived. Just like every year since we started asking IC practitioners about barriers to success, line managers were seen as the single most pressing issue to overcome. 56% of respondents this year cited a lack of line manager communication skills as a challenge – up from 52%.

Yet despite the scale of the challenge, channels specifically designed to support this key audience are still limited – with most dedicated communications being sent through unengaging digital means like emails.

Communication training aimed specifically at this audience has decreased, with only one in three IC practitioners providing this (fewer than in 2016). Disappointingly, just 33% see improving this offering as a priority for 2018 – which, in our view, is insufficient given the persistence of this IC barrier.

Just like every year since we started asking

IC practitioners about barriers

to success, line managers were

seen as the single most

pressing issue to overcome.


5. But communicators are putting more and more chips on digital channels

In 2017, we highlighted the growing desire to use more digital channels within businesses but ended with the conclusion that digital isn’t the panacea – in fact it was underperforming in some areas. Over the course of the past 12 months, the desire for digital hasn’t subsided: practitioners are planning to increase the usage of all types of digital channel we asked about, with a particular emphasis being put on self-service media. One surprisingly popular option this year was chatbots, which 72% of respondents indicated they want to use more for internal communication and employee engagement purposes.

However, the availability of technology does not necessarily equal a successful implementation: around two thirds of respondents believe social channels are either adequate or poor, while workplace podcasts, which are the darling of our private lives, again failed to make any inroads into the channel mix and remain one of the lowest used and lowest performing channels.

Luckily, internal communicators are increasingly aware of the need to make sure existing electronic communications work for their business: improving digital channels is seen as the second biggest priority for 2018. This is encouraging, and we hope to see the perceived effectiveness of digital channels climb ahead of the State of the Sector 2019.



6. Europe and North America are following different trajectories

The results from the 2018 survey were particularly interesting in comparison to previous years in that we received a much higher response rate from other geographies, namely North America. This provided us with a great opportunity to compare the state of the internal communication and employee engagement sector in different locations across the globe.

What we found was a considerable difference between Europe and elsewhere: overall, the UK and Europe appear to give more importance to long-term IC planning. In particular, respondents from these locations were more likely to have an internal communication strategy in place, alongside other planning tools – while 31% of North American respondents admitted

they had no formal planning tools, ‘just’ 20% of UK/Europe-based respondents said the same! Equally surprising was the difference in priorities, with European respondents far more likely to view line manager communications as an area to improve in over the next 12 months, bettering leadership communications was the bigger priority for North America- based respondents.

Whilst there are still advances to be made across the globe, we are hopeful internal communicators on either side of the pond can inspire each other to drive further improvements.

Download the full report at: www.gatehouse.co.uk/signup


Jenny Nabben argues that internal communicators should spend as much energy reducing the ‘noise pollution’ faced by their audiences as they do producing content.

Spring clean your internal communications


Spring is traditionally a time for getting rid of the old and

welcoming the new; a time to declutter and create the space for new beginnings. But when it comes to communications, we can be guilty of believing more is always better; more channels, more messages and yet another campaign. It’s easy to get caught up in a cycle of over-production and believe the value we bring to our organisations is derived from the volume of communications we manage.

As the function responsible for engaging, inspiring and motivating employees to support the organisation’s goals, it’s tempting to believe that content is king. But while we recognise how critical it is to understand our different audiences – how often do we measure how much ‘noise’ our audience is exposed to and do we understand the cost to employees of what’s commonly known as information overload? Spring might just be the time for us to focus on having a digital detox.

Here are some of the important facts, according to current research, on the impact of information overload:

1. On average, most office workers receive around 350 emails a week with managers receiving up to 300 a day. Yet, around one third of those are seen as unnecessary.

2. It takes between 7-27 minutes to return to a task after being interrupted by email.

3. HP research identified a reduction of up to 10 points in our IQ as a result of being overloaded by email and that 10 point reduction is the same as being under the effects of marijuana!

But it’s not only the lost time and reduction in productivity to consider, there’s a growing body of research on the stress-inducing impact of information overload. Author Linda Stone suggests that sitting at our desk for seven hours a day, hunched over a screen causes email-apnea or the tendency to shallow breathing and breath-holding. And that in turn, this encourages the body’s nervous system to move into fight or flight mode which increases our levels of stress.

Whilst for some organisations email has been overtaken by new collaboration channels, it’s unlikely that email has disappeared and more likely that employees simply receive duplicate messages via several channels. But it’s not just digital channels that demand our constant attention. Employees also have to filter information from internal digital screens, busy intranet channels, Twitter, social media, video, conferences, townhalls and of course, the ever-present meeting culture which few organisations challenge.


Because we’re often so focused on production and creation of messages, it’s easy to find yourself in a blind spot and to forget just how overloaded employees’ working lives really are.

So, unless we consciously plan to reduce the amount of digital noise, the communications function becomes part of the problem rather than the solution. The annual strategic planning cycle is the perfect time to re-balance our role as producers and include targets on reducing noise pollution in our organisations. Once we recognise how critical it is for leaders and employees to experience more uninterrupted thinking time, we can play our part in making that happen.

Here are some top tips to create breathing space that will allow employees time to reflect, digest and problem solve more effectively:

1. Take time to familiarise yourself with the field of information overload so you have all the facts. Check out the Information Overload Research Group at iorgforum.org.

2. Look at what technology companies are doing to reduce information overload as well as the social scientists, psychologists and neuroscientists in the field.

3. Include ways of measuring information overload in your organisation and use the data to inform your planning activities.

4. You might set up a pilot group of office workers to help you identify frustrations, common interruptions and information that is out of date or irrelevant.

5. Ask your team to brainstorm ideas for reducing the volume of noise in the organisation. Ask for their personal insight into the stress caused by information overload. Set stretch goals for noise reduction in specific channels.



6. Ask your audience to be part of the solution and find out how to ensure information is more targeted and relevant to their jobs.

7. Get your leaders involved in the conversation about how to increase productivity, reduce cognitive overload and to allow employees to be more creative. Make noise reduction a strategic priority.

8. Every time you launch a new channel consider which one you can switch off. If that’s not possible, be disciplined about avoiding message duplication.

9. Create quiet spaces in the organisation where employees can work without digital interruption.

10. Challenge your own thinking about your role as a communicator – remember that production is only half the picture.

Because we’re often so focused

on production and creation of messages,

it’s easy to find yourself in a

blind spot and to forget just

how overloaded employees’

working lives really are.


Biography: Jenny Nabben

Jenny Nabben has held senior communication positions at HSBC, British Gas, the UN’s World Food

Programme, Coca-Cola Enterprises and Lloyds among others. Jenny designs and delivers training, coaching and facilitation for global companies. Jenny has an MBA and is a Master Practitioner in NLP, coach and facilitator.

Jenny’s has published two books Influence and Presenting with Confidence with Pearson publishing.

@nabbencomms ‏

The purpose of internal communication is to create great conversations in our organisations; conversations that educate, inspire, connect and create deeper commitment to shared goals. And what characterises great conversations is that they include silence and space and encourage everyone involved in the conversation to think more deeply.

Once we switch our focus and include noise reduction as a strategic priority in our planning, we will naturally focus our efforts on communication activities that add real value and develop a more critical eye over everything we do. When we see ourselves as producers, it’s too easy to be seduced by the latest technology or new digital channel and to spend budget on yet another campaign. We might deliver better employee engagement and better organisational outcomes by simply turning down the volume, getting rid of the clutter and cleaning up the noise pollution.

We might deliver better employee

engagement and better

organisational outcomes by

simply turning down the volume,

getting rid of the clutter and

cleaning up the noise pollution.



Heard this one before? Then you’re not alone. It’s what most seasoned communications business partners are accustomed to hearing at some stage in their career within large networked organisations. Uzma Mohamedali offers some tips to avoid slipping into chaos when asked for a communication strategy.

We need a communication strategy. And we need it now!


Now, more than ever, businesses are looking to implement their business

strategy with tangible results – and quickly. Understanding the brief as an internal communications expert is half the battle, be it implementing a new policy, a new process or a business transformation.

If misinterpreted, the risk of an arbitrary- sounding request can be an ineffective, disjointed plan, a waste of your and your team’s time, money and intellectual effort.

Making a well-considered decision is therefore important. It requires a large dose of emotional intelligence and in many cases resilience, in the face of any “push-back”.

So before you sit back at your desk, exasperated, charged with a task you have no idea where to begin, take a deep breath…

Listen to gain clarity It pays dividends to listen very carefully to what your business leader is saying.

What is the real goal and purpose behind what he or she is asking for? Is it a business-critical need, or a want? For example is it a key message that can be disseminated as part of your existing plan? Is it a quick win or a labour-intensive assignment that will take both financial and human resources to deliver?

To speak up and diplomatically challenge the status quo demonstrates good partnering skills. Have a robust conversation keeping the ever-changing business landscape in mind. And ask as many questions as you can along the way.

Think pragmatically Once you understand what’s required, how do you achieve maximum effective results?

Internal communication is an evolving discipline. Business as usual can mean several competing demands, at the best of times, especially in a matrix organisation where you may report to a business leader and also your communication department.

Like walking on a tightrope, the alignment with the goals of your directorate and your business area is ideal. It takes good influencing skills to actively manage this tension. If there’s an opportunity for mutual benefits that’s a bonus, however as more often than not is the case, timing is a good negotiating factor.

Create commitment It’s human nature for our degree of satisfaction to be tied to the extent of our involvement.

What is the real goal and purpose behind what he or she is asking for?



Avoid losing credibility by ensuring as many influential stakeholders who have a vested interest in the outcome of your communications strategy have a role to play in the success of the plan.

Herding the cats as it’s known, is tough job. It about getting under the skin of the business – understanding what motivates your key people. To navigate this requires a blend of leadership skills and a peppering of political nous.

If your key stakeholders seem lukewarm, distracted or ambivalent about your proposal, find out why. They might be able to share some insights to co-create a solution which would allow for renewed commitment.

Shared vision and outcomes: are we pulling in the right direction together?

In conclusion, communicators can avoid sliding into chaos after being asked for a communications strategy, through reflecting on a few simple questions:

● What is the real goal and purpose?

● What is the benefit for key stakeholders?

● Are we pulling in the right direction together?

Biography: Uzma Mohamedali

Uzma Mohamedali is a communications consultant with more than 10 years of experience in change and internal communications working with clients both in-house and from an agency perspective. She is currently living in Europe.

Considering these can drastically improve the outcome of their offerings and simultaneously position communicators as active facilitators of business strategy.

Faced with the challenge of a new strategy, my advice is to be alert, positive and intellectually engaged. Trust your ability to get to the heart of the issue instead of remaining at its periphery. Sometimes a full- blown communication strategy is not the answer.


It’s time for internal communication to refocus. Influencing employees by shaping the organisation’s ‘official’ narrative has always been the profession’s raison d’être. Not only is the effectiveness of all this debatable but it also misses the bigger picture, says Marc B. do Amaral. A plea for a broader perspective on internal communication: the communicative organisation.

To make a difference, internal communication needs to speak up


In 2007 Nokia is the undisputed leader in mobile phones and one

of the strongest brands on earth. CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and other top executives are radiating with confidence. Meanwhile, in Cupertino, California, Steve Jobs is putting the finishing touch to a new gadget called iPhone.

When the iPhone hits the market, Nokia’s leaders do not need long to grasp the significance of the event. The smartphone will change everything. Countering the threat will be tough. The Finnish giant is strong in mobile technology but not so much in operating systems and applications, which is what makes a smartphone smart.

Fear

Nokia’s leaders hesitate to speak out about the significance of the smartphone threat. Doing so would radically tilt Nokia’s image, from undisputed leader to that of feeble challenger, and one with its hands tied behind its back. Kallasvuo and his

team are unsure about Nokia’s ability to develop a viable smartphone, and they realise that the financial markets are likely to reach the same conclusion. Nokia’s reputation and share price could quickly suffer. The decision is made to downplay the significance of the smartphone.

Externally and internally, Nokia’s leadership team frames the smartphone as a typical niche product, unlikely to become mainstream. While Nokia buys itself some time by taking this position, it also puts itself in a difficult spot. Now it has to keep investing in its existing line of ‘not so smart phones’


as if nothing has happened. Second, it needs to develop its own smartphone, which – besides massive financial and human resources – requires a set of technological skills it does not possess.

Pressure

Nokia’s middle managers, kept in the dark about what is really going on, soon find themselves under mounting pressure to deliver new products at impossible deadlines. They are terrified by the brutal reputation of Nokia’s leaders who often shout and threaten to fire or demote those who fail to deliver. Nokia’s status-sensitive culture makes things worse. Middle managers are keen to deliver good news and demonstrate ambition as a bad standing is easily acquired, something that inevitably results in loss of resources, demotion or worse.

Afraid of disappointing their bosses, Nokia’s middle managers start over-promising and under-delivering. Receiving overly optimistic reports on progress, top management is unaware of delays and quality issues. The quality

of Nokia’s high-end phones starts to gradually decline, and worse, the intense efforts to develop a so-called iPhone-killer are going nowhere.

In 2011, the newly appointed CEO Stephen Elop decides that Nokia will be better off outsourcing software and he forms an alliance with Microsoft. The market value of Nokia declines 90% in six years. Microsoft ends up buying Nokia’s phone business in 2013.

Clogged communication lines

Despite its leadership position, resources and technological prowess, Nokia was brought down because of an extremely poor emotional climate. Nokia’s undoing serves as a poignant illustration of how blocked communication lines can undermine an organisation’s agility, which often proves lethal in today’s fast-changing business environment.

Nokia’s internal communication breakdown is far from unique. Similar patterns were at play in many other corporate debacles such as the

Nokia’s middle managers, kept

in the dark about what is really

going on, soon find themselves under mounting

pressure to deliver new products at impossible deadlines.



1) ”Distributed Attention and Shared Emotions in the Innovation Process: How Nokia Lost the Smartphone Battle”, Timo O. Vuori and Quy N. Huy, 2015

scandals at Volkswagen, Wells Fargo and Enron. All too often it seems that top management, willingly or unwittingly, turns a blind eye to the proliferation of silence, undercutting any chance of timely course corrections.

We tend to see most of these cases as spectacular incidents, caused by the proverbial rotten apple in the basket. Research suggests however that silence is in fact a far more common problem than we usually imagine. In a groundbreaking study, Milliken et al. found that 85% of a sample of employees from an array of industries had experienced at least one situation where they felt they could not speak up. Almost a quarter said they generally felt uncomfortable to speak to their boss about problems or concerns.

The case history, reconstructed by Vuori and Huy1, does not mention the role played by Nokia’s communication department, a fact that might be telling in itself. Was internal communication even aware of Nokia’s broken emotional climate? Did they know communication between middle and top management had come to a halt? Would it have made a difference if they had? Who knows how the story would have played out if a trusted adviser would have found a way to raise the issue with Kallasvuo.


This brings us to the question of ‘who we want to be as business communicators when we grow up’, so to speak. Do we prefer to stay in the relative comfort and safety of representing ‘his master’s voice’, always busy shaping and controlling the official narrative? The story of Nokia points to a great opportunity for internal communication to break out of its narrowly defined role of internal spokesperson and creator of messages. The profession could make a far more meaningful contribution if it were to shed its myopia and redefine its purpose. Embracing a broader focus on the communicative abilities of the organisation as a whole could make a world of difference.

The communicative organisation

An organisation is a collective of people working together to accomplish shared goals through myriad networks. The way these networks are organised, and the richness of the conversations that take place within and between them, define an organisation’s vitality and ability to adapt. This is the perspective

of the ‘communicative organisation’. It is based on the insight that in the social era, employee engagement, strategic alignment and the organisation’s ability to adapt to its environment are all built on effective conversations, internally and externally. And it is completely at odds with the traditional input/output-model of communication which has dominated the profession since its inception.

Biography: Marc B. do Amaral

Marc B. do Amaral is the owner of SPUP, a Netherlands-based consultancy

that helps organisations have better conversations.

Building a communicative organisation shifts the focus towards creating ‘rich’ conversations on all levels and a healthy pattern of communication flows, upward, downward and lateral. This cannot be accomplished without creating the right climate first, a climate in which people feel trusted, free to speak up about their ideas and concerns and to question their own assumptions as well as those of their colleagues and managers. If helping organisations embrace the social era is not the purpose of internal communication, then whose is it?

The profession could make a far more meaningful contribution if it were to shed its

myopia and redefine its purpose.



As Microsoft Office 365 continues to take organisations by storm, many internal communicators find themselves struggling to communicate the breadth and complexity of tools available to employees. Lucy Braun and Sergey Datsenko share their experience running a campaign to help employees of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) collaborate more effectively by leveraging the full potential of the 365 suite.

Getting the most out of Microsoft Office 365


With a workforce of 18,000 staff members and consultants

spread across about 170 countries and territories in the world, UNDP has an interesting challenge around collaboration across locations and with partners. Two years after the roll-out of Office 365 throughout the organisation, data showed that levels of uptake of the tools differed substantively between individuals, teams, offices and regions. There was clearly a lack of awareness among staff of the technology available to support collaboration and team productivity, which resulted in Office 365 tools being significantly underutilized.

In 2017, the Knowledge Management and IT teams joined forces to address this challenge and to increase awareness and adoption of the tools available to help colleagues with everyday tasks and enable them to make informed decisions about ‘which tool to use when’. We came up with a campaign that included three components: awareness raising, training and additional support channels.

Quick reference guide mapping the tools to be used for every-day tasks.

CHANNELS & TECHNOLOGYTHE JOURNAL OF INTERNAL COMMUNICATION VOLUME 15


The challenges of communicating Office 365

One of the key challenges with Office 365 is the ever-increasing number of features. The plethora of options is overwhelming for many users, and you can approach it from many different angles. Our approach was to focus on one of our staff’s biggest pain points – the collaboration aspect – and to create interest by demonstrating that we have the tools available to allow them to get work done collaboratively.

In addition, there are many overlaps between tools and features that make it quite difficult for people to choose. Just like in real life, having choice can be exciting but is often daunting at the same time. Many of our colleagues were craving very clear ‘instructions’ on which tool to use in light of many competing choices. Our decision was to not train people on how to use one specific tool, but instead go through the pros and cons of using one tool versus the other options in various

scenarios (e.g. collaborate as a team through Microsoft Teams vs. through a Yammer group or using OneNote for action points from a meeting vs. tracking them in Planner or Outlook) to allow colleagues to make informed decisions.

Finally, the pace at which the tools are evolving and being updated makes it hard to keep up, for end-users, IT staff and internal communicators alike. It is virtually impossible to keep guidelines or training materials up-to-date, so instead of creating our own branded versions of training assets, we decided early on to rely on Microsoft’s resources as much as possible, even if the language and examples used are more appropriate for corporations than non-profit sector organisations like us.

There was clearly a lack of awareness

among staff of the technology

available to support collaboration and team productivity, which resulted in Office 365 tools

being significantly underutilized.


Three campaign principlesOur training and awareness campaign relied on a few core principles:

● ‘Make it matter’: we focused on relatable real-life scenarios. In the planning phase, we identified situations in which our people would need to adopt these tools, and built the campaign around these – examples include ‘Work as a team across locations’ or ‘Co-author, co-edit and share documents’.

● ‘Practice what we preach’: we exposed colleagues to as many Office 365 tools throughout the campaign as possible: By signing up for just one training session, they got to interact with 10 to 12 different Office 365 tools along the way, from watching an animation in Video, to registering for a session through Forms and asking their questions in a dedicated Yammer group.

● ‘Keep it simple and flexible’: we kept the language free from technical jargon and the programme flexible: People could sign up for as many or as few of the 1-hour training sessions as they were able to fit into their schedules.

Sway series featured sample schedules of differentUNDP personas using Office 365 tools in their work day.



A three-phased campaign, the programme kicked off with awareness raising activities between July and September 2017. We developed a visual identity for the campaign, as well as a series of materials, such as a promotional video, and a quick-reference guide mapping the tools to be used for every-day tasks. Our ‘A day in the Office 365 life of…’ Sway series featured sample schedules of different UNDP personas using Office 365 tools in their work day. We also created a SharePoint portal for all materials and a Yammer group to share weekly tips, latest updates and answer questions, and recruited a group of champions but also engaged with senior management for support. The second phase included a general Office 365 overview roadshow to interested teams that was very useful in terms of collecting feedback on content and format.

The third phase was a series of ‘bite-sized’, 1-hour training sessions over a 3 month-period. Each month, we focused on a different aspect: ‘collaborate on content and connect online’ in October, which focused on sharing content,

co-editing documents and managing webinars and online meetings; ‘tools for teams and projects’ in November, where we reviewed task and project management tools and team collaboration platforms; and ‘work out loud’ in December, which encouraged staff to share lessons learned and best practices, create interactive newsletters and reports, and showcase their work using tools like blogs and Sway. Overall, we conducted over 90 sessions around these themes, both in person in New York and as webinars catering to various time zones and reaching colleagues in over 90 countries.

We will continue to analyse the impact the campaign has had on adoption over the

coming months. However, as always with technology the question is, how quickly can

you expect to ‘move the needle’ on adoption?

Three-month training programme


Promotional video

Biography: Lucy Braun Lucy is a communications specialist and expert in humanitarian relief operations

by background and has worked in Europe, the US and Asia in both the public and the private sector. She has over thirteen years of experience with United Nations agencies, managing teams around internal and external communications and leading significant digital workplace and change management initiatives – including as Chief of Communications for UNICEF’s US$3.4 billion supply operation. Lucy currently supports UNDP as Knowledge and Information Systems Advocate in the Knowledge Management Team.

Linkedin profile: linkedin.com/in/lucy-braun)

Biography: Sergey Datsenko Sergey is an information and communication technology expert with over twenty years of

experience in Internet services and technologies. He currently leads the team that provides infrastructure and cloud platforms and services, including Microsoft Azure and Office 365 services at UNDP.

We’re now in the last stage of the programme, analysing the lessons learned and focusing on sustaining the message and providing ongoing support to staff via our Yammer community. Feedback from the training sessions was very positive and we have many promising signs that individuals and teams are starting to use the tools more and more.

We will continue to analyse the impact the campaign has had on adoption over the coming months. However, as always with technology the question is, how quickly can you expect to ‘move the needle’ on adoption? One thing we’ve come to realise is that with new people joining or moving roles regularly, this can’t be a one-off exercise. This training should be an ongoing programme of work, and we are aware that we will need to review adoption regularly and to maintain our efforts to help colleagues collaborate effectively.



Senior Internal Communication and Engagement Director Rebecca Gallagher shares the approach she has taken at 2U, Inc. to create dialogue and measure impact.

Innovating employee communications for a modern workforce


Developing a measurable strategic communication plan is not a simple task in any organisation. Add the complexities of a fast-paced, rapidly growing global company that recently acquired another global business and it can feel like an impossible mission. That’s the landscape I operate in at 2U, Inc., a leading education technology company that partners with great universities and colleges to build the world’s best digital education. While it can be a challenge to create effective employee communications for 2U’s modern workforce, there are some strategies I have adopted that have made internal engagement more effective.

Step 1: Listen to the employees

Fortunately, 2U employees are eager to share feedback. Through quantitative (electronic surveys) and qualitative (focus groups) research, we evaluate existing channels, leadership communications, and the resonance of strategic messages on an ongoing basis. Through these tools, we have identified a need to create more conversations between leaders and employees, to reduce the noise

and variety of tools, and to build a community to connect an increasingly expanding, both in size and geography, employee base.

Step 2: Define your purpose

When you know what you are trying to accomplish, it is easier to understand where to spend your time and what questions to ask to measure the impact of your communications. We have a unique challenge – to connect a growing workforce in a way that encourages open dialogue and quick decision-making while staying

We have a unique challenge – to connect a growing workforce in a way that encourages

open dialogue and quick decision-making

while staying true to our values.



true to our values. And we needed to accomplish this without adding to the noise. Our purpose is to empower leaders to be more connected communicators, while giving voice to all levels of employees throughout all offices.

Step 3: Make small, deliberate steps toward systemic change

We are fortunate to have a strong foundation with fewer than 5 percent of employees indicating dissatisfaction with overall employee communications. Therefore, our changes represent an evolution, not a transformation.

We are reimagining existing communications and challenging each other to imagine what each vehicle could look like or accomplish if we were to start from a blank page. Broadcast communications (email, digital signage, intranet) are becoming more visual and inclusive of video and social interactions. While digital signage could be one-directional, we add QR codes to encourage engagement and action. Rather than generating content

solely within communications or via key clients, materials are crowdsourced from all employees when possible for increased connection to the content. We are also shaping the agenda for quarterly, virtual all-company business meetings based not only on executive priorities, but also the topics most requested by employees.

While reimagining existing communications, we are simultaneously finding new ways to reach the right audiences with relevant messages in an environment where they were actively engaged. Social collaboration tools have grown in popularity over the last decade due to their ability to connect dispersed workforces, increase collaboration, and help teams make more informed decisions more quickly. At 2U, Slack is an extremely popular tool that not only encourages discussion, but brings together dozens of design, project management and marketing tools into one workspace, reducing emails and saving employees’ time. That’s why our intranet relaunch this year will have an unexpected component. Instead of dedicating resources to market the intranet as yet another communications destination, we are adding the functionality for employees to access information on the intranet from within Slack, just as they access information in other tools they use each day.

Slack is a unique tool and it’s not right for every organisation. Fortunately, there are a variety of options, including


Biography: Rebecca Gallagher Rebecca is a strategic communicator with experience creating and

executing external and employee communications strategies in the broadcasting, online retail, hospitality, technology, and tourism industries. Currently, she leads the internal communications and corporate citizenship functions for 2U, Inc., a global education technology company headquartered in Lanham, Md.

Connect with her online at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccacgallagher/.

mobile apps, social intranets, and many direct competitors within the social collaboration space. For us, it is effective as an internal Twitter – enabling us to push out real-time information and get immediate feedback. It catches people’s attention, where they would simply ignore an email announcement or an intranet news story. For example, we used it to share information about the recent consolidation of our New York offices into one building in Brooklyn. As we got closer to the move, employees needed more detailed information, so we used Slack to trigger them to pay attention to new content made available on our intranet. We are planning to use this for alerts, when something important or urgent comes up and we need people to stop what they do and listen.

Slack will also change our approach to employee communication, making it more conversational. As a “social” tool, it naturally encourages immediate feedback from employees, providing a pulse check on how messages are received. As we grow in scale, it will become more difficult for our senior leaders to be visible to employees and

keep up with what’s happening in each of our offices. We are planning to hold weekly ‘Ask me Anything’ sessions, where people can catch up with leaders and ask them questions.

A measurable impact

The evolution is still underway, but the impact is evident. Confidence in our leadership and business strategy has remained steady despite significant organisational change. Engagement in defining quarterly business meeting content has increased, while anonymous suggestion box comments have decreased. Readership of the corporate e-newsletter increased slightly with content engagement significantly increasing.

To us, success does not necessarily translate into numbers of active users or time spent in any one tool – even though these metrics are available – but rather in the ongoing confidence in our strategy, high levels of employee engagement, and reduction in the overall volume of emails, particularly requests from people who cannot find the information they’re

looking for on their own. And ultimately, of course, success lies in our ability to continue to deliver our business goals.




Have you ever considered what happens when you start treating your internal communication tools like your internal products and employees like customers? Maja Biernacka reflects on how internal communication practitioners can change their audiences’ attitudes towards IC solutions.

Treat your IC tools as internal products for sale


Would you buy products that are not able to solve your problems,

are difficult to use, or unattractive? Or would you buy products & possibilities that you don’t know or that have a bad reputation? Reflect on this idea and see a change in your audiences’ attitude towards IC solutions.

How much do you care about the internal communication tools you’re responsible for? I believe a lot. But to get better results, let’s try to change your perspective: Internal communication tools are products that help reach your focus areas and make their work more effective. It’s worth paying more attention to both products and customers, in the ways which all good sellers do.

Products should solve problems

Do IC tools help your employees communicate, collaborate and cooperate with one another? Or, on the contrary, do these tools make it difficult to find necessary information which is incomplete or invalid?

If you want your clients to use your products, your IC tools have to provide useful materials that help employees in their everyday work. It’s essential to have access to well-designed and quick to find pieces of information, available in various formats, and easy to use functionalities which make your employees’ work faster, easier and more effective, and give them a feeling of being successful, collaborative and supported by the solution.

If your products do not solve your clients’ problems, they will not use them. You should create bespoke internal communication tools in a way which serves your users and make their everyday work better.

Products must work

Would you buy a product that you heard had failed? How do you react when you read negative comments about products you’re considering buying? You probably have doubts or even decide to withdraw your purchase. The same goes for your IC tools.


If you want your clients to use your products, your IC

tools have to provide useful materials that

help employees in their everyday work.


For example, an intranet should be fast, user-driven and improve collaboration and communication in a workplace. The reality is often far from this because of mistakes made when creating such an intranet. Do not expect your employees to be satisfied with using tools that are designed against the rules or have too many, minor errors – these make everyone feel disappointed.

Improve the implemented tools constantly, solve breakdowns and ask your customers what they wish to have organised in a better way and then implement these modifications.

Products should be attractive

Would you buy a product that is ugly? If it is very useful, I may consider it but we’re all more willing to buy attractive items, with well-chosen colours and interesting designs.

Our IC tools should look like this: from an interesting layout for a newsletter, a video with attractive images & animations, to eye-catching graphics on the intranet. Many people buy with


their eyes! Creating attractive tools is essential to success and tips on what to change can be found in benchmark or among the solutions used in the external media & communications.

It’s also good to ask employees for their definition of ‘attractive’ – what the audience wants to see, how it looks & feels.

Customers should know how products work

We’re all more willing to use and, at the same time, less afraid of products if we know & understand what to do with the; how they could solve our problems. This is why you should educate your employees about the many possibilities of your IC tools.

Focus on showing how they work, what advantages they have and clarify any doubts about their application. Moreover, it will help you decrease barriers between users and these tools. Educating about goals, advantages, functionalities and tricks & tips should also be an important


element of IC action planning, not as a simple action to be checked-off the list.

Products should be promoted

Almost everything needs to be advertised. Although we are surrounded by commercials and ‘noise’, it still works if you do it well. We rarely use advertising ideals in internal communications, so the tolerance for such actions should be higher than in external communications.

Your IC tools need it as well and even if you dislike such actions outside, you should consider such options to check their power internally. During campaigns employees may find advantages, ways of using tools and how they can help them in their work – enable them to share these and help advertise your product.

Products ought to be monitored

To find out what your clients buy, you should monitor their behaviour. Check statistics of the use (the sales) of particular products, talk to your

Do not expect your employees to be satisfied

with using tools that are

designed against the rules or

have too many, minor errors

– these make everyone feel disappointed.


Biography: Maja Biernacka Lives in Poland and is an independent IC consultant. Among her clients there are VW, Lidl and British American Tobacco. She also supports Gatehouse in their international projects in Poland. Maja shares her knowledge and experience on her popular Polish blog, Komunikacja wewnętrzna od kuchni (English: Behind the IC scenes).

Working in communications since 2002, before starting her own business, Maja successfully managed a team of consultants in a PR agency, worked for a corporation and two key Polish TV studios.

Find her on Twitter: @maja_biernacka

Blog: http://beedifferent.pl/blog

LinkedIn: https://pl.linkedin.com/in/majabiernacka

clients, give them space to share their doubts and discuss your products.

These comments are invaluable for sellers. They highlight the things that work and the ones that don’t and should be changed or improved. Monitoring the extent to which your products are used, you will identify the elements & functionalities which are popular and the ones that should be withdrawn from the market to save time, money and energy invested in maintenance.

Constant evaluation is the key to selling more and increase the number of satisfied customers.

As IC professionals, we all sell our work and we need to adopt a customer-focused approach. Treating your IC tools like your internal products to sell may change your attitude towards them, and improve your employees’ experience.


Internal communication at Hammerson, a FTSE100 property development company, was still in its infancy due to its rapid growth against the backdrop of a small, family business culture and needed to be elevated. Gatehouse interim consultant Natalie Henderson talks us through how she helped to drive a new strategy, brand and channels to take the function, and the organisation, into the next phase of its IC evolution.

Integrating an internal communication function and setting it up for future success


The challenge

As a FTSE100 company which specialises in creating the most desirable retail destinations, Hammerson has grown rapidly in recent years, and now operates an impressive portfolio of shopping centres across the UK, Ireland and France. As the business has evolved, its traditional, home-grown approach to internal communication has become less effective and so, at the start of 2016, the business turned to Gatehouse for help.

Following a discovery workshop that looked at current state challenges and a series of executive interviews, Hammerson began the first phase of work to evolve its internal communication (IC) strategy, channels and content, to better meet the communication needs of diverse employees, across multiple sites.

A clear overarching IC strategy for Hammerson was developed – setting out the long-term approach to move people from passive observers to engaged advocates and the priorities were to:

1. Provide a suite of world class internal communications, with a new internal hub at the heart

2. Introduce a regular and reliable ‘drumbeat’ of communications built around a formal, pre-agreed plan

3. Provide an environment for rich two-way conversations and ongoing dialogue supported by engaging managers

4. Have a dedicated and specialist communications resource in place, empowered to advise leaders and make things happen

5. Introduce a ‘one Hammerson’ culture where all colleagues feel connected, wherever they may be based

6. Produce engaging content and campaigns that support business vision, values and strategy

The strategy also fed into and helped shape a clear future-state vision:

“By 2018, we will have truly exceptional internal communications at Hammerson, creating an environment where our colleagues feel well informed, engaged and connected. Clear, coherent, strategically aligned messages and appealing content will be shared in a timely way via a range of world-class channels – and we will be celebrated for our conversation culture, where managers and leaders listen, colleagues contribute ideas and information flows freely up, down and across the organisation”.


Stakeholder engagement and

management was a crucial first step to galvanizing

support in driving the IC strategy

forward.

Step 1: The intranet

The initial area to be tackled right away was the relaunch of the intranet; Hammerson wanted a new intranet platform launched six months within my arrival.

In partnership with Gatehouse, we carried out a piece of research to find out what both the business and employees needed and wanted from a new and improved intranet. I also used every meeting I had to gain feedback on the intranet and Hammerson’s approach to IC in order to frame my recommendations.

Based on the research, the decision was made to move forward with a new platform. BrightStarr’s Unily seemed to be the perfect fit, and three months after having them onboard as our new supplier, we launched Ondemand, Hammerson’s brand-new intranet and communication hub.

Ondemand was launched through an email campaign led by the CEO, posters and pop-ups, a teaser animation,

webinars and a comprehensive user guide. Hammerson employees could now read more engaging news; find people, documents and information faster; connect and collaborate more easily; access it through any device; and generally, work smarter than before.

CASE STUDYTHE JOURNAL OF INTERNAL COMMUNICATION VOLUME 15

The next step was to mobilise the support needed to help drive the strategy forward, as well as support the first phase of delivery – launching this new approach to IC, with a fresh new brand and intranet relaunch. This is when I was brought in.

I met with key stakeholders to understand their main challenges and what they felt improved internal communications looked like. Stakeholder engagement and management was a crucial first step to galvanizing support in driving the IC strategy forward.


Step 2: The IC brand and approach

In parallel to launching a new intranet, we needed to tackle the delivery of corporate internal communications. We needed to distinguish between corporate, local and personal information – an IC brand was needed.

Gatehouse had already done significant work on designing a look and feel for internal communications, utilising the ‘On’ of Hammerson. With this fresh look, I devised and launched a whole new approach to delivering IC at Hammerson. It was necessary to introduce this before the intranet launch so that employees would understand the name of the new intranet and how it all fit together.

To professionalise internal communications, some things needed to change. The previously relied upon informal style of internal communication sometimes caused colleagues to miss out on relevant information and news only shared locally. Whereas in other cases, very local and more personal information was communicated to

hundreds of employees, where it had little relevance for that wider audience.

As a result, I started by introducing a formalised approach to mass emails as well as restricting mass emails to approved users. I also made sure all Senior Management communication went through the Internal Communications function, to ensure that all the messages were carefully crafted and aligned with the vision, strategy and values. Furthermore, the use of Ondemand was encouraged for news that was

previously emailed. The social area on the vastly improved intranet gave employees an alternative space to share their news.

The new approach to IC was initially explained in launch emails from Hammerson’s CEO; everyone needed to be more organised in planning their communications and utilise the great functionality of our new intranet, Ondemand, as well as the expert guidance from the IC function. This was then further driven home in every conversation I’ve had since launch!

The new approach to IC was initially explained in launch emails from Hammerson’s CEO; everyone

needed to be more organised in planning their communications and use the great new

functionality of our intranet, Ondemand, as well as the expert guidance from the IC function.


Biography: Natalie Henderson Natalie is a senior communications professional with extensive internal

communications and employee engagement experience gained across a wide range of privately owned businesses and public limited companies in the retail property, food, logistics, drinks, utilities and construction sectors.


The result and next steps

The feedback from the business was fantastic. Senior managers are delighted at the huge reduction in poorly targeted emails and that internal, corporate communications are more carefully crafted, and have real impact. A permanent IC Manager is now in place and building on these strong foundations.

Hitting the ground running as an interim

To hit the ground running and activate the new IC strategy in a limited amount of time, it was essential to engage with the key stakeholders and as many people on the ground as soon as possible, making them feel part of the change and involving them in its success.

It was also important to be proactive. As an interim, you often get left to your own devices and people can’t guide you because they don’t know what they need. Part of this is being confident in your own ability and expertise as an internal communicator; helping people to understand what good internal communication looks like for their business.

Looking back, I’ve learnt much from this experience: I learnt that I can create something from nothing, that attention to detail is essential in any project, and that I love setting up IC functions from scratch.

The challenge of the intranet relaunch was one of the biggest of my career and I’m proud that I could do it in record time and achieve the level of engagement we did, so quickly. We were even awarded ‘Highest Intranet Adoption’ by our supplier, which is a great accolade!


In December 2017, McDonald’s UK internal communication team partnered with Gatehouse to launch a bespoke internal campaign designed to create staff excitement around the annual external Christmas campaign.

Helping employees get #ReindeerReady at McDonald’s


Christmas is a time of anticipation and excitement. In late 2017,

our marketing and communication teams were busy planning an exciting customer-facing campaign to put the brand at the heart of the festive season. The creative concept of the external campaign was created by Leo Burnett, our long-term marketing agency, and focused on the build-up of the excitement in the run up to Christmas by looking through the eyes of a little girl and capturing her sense of wonder with the arrival of the Christmas reindeer. A campaign hashtag, #ReindeerReady, was created to engage customers on social media.

We decided that it wasn’t just about helping customers get #ReindeerReady – we needed to ensure that our people provided an excellent customer experience while having a bit of fun themselves. Gatehouse was brought in to produce an internal campaign aligned on the same concept and designed to create a unique and memorable experience for employees.



Multiple agencies were involved in the overarching campaign, including Blue Goose, the agency in charge of ourlounge, our internal online platform. A robust project plan was created along with weekly meetings between all relevant agencies and stakeholders. Because all members of the wider team ultimately had the same goal – providing customers and employees with an exceptional holiday period – it was easy to establish the necessary open lines of communication. Having delivered an internal communication audit for McDonald’s a few months earlier, Gatehouse had an excellent understanding of our different audiences and complex requirements as an organisation – the internal campaign had to be unique for the crew audience as well as easy to use and share.

Elements of delivery

Our challenge was ensuring that every element was aligned with the wider campaign while still targeting crew members. All items

were developed to align with this objective, but the internal campaign was specifically produced to encourage our people to embrace, engage and bring to life what being #ReindeerReady means. A challenging deliverable all around!

Another challenge was the target audience. McDonald’s is fortunate to have a diverse workforce with employees falling within a wide age range; however, for an internal campaign, this is a challenging brief as the deliverables must make an impact for many different sub-audiences. With this in mind, the deliverables were meant to be used by anyone; whether you are a social media-fiend, or you would rather stay away from all things digital.

We decided to create a comprehensive restaurant kit included a series of goodies and fun items. Building on the gaming app produced as part of the external campaign, Gatehouse developed a physical game based on the McDonald’s characters in the app. A finger puppet

Our challenge was ensuring

that every element was aligned with

the wider campaign while still

targeting crew members.


racing game was then produced, and the ‘Winter Games’ reindeer racing was born with finger puppets, a race track and a leader board to track fastest times. Other items that were created included a ‘What’s Your Reindeer Name?’, a poster that the user could use to decipher their holiday moniker based on their own name; however, what proved to be the most popular were the Instaframes. Different versions were included in each kit and encouraged users to write their fastest Winter Game race time or reindeer name on with an erasable pen. This also tied into the Snapchat filters created by Leo Burnett and reindeer filters seen on ourlounge.

Because of the many different parts of the restaurant kits, it was decided that a short, snappy instruction video would connect the restaurant kit to the external campaign, while also explaining how the items could be used. This was then hosted on the private McDonald’s UK Vimeo channel as well as ourlounge.



We knew from the audit that our people were using closed social groups on Facebook to communicate with their restaurant team and share photos and videos, so we allowed for the sneak peak of the TV advert to be shared on these groups and encouraged restaurants to post photos of employees using the Instaframes. Because the hashtag, #ReindeerReady, was on all kit elements, it further encouraged people to use their personal social media accounts to share their experiences with the campaign. We were then able to monitor social media use and capture this as part of our measurement piece. We also took this opportunity to drive traffic to ourlounge by creating a reindeer-themed photo gallery and conducting weekly polls about the campaign – allowing us to gather robust metrics.

The results are in

As with any campaign, it is imperative to measure the impact, interaction and reach. This was particularly important in this case as the campaign would be used as a baseline for similar work in the future.

Before the launch of the campaign, and with input from Blue Goose, it was decided there would be two pulse surveys hosted on ourlounge followed by a 10-question survey sent to all audiences at the end of the campaign. The pulse surveys were meant to

capture if people felt they were ready for the campaign and what they thought about the kits themselves. These were short one-question polls that popped up when a user logged in while the survey was a more in-depth approach for all audiences.

Once that survey closed, a detailed analysis took place and a master report was created, which included these findings and analysis gathered from ourlounge, Vimeo (used to host the sneak-peak video and instruction video), intranet and social media. Following the report creation, which included input from all internal campaign team members, McDonald’s, Gatehouse and Blue Goose held a team meeting to review the results and discuss learnings to use as we move forward into the future.

A standout campaign

It was abundantly clear that the internal campaign was successful and launched at the right time and in the right way. People felt the campaign elements were high quality and after


Biography: Linda McGee An experienced head of internal communications, with a background in retail operations, Linda currently leads the internal communications function at McDonald’s Restaurants to engage, educate and inform people and franchisees about the vision, business priorities and successes. As part of this role, Linda works with remote and diverse audiences, managing communications

across multiple channels, and advising senior leadership on their communication.


the success of this one, they want to see further alignment of internal campaigns with external ones. Pleasingly, the communications that managers received about the campaign helped them understand the objectives and the information was what they needed to execute the campaign in their restaurant. It did sound that while the campaign started out with a bang, sustaining the excitement throughout the timeline proved to be a challenge.

With the full results in and input from all team members considered, we are now looking at how we can continue to improve for future campaigns. We will look to clarify business objectives of the external campaign and how this aligns with our internal goals, consider our key audiences and ways to sustain campaigns with all of them while using the channels we have available. At the end of the day, everything we do is about our people and our customers and we want to ensure we our on a journey of continuous improvement.

We will look to clarify business objectives of the external campaign and how this aligns with our internal goals,

consider our key audiences and ways to sustain campaigns with all of them while

using the channels we have available.


Delivering a member-centric pensions website at Rolls-Royce

For over a century, Rolls-Royce has been a hallmark of quality as a world-leading manufacturer. Their pensions team wanted to bring the same level of quality to an online service and enhance the overall service provided to over 80,000 pension scheme members. Gallagher Communication explains how they made it happen.


Rolls-Royce’s brand promise ‘trusted to deliver excellence’ sets

a standard and an expectation. The brief to Gallagher Communication was to develop a self-service pensions website, which we did with that promise in mind. Understanding the needs of both members and the pensions team was essential to create a solution that would deliver excellence in information, functionality and support.

The result is a high quality, member-centric pensions website, that provides self-service functionality and educational features, while reducing manual administration and enabling the pensions team to focus on applying their expertise to highly technical queries. Initially launching to active members, Rolls-Royce saw 5,500 successful registrations for the site within the first month, with 15,000 online calculations run to date and an increase in the number of death benefit nominations. The project also contributed to the pensions team winning an internal award for meeting Rolls-Royce’s brand promise, ‘trusted to deliver excellence’.

The challenge

Rolls-Royce has a pensions team of 16 employed to support members with highly technical queries. However, the overall team workload was being dominated by simple administration queries, such as updating a member’s address and bank details. While they had developed processes to deal with the work as efficiently as possible, these basic tasks diverted attention for more complex queries, such as Annual and Lifetime Allowance queries.

Rolls-Royce already had a pensions space on the intranet that allowed active members to run basic calculations, but this wasn’t accessible at home or by deferred or pensioner members. The pensions team set an objective to create a self-service website, accessible by all.

REWARDS & PENSIONSTHE JOURNAL OF INTERNAL COMMUNICATION VOLUME 15

Workshops with the pensions team allowed us to understand needs, objectives and challenges. Key considerations about the members included:

● The range of office-based staff to shift-based engineers in manufacturing environments.

● The age range of membership, with a particular concentration of members around age 40 who will soon be considering retirement planning.

In the workshops, we spent time looking at administration logs of queries to understand where the biggest impact could be made. We also explored the Rolls-Royce brand promise and their values, to ensure that the final solution would feel authentic to all employees, past and present.


The solution

In partnership with the scheme’s administration technology provider, we developed a brand new website that is available to all members. The scope of the website services included the ability to update personal details and run instant estimates from the administration system, through to providing accurate and up-to-date information about the scheme and topics such as taxation. For pensioners, new to an online system, the functionality included electronic

payslips; for deferred members (also new), the functionality included a deferred benefits calculator, online case tracking and feedback tools.

Our role was to create a powerful user experience, member-centric designs, content and clear member journeys to ensure that each member type could simply and easily view information they wanted and complete tasks without any assistance, such as updating their details. To help us stay in the shoes of the members throughout the development process, we created personas that captured key member types and their needs and objectives.

Every decision about design, content and functionality was made by referencing the personas to ensure that obstacles were overcome and objectives met. This continual focus elevated the website from a good self-service system to an intuitive self-service solution, accessible anywhere, any time and on desktop, laptop, mobile and tablet devices.

Using our personas, we developed a clear member journey for each process, carefully considering the challenges a member may face during the process (such as finding their member reference number).

Every decision about design, content and functionality was made by

referencing the personas to ensure

that obstacles were overcome and

objectives met.


To meet the objective of the project to get members managing their pension online, we created a task bar that would draw out key tasks for each member type to complete and establish the behaviour of where to find information, before contacting the pensions team.

For example, in order to support the maintenance of good quality data, members were set a task to check their personal details. Using a simple gamification technique of showing a progress bar against tasks brought this to life.

Because of the importance of this website to the pensions team and their workload, we created a training session around the site launch to engage them with the objectives of the project, the approach, and ran interactive sessions to allow them to step into the shoes of each member type through the personas. The session also allowed the team time to explore the functionality and content of the site so that they would be more able to support members over the phone if they had queries.

Finally, to aid members during the launch of the new website, we created a launch postcard and user guide, which highlighted the new features on offer and reminded them of their member reference number required for registration.

The outcomes

The final solution is a high quality, member-centric pensions website, that provides self-service functionality and educational features, while reducing manual administration and enabling the pensions team to focus on applying their expertise to highly technical queries.



Key statistics against our project objectives include:

● Objective: Encourage all members to make use of the online calculators.

● Result: Since launch, there has been a consistent average of over 50% of all website sessions including use of a calculator; at manufacturing locations, over 20% of sessions include use of a calculator.

● Objective: Ensure ease of registration of members across all job environments and locations.

● Result: Once members have started the registration process, there is a 97% success rate.

● Objective: Encourage members to engage with key tasks, based on their member type.

● Result: Since launch, 65% of members have engaged with their tasks, which included running a calculation, reviewing their nominations and verifying their address details. The number of nominations recorded for the total membership has increased.



The project also contributed to the pensions team winning an internal innovation award for meeting Rolls-Royce’s brand promise, ‘trusted to deliver excellence’. In particular, the judges commented on the way in which every aspect of the project was aligned to the Rolls-Royce brand promise.

2016 was an important year for Rolls-Royce pensions as we merged four of our Defined Benefit arrangements

into one large £13bn plan. Throughout the merger discussions member engagement with pensions improved

substantially. The relaunch of our member website was an important part of the merger not only to retain this member engagement but also to provide easy to use self-service tools that reduced the transaction activity that our specialist pensions team was required to do.

Ian Farnsworth – Pensions Manager

We were geared up for Armageddon but it seems to have

gone very smoothly. I honestly can’t think of a single complaint

so far, which is great news!

Andy Dickinson – Pensions Specialist

The support provided by the team at Gallagher Communication was second to none. They became an extension of the in-house team

and also forged an excellent relationship with our systems provider that allowed us to deliver

the daunting website redesign with the least disruption. The input and guidance provided

by Gallagher Communication contributed substantially in delivering a well-designed,

simple to use and engaging website.

Ian Farnsworth – Pensions Manager


Following a period of rapid growth, US healthcare disruptor athenahealth wanted to improve its employee experience to better align to the $1 billion business it is today. Director of Benefits & Global Mobility Joanne Jones explains how the Compensation, Benefits, and Internal Communications teams got together to help address employee retention and engagement.

Improving employee engagement through a Total Rewards culture


athenahealth provides network-enabled services for hospital and ambulatory clients across the US, improving provider performance and tracking public health trends.

We reached a new stage of maturity last year, turning 20 years old. Now with more than 5,000 employees – otherwise known as athenistas – across five locations in the US and three in India, we’ve become a big player in a relatively short time.

Of course, with great growth comes greater challenges and responsibility.

We at athenahealth pride ourselves on being a bold, trendy, and innovative company, and have worked collectively to spread this culture throughout the organization – but when it came to benefits, we felt the employee experience didn’t quite match up. Considering we’re a relatively young company with a substantial millennial workforce, this needed to change.


Stakeholder analysis

We started off last year by completing a competitive analysis of our existing benefit programs and health plans. We wanted to get a clear view of our market position to help maximize our ability to attract, engage, and retain the best people.

This process involved getting feedback from athenistas on their perception of our benefits – where they saw gaps and where they felt we should invest.

One thing that came out loud and clear was the lack of awareness of what we offered today – let alone what we could offer in the future!

Let’s do this

Make your 2018 benefit elections in Workday: Nov. 1 through Nov. 20

We heard it from athenistas, we heard it from leaders. Clearly, we had an opportunity – and a responsibility – to educate athenistas.

Fresh thinking

We decided that we needed to invest in a communication campaign.

We wanted something that would act as a catalyst for an ongoing dialogue with athenistas about their rewards. Something packed with positivity, clarity, and energy, that would not only talk about benefits enhancements we planned to introduce in 2018 but that also helped athenistas and their families understand what the company already had to offer.

This was about taking things to another level. We’d done basic communications in the past, but we needed professional support to inject some fresh, new thinking, reflective of our external brand.


Looking under the lid

Enter Gallagher, our broker for health and welfare in the US, who introduced us to a team of employee communications specialists within Gallagher UK.

Gallagher Communication hosted a workshop last July to kick off the two parts of the project: Total Rewards (TR) identity and an Open Enrollment (OE) campaign.

In addition to my team, I got a couple of different stakeholders in the room – from the Compensation and Internal Communications teams – to make sure we connected all the dots.

Gallagher Communication took us through a pretty rigorous process. They wanted to gain a full understanding of our company, our people, and brand guidelines as well as how we talk to customers and athenistas, and what communication channels we could leverage.

We explored colors, wording, and photography that aligned with our brand promises of being refreshingly candid and radically simple. We ultimately decided on the eye-catching green, the simplicity of social media ‘comment’ style language, and photos reflective of our athenistas in action to help inject something raw and emotive.

The workshop was well-thought through and well-executed. Afterwards, Gallagher Communication came back to us with pieces that really resonated.

Targeted and engaging

The resultant campaign used bold creativity, powerful messaging, and clear calls to action to help athenistas become informed and empowered decision-makers.

It was an intensive campaign and we saw great results.

The three-week window for athenistas to make their benefit choices opened on 1 November. All communication touch points were designed to drive

We heard it from athenistas,

we heard it from leaders.

Clearly, we had an opportunity

– and a responsibility – to educate athenistas.



athenistas to learn more about their benefits options and, ultimately, make their elections.

October kicked off with vlogs, digital teasers, and a cool, swatch-book style summary guide that athenistas could refer to on-the-go. The swatch-book was designed in a way that presented the key information in digestible chunks, and it was great to see them pulling out their guides at the benefits fairs. These elements positioned the existing and new benefits as part of athenahealth maturing.

The campaign continued through November with emails, leadership blogs, onsite posters, table tent cards,

Time to own itYour benefits enrollment window closes in:

17DAYS

09HOURS

38MINUTES

42SECONDS

We heard you

athenistas,

Together we are the pioneers and disruptors of the future of healthcare.

Improving healthcare is a big deal, and so is your wellbeing. You don’t just

come to work for our mission — you do it for yourself, your loved ones

and your future.

At athenahealth, we bring our whole selves to work. With that in mind,

many of you told us our benefits could be better, and we listened. The

athenahealth Rewards team has worked tirelessly this year to give you

access to high-quality products and services that also help minimize your

costs and offer you greater choice and flexibility.

Moving the needle on our benefits takes time, but we’re committed to

owning it. And when Open Enrollment for 2018 kicks off on November 1,

it’s your turn!

You have important decisions to make and new choices to consider for your

wellbeing (and your wallet!), so it’s time for you decide what’s right for you.

Let’s continue to build our future together!

Lorraine Vargas Townsend

Vice President of Human Resources

Stay tuned for more information

and visit the Employee Portal

for additional details.

The better informed you are,

the easier it is to make decisions

for you and your family.

Campaign Materials


Biography: Joanne Jones

Joanne Jones is Director of Benefits & Global Mobility at athenahealth, where she is responsible

for the strategic planning, design, implementation, communication, compliance and administration of the Company’s Benefits programs and policies.

She has more than 20 years of experience in the management of the benefits and global mobility functions for multinational organizations.

and a live digital countdown display in key communal areas. Each piece was designed to remind everyone that OE was here and choices needed to be made.

We also debuted an interactive decision-making tool called ALEX®, by Jellyvision, to help guide athenistas through tricky choices like picking the right medical plan.

The all-important upshot?

96% of athenistas went into the OE system and actively made an election. That’s the highest participation rate we’ve seen and is an increase of around 20% over previous years. 75% of athenistas used the ALEX tool to help make their decisions.

Feedback suggested athenistas understood what they needed to do and they connected with the look and feel of the campaign. Overall, it was really well done.

Next steps are to build on the brand we’ve created, ensuring that we continue to elevate the wider TR dialogue and value of athenahealth Rewards. We want to align TR to everything we do across HR, Benefits, and Compensation, ensuring it’s something that’s “felt” by athenistas – a holistic experience instead of an easily-forgotten promise.

Your new benefits

friendContact ALEX

myalex.com/athenahealth/2018

In December 2017, Gatehouse joined forces with Gallagher Communication, the world-class experts in rewards, benefits and HR communications.



Open a new chapter in internal comms, for free!Get inspired with real-life stories and expert advice. Learn the latest internal communication tactics direct from leaders within the world’s most exciting companies.

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www.gatehouse.co.uk/joic

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A Gallagher Company journal ofinternal communication · working in marketing, managing a team responsible for ‘employer and learner engagement’. There I got the chance to use