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Transforming the adoption of new ways of working through change communications

Transforming the adoption of new ways of working through change communications

Embedding a strategic vision with change communications

A global engineering firm launched a new internal strategy to optimise their ways of working. They needed support to bring their strategic vision to life, and focused on identifying effective ways to educate, inform, and engage individuals.

The challenge

This global engineering firm, with over 60,000 employees, wanted to make significant changes to the ways of working across its business. It needed to engage the workforce to ensure that the new strategic vision was embraced and embedded to improve productivity and efficiency.

They needed an effective change communications strategy to educate, inform and engage their workforce to ensure the successful and sustainable adoption of the changes.

271 weekly visitors to dedicated microsite (on average)​

60% attendance to the first training session, with more viewing the recording after the live session ​

10+ written case studies created, showcasing the value

The solution

Following an agile methodology, we worked at pace to create an effective communications strategy that could be optimised in response to continuous feedback. We were able to form a cross-functional team, to ensure the strategy implemented was aligned to the overarching business objectives. ​

  • Completed a detailed discovery phase, created a communication strategy and roadmap​
  • Educated teams through bitesize training sessions​
  • Shared surveys to evaluate individuals’ level of understanding and engagement​
  • Created a hub of information and developed creative communications to stand-out against the noise

​

The results

Successful engagement from the activity was evidenced through the interactions with the communications.

  • 271 weekly visitors to the dedicated microsite (on average)​
  • 60% attendance to the first training session, with more viewing the recording after the live session ​
  • 10+ written case studies created, showcasing the value 

Summary

This leading global engineering firm was able to influence and engage its workforce to embrace and embed new ways of working through the development of a well-researched, structured and targeted change communications strategy. The results of this successful change delivered value to the business through efficiency and productivity gains.

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February 15, 2024 Alaina Roberts
Alaina RobertsTransforming the adoption of new ways of working through change communications
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Employee engagement success

Employee engagement success

Communication to drive employee engagement

Agile communications a critical success factor for global change programme

Atkins a member of the SNC-Lavalin Group, is one of the world’s most respected design, engineering and project management consultancies. The company specialises in major infrastructure projects from aerospace and aviation through to transport, energy and buildings. Atkins is one of the UK government’s leading suppliers and was instrumental in creating the infrastructure for the 2012 Olympics.

Atkins has a programme of work that is focused on looking at ways that digital technologies can help further improve the service that it delivers its clients. As part of this, it is looking at embracing and developing new tools and new ways of working to create an even more collaborative and connected company.

As a global company, Atkins has over 19,000 people spread across 300 offices around the world. Many of these people come from companies that have been acquired over the years so one of the biggest challenges for Atkins is to ensure that employees can collaborate effectively across geographical and industry boundaries.

It was also important to ensure that employees bought into the vision of the company moving forward and felt that they could contribute to the ideas and innovations that are driving this change.

The 2020 Programme

As part of the 2020 Programme Atkins had a number of initiatives designed to get employees collaborating more effectively. These included the creation of Bid-In-A-Box – an online facility to help teams put together bids more efficiently through standard templates, shared content and key learnings. The company also decided to roll out a new collaboration tool that would make it easier for people to create and work through virtual teams.

Bright supported on the communications for the launch of the new services to make sure people were aware of what was available, how to access and use it and where to go for help. The communications also need to be clear and compelling to encourage people to get involved and use the available tools. The communications strategy needed to be agile and comms created, rolled out quickly and needed to align with the branding that had already been created around the 2020 vision.

Bright were able to get underneath the skin of the brand quckly and worked effectively with the internal team and other partners. They were proactive, responsive and very agile in their approach.

Kathie Gilley, Business Transformation Director

Bid-in-a-Box: A success story

Bright were able to get a team up and running in just a few days. Working closely with the internal team, lead by Business Transformation Director, Kathie Gilley, the team was able to get a communications plan for Bid-In-A-Box built and approved in less than a week with the first elements of communications toolkits drafted and ready less than two weeks after the programme had been signed off. The team used Bright’s agile marketing methodology to create and test a number of concepts quickly to determine the best approach and worked closely with other suppliers to get the toolkits ready for launch in record time.

The toolkits included video case studies, user guides and FAQs for Bid-In-A-Box. Alongside toolkit and launch materials for the roll-out of the new colloboration tool internally including video and ‘how to’ guides.

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July 9, 2019 Sian Heaphy No comments
Sian HeaphyEmployee engagement success
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Engaging creative comms

Engaging creative comms

Creative communications to build rapport

Fluxx is an innovation company, creating new products and services to drive growth for some of the UK’s largest companies, such as John Lewis, Lloyds Bank and More Than insurance. Fluxx offer a unique blend of creativity and practical intelligence to help brands to develop original ideas and deliver digital products and services that are both innovative and highly lucrative.

Marketing performance improvement

Fluxx was exhibiting real potential and already held an impressive client list, but, operating in an increasingly competitive industry, was keen to build on its market share. Its team was eager to establish a systematic marketing approach that would help them to be consistent in their promotional activities and support business growth.

Fluxx’s priority was to educate its target markets on the value of innovation and the role that Fluxx plays as a catalyst and strategic creative partner. Focused on communicating its point of view through thought leadership, case studies and analysis. For this it needed to establish regular and effective contact to build lasting relationships with clients, prospects and key influencers in this space.

Bright helped Fluxx get a targeted and effective marketing program up and running, fast. We kicked off the programme with a perception audit to identify and shape the messaging that resonates among customers, prospects and employees. Working alongside Fluxx’s internal team we used this to shape and support regular content production to augment the existing marketing efforts.

The road to success

The UX and fresh content was developed for the Fluxx website and promoted across multiple social channels. Bright also established a monthly e-newsletter ‘What the Fluxx’ that publicised the latest content and nurtured an increasingly engaged network. Fluxx events were (and still are) legendary, bringing together industry business leaders through unique themes and positioning to create lively debate.

Alongside this we worked to clean up the Fluxx target database by extracting data from the company’s existing system. Analysing the information to create a list of target accounts and contact information, which was cleansed, segmented, and shared with the Fluxx team. It was clear a CRM was necessary for proper management of their data, Bright supported finding the right CRM and establish best practice usage of martech tools and reporting.

Establishing connections within the target market

The communications and data strategy enabled Fluxx to establish connections within their target markets and delivered measurable benefits:

Enhanced brand awareness through consistent creation and promotion of high-quality content.

Improved brand engagement demonstrated by people spending longer on the website, better engagement across social channels and email and an upsurge in recruitment enquiries.

Embedded reporting and improved martech usage, including a new CRM support marketing activity, sales pipeline reporting and ensure rapid follow up with hot prospects.

July 9, 2019 Sian Heaphy No comments
Sian HeaphyEngaging creative comms
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Cracking media coverage

Cracking media coverage

Cracking coverage for high growth digital consultancy

Red Badger was born and developed by Cain, Stu and Dave in 2010. They had a shared ambition to create a business that turned the traditional consulting model on its head: no sales team; no RFP processes, just great people doing great work that focused on quality, value and collaboration.

Bright ran a successful media outreach campaign, as part of their work with Red Badger, to promote the launch of Fortnum & Mason’s brand new, fully responsive eCommerce site, designed and developed by Red Badger.

Elevating Red Badger’s reputation

The key objective was to ensure Red Badger was positioned as a leading technology partner to its client, global brand Fortnum & Mason, and credited as much as possible for its work designing and developing the innovative, new site, in just eight months.

To kick off, Bright conducted an initial information-gathering interview with Red Badger to gain an understanding of the project from their perspective. To understand the customers’ perspective, Bright also interviewed the Customer Experience Director at Fortnum & Mason, who oversaw the web re-development project.

Bright was then drafted a range of content, including a press release, award entries, case study and an event speaking pitch. The award entry for Retail Week’s ‘Technology and eCommerce’ awards was shortlisted in the Best Customer Experience category.

An agile approach to outreach

After managing the review and approval of the various content pieces and formats, Bright agreed a date with Red Badger to announce the website launch to the media. Knowing that one size does not fit all when it comes to engaging the media and key influencers. Bright created tailored versions of the press release to maximise appeal to journalists covering three key sectors: retail, marketing and technology. This approach gained widespread coverage and significant traffic to the Red Badger website. Bright also ran a social media outreach campaign to engage influencers and amplify outreach.

Bright managed to achieve a wide variety of excellent content that appealed to different audiences. E-Consultancy, for example was a brilliant blog-style critique of the Fortnum site, and has had a direct impact on new business leads who have approached Red Badger after reading it.

Cain Ullah, CEO

Results

Bright’s agile approach to the communication strategy, content creation and outreach strategy resulted in:

  • Joint interviews for Fortnum & Mason and Red Badger with Essential Retail, Techworld and Computer Weekly
  • Achieved coverage for the campaign in 10 key titles: Retail Times, Internet Retailing, Retail Systems, Retail Week, Retail Gazette, Econsultancy, Essential Retail, Techworld, The Grocer, Computer Weekly
  • Obtained lead story for the campaign on Econsultancy Daily Pulse news email alert
  • Shortlisted for a Retail Week Technology and Ecommerce award

The outreach campaign and coverage generated had a direct impact on lead generation for Red Badger; the company was approached by multiple new business leads as a result.

July 9, 2019 Sian Heaphy
Sian HeaphyCracking media coverage
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80% of new video tech adoption thanks to agile employee engagement programme

80% of new video tech adoption thanks to agile employee engagement programme

Driving change through an agile approach to employee engagement

BCG came to Bright midway through its 5-year digital transformation programme, initially requiring communications and employee engagement support for the global rollout of its online video conferencing solution.

Ensuring full adoption of new tech

The aim was to ensure employees fully adopted the service, and reliance on a legacy audio only tool was significantly reduced. Over time this engagement developed to include communications support for other technology rollouts including desktop software updates and new laptop devices.

A strategic communications programme needs to sit alongside the digital transformation, designed to engage employees and bring them on the transformation journey from start to end.

Communicating the vision

Bright identified the need to articulate and communicate the overall digital transformation message to the employees. Clear and direct messaging from the CIO’s office outlining the overall digital strategy was developed, alongside dedicated communications and training. This was to support the roll out of new technologies and services being delivered.

Bright is a group of very smart and talented people. They helped me develop numerous strategies and the quality of their work has always been very high.

Christof Reckagel, Global Data Management Director, BCG

How agile communications drove results

Bright approached this project using an agile way of working to align with the business outcomes and track progress against KPI, tactics included:

  • Creating internal brand around the new technologies for people to connect with
  • Ongoing training program delivered via self-help guides, in-person or online training sessions and video tutorials
  • Measuring how communications landed and proactively react to feedback quickly and openly
  • Launch announcements and assets to create initial excitement demonstrated visual communication resulted in better retention of information
  • Finding ambassadors, usually early adopters of the technology – people are more influenced by their peers
  • Provide regular updates on progress and be honest about any bumps in the road

Results

1500 employees enabled with video conferencing

80% usage of video conferencing tool

411 increase to Devices microsite in first month of comms programme

85% of employees very satisfied or satisfied with their new device

July 9, 2019 Sian Heaphy
Sian Heaphy80% of new video tech adoption thanks to agile employee engagement programme
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