Less noise, more impact

Six months ago Caburn Hope started working with a large pharmaceutical to transform their employee experience. The pharmaceutical in question plays a vital role in society and the innovative work they carry out improves the lives of millions of people.

In such a fast-paced, matrix organisation, the UK Colleague and Community Engagement team had become aware that colleagues were being overwhelmed by communications, which were being received from various parts of the business at the same time.

To identify where communication could be streamlined and made more effective, we carried out a detailed communication review.

A representative portion of UK employees were invited to complete a survey using Caburn Hope’s unique and comprehensive employee insight tool. We also interviewed a selection of colleagues from different divisions, functions and levels which added qualitative feedback to the data gathered from the survey.

The feedback and data provided both detailed insights and trends, plus benchmarks that can be measured against in the future.

Drawing upon the insights gained, Caburn Hope worked with the Colleague and Community Engagement team to develop a content strategy designed to ensure a more targeted and localised approach to communication, whilst ensuring a consistent and inspiring overall message. As part of this strategy, we also developed a channels matrix to ensure the existing channels were used to best effect, particularly digital platforms like Yammer.

The foundation for the new communication strategy was a new corporate narrative and supporting look and feel, which expresses the company’s vision and values in a compelling and relevant way for colleagues – and helped to showcase what it really feels like to work in the organisation. The key messages focussed on the power of collaboration and celebrating diversity, which resulted in the strapline ‘Real people. Real Chemistry’.

In addition to working on specific campaigns, Caburn Hope has worked with the team to develop a communication toolkit and suite of materials that has empowered other stakeholders to use the renewed identity – ensuring consistency across all communication.

The plan is to carry out another audit later this year with a similar sample of employees to measure the impact and improvements the changes have made. However, early indicators from key stakeholders are already very positive:

“In a short space of time Caburn Hope has formed a true partnership with our own team. The initial audit and review exercise gave us the data and depth of insight we needed to validate and crystallise our thinking. Having carried out that exercise, their strategic guidance and creative execution in the development of the new corporate narrative and subsequent campaigns has made a significant impact on the effectiveness of our communication and is already starting to transform employee behaviours”.

- Head of Colleague and Community Engagement.