A business’ employees are the lifeblood of the company. Making sure that the team is engaged, motivated and ready to get behind shared goals is vital to success.
Many businesses can neglect their internal communications, when actually, they are as important, if not more so, than what you do externally.
Motivating a team
If you’re a smaller business, it’s easy to get everyone together in a room, but what if you have hundreds of employees, at sites across the country, or even the world?
It’s harder then, to bring everyone together, but it’s vital that this happens, so everyone is on the same page and pulling in the right direction.
Whether it’s regular video updates from the senior team, a monthly magazine, or events and activations at sites, it’s important that employees are in the know about developments in the business, and buy into any changes that are happening.
Engaging AkzoNobel with Armstead
We recently worked with paint brand Armstead to engage colleagues at its parent company AkzoNobel with a new creative approach and the launch of the first ever Armstead Facebook page.
Armstead developed a new creative approach based around encouraging tradespeople and decorators to ‘Bring your A-Game’. Armstead is the paint that lets them bring their best possible self to a job.
We knew we had to do something creative to encourage everyone at AkzoNobel to bring their A-Game and get them excited about Armstead.
We designed, packaged and delivered 3,500 Armstead ‘A-Game’ breakfast bars to AkzoNobel sites across the UK to help colleagues fuel to bring their A-Game in their role on launch day.
We then created the Armstead Olympics, a series of games to test speed, skill and strength, to give employees at the AkzoNobel UK headquarters a chance to see the new creative and approach first hand.
After a successful day of A-Games in Slough, we took the Olympics on the road to the Dulux Decorator Centre Support Centre in Altrincham, so colleagues there could also take part and get a chance to engage directly with the brand and the new activity.
From setting the fastest lap in a racing game, to getting the ball into an Armstead can, hundreds of colleagues rose to the challenge and all enjoyed an opportunity to see the new Armstead creative first hand. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with everyone looking forward to playing their part in seeing the campaign rolled out in stores, publications and on social media.
When homeworking becomes the norm…
But what happens when a team suddenly can’t work together physically? And an event can’t take place to engage people?
Internal communications are even more important at the moment as many, many businesses face the challenge of a prolonged period with some, if not all, of their team members working from home.
It can often feel like things are changing rapidly, and ensuring that all colleagues in a business are up to date, and aware of the latest developments is crucial.
Video has become essential in the new reality we’re living in today. Face-to-face time is still important even if you can’t have an actual meeting.
And when it comes to creating video, it doesn’t have to be perfect. A simple video message to share with employees across a business can be very valuable.
Likewise, live video calls are crucial. But remember, they aren’t a broadcast, they should be treated in the same way as meetings with everyone given a chance to engage and input.
We’re still holding our weekly ‘Show & Tell’ training sessions on Fridays (complete with a glass of wine) over Zoom so we can all come together, share knowledge and update on events from the week.
The same with our Monday morning meeting. We bring the whole team together to update on key actions from the week and give everyone in the business a chance to highlight a key learning from the previous week.
And when it comes to launches, virtual events can be just as good as the real thing. We’re currently working on plans to ensure our clients can communicate their key developments to teams across the UK or even the world during this difficult time.