Using polling technology to gain fast feedback via email
http://www.melcrum.com/source_sm/0309index.html
Welcome to Melcrum's Social Media and Intranets Newsletter.
It's
a common problem for internal communicators: how do you get a
critically important company message out to tens of thousands of
employees, many of whom have varying access to computers? Complicate
the issue with the need for employees to act on the news and you have a
very stern challenge.
At US-based oilfield
services company Baker Hughes, such a challenge came in the shape of
communicating benefits of the Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP):
employees weren't participating in the program and the deadline was
approaching for enrolment in the 2008 scheme.
To
tackle this challenge, the Baker Hughes HR team launched a
multi-channel and multi language communications campaign to increase
ESPP enrolments. The campaign included:
- "My espp":
A new, hard copy and PDF brochure, written in six languages and printed
and sent to employees. The brochure was also placed on the intranet.
- Face-to-face meetings:
to help answer any questions about the "my espp" brochure and the ESPP
program, face-to-face meetings were held between employees and HR.
- Weekly emails:
Complementing the meetings were weekly email reminders that were
translated into different languages and sent out to ensure message
frequency and consistency.
Innovative polling
On top of these traditional comms tools and approaches came a new tool
for Baker Hughes - email polling by PollStream.
A
total of 35,600 global employees were sent an interactive poll via an
HTML email. To satisfy the language requirements of its global
employees, Baker Hughes emailed the poll to 9,650 global employees in 6
languages other than English.
The poll was
carefully designed with multiple "branches" and "endings" to help
engage, educate and inform employees in a measurable two-way dialogue,
designed to be a rewarding exchange that drove employee action.
Measuring employee take-up
As a result of the multi-channel campaign, 1,700 new employees (an
increase of 16.4% from the previous year) signed up for the ESPP
program and 925 previous participants decided to increase their
contributions.
The purpose of the poll was not to obtain insight, it was to drive action (employee sign-ups) and influence behavior.
By
distributing communication in 7 different languages, the company
experienced an international (non-US English speaking) increase of
13.9%.
In terms of the campaign’s final push, over
1,400 employees interacted with the 4-question poll and 444 of those
employees declared that they either wanted to increase contributions or
start participating with the ESPP. Specific employee declarations
prompted the poll to serve up relevant content to educate employees
about the best method to increase their contributions.
The purpose of the poll was not to obtain insight, it was to drive action (employee sign-ups) and influence behavior.
Using
PollStream’s prompt for comment feature, employees provided more than
300 comments to help the HR Communication department better understand
general perceptions of the ESPP (why employees aren’t contributing or
increasing their contributions), allowing them to better position the
program in the future.
Employee feedback provided
from the prompt for comment feature told us that employees who lived
"paycheck to paycheck" found it difficult to sacrifice even part of
their earnings to the savings program.
In response, Baker Hughes are now planning a communication program around how employees can save money in general.
Members of the Internal Comms Hub can log in and read the full Baker Hughes case study.
Best regards,
Until next time,
Alex Manchester
Senior Consultant
Step Two Designs
Blog: www.alexmanchester.com
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