Comms Team Newsletter – 01
It’s our mission to make sure employees engage with Darwin and their benefits. The Buzz tells you how we do it.
We hope you enjoy reading and let us know what you think!
Samsung Highlights
Where do you go from great?
Great client work is the result of on point collaboration, both us and the client need to understand the brief, be open to new ideas and be aligned in delivery. Think Aerosmith and Run DMC or Queen and David Bowie. Definitely not Michael Jackson and Eddie Murphy (yep it happened, and there’s a reason we’ve all chosen to forget it). Our work with Samsung is the product of great collaboration and here’s an example of why…
The challenge
Samsung’s vision ‘inspire the world, create the future’ means they need engaged, creative and motivated employees. Even though they maintain high engagement with benefits, with login rates in the 90% plus range year after year, they didn’t want to be complacent.
Feedback gathered in 2015 suggested many employees didn’t understand the basics, like what they could spend their benefit allowance on.
The solution
2016’s innovative, ‘always-on’ benefits communications campaign was designed to:
- Inspire their tech savvy, highly dispersed workforce to interact with their benefits
- Increase people’s understanding and appreciation of their benefits
- Help them improve their financial wellbeing
The communications campaign targeted all employees through a huge variety of media channels with something to appeal to everyone. Innovative channels like augmented reality combined with visually impactful interactive branding and campaigns got people’s attention, while targeted communications talked to people as individuals.
Media included an augmented reality app, posters, 121s, emails, an aging app, deskdrops, fridge magnets and monthly newsletters. With something happening every month, employees had multiple opportunities to learn more about the value of their benefits. Repetition of messages down multiple media made sure their impact was maximised.
The result
They maintained their 96% engagement level during the annual benefit selection window and engaged 3,530 employees at events and through provider interaction.
In the response to the reward survey question ‘Samsung Highlights enhances your overall reward package’ those agreeing went up from 74% to 78%. Those responding “no” went down from 7.8% in 2015 to just 0.6% in 2016.
Kirk vs Spock
The power of messaging
We all know the age-old tension between head and heart. We make around 35,000 decisions every day on everything from what to eat and say to when to sleep and what to watch; each time fighting rational and emotional forces before coming to a decision. This is why Mark Zuckerberg chooses to wear the same thing every day – to minimise decision-making in order to focus on more valuable decisions.
Ok, so we’re not Mark Zuckerberg, but we do all suffer decision fatigue. So how do we convince people to care about their benefit choices when so much else is competing for attention? There are particular tactics our Comms Consultants adopt when structuring messages, one of these is looking at striking the balance between rational and emotional appeals in messaging.
This is the kind of thinking we developed for Auto Enrolment. We produced several campaign options for clients to choose from, each pulling at a different side of the brain.
Interesting fact
Campaign 4 (see below) was chosen most often by our clients. This isn’t surprising as in the case of AE, people want more information upfront so they can go through their problem-solving process.
What we love
We love Behance
We really adore it (and suffer terrible design envy when we see what’s on show). It’s unbelievable the amount of talent you can find out there!
Behance is the leading online platform to showcase and discover creative work: you know what you’re going to find will be top quality. It’s also a great place to look for inspiration and see what’s cooking in the creative world.
You don’t have to be a creative to use it or love it, so join us and take a look: from photography to illustration, CGI and everything in between. We guarantee you there is something in it for you.
behance.net
Show and tell
We’d love to show you all the amazing work we’re doing with clients but here’s a taster of what we’ve produced recently that shows great communications can make a big impact… and win awards.
Sage – Most engaging benefits proposition (Employee Benefits Awards 2017)
The challenge:
- Unite the business globally as part of a wider “One Sage” business vision
- Introduce benefits technology that would:
- Engage their young, extremely tech-savvy workforce, who wanted everything mobile-enabled
- Deliver HR administration efficiencies
- Improve employee appreciation of benefits and therefore the business
The solution:
Going all out with a fun communications campaign – a festival theme based on employees ‘selecting their benefits line-up’ targeted to the young workforce; the core message being choices and flexibility for all employees aligned to their diverse need.
The result:
84% of employees logged in during their 2016 BSW (up from 54% in 2015) and the number of benefits selected increased by 62%. Engagement with the benefits package increased by 13%.
Cue Product Placement
We often get asked for new things, new stuff and new ideas – so here’s an example of just that, our mobile benefit guides.
The idea?
A phone friendly, light version of a benefits guide. No frills, no fuss, just a quick intro to say hi, a list of the benefits on offer, wrapping up with key information (think dates / contact details) and a clear call to action.
The good stuff?
It’s clickable – we can link straight from the guide to Darwin so with one click you’ll be able to continue the mobile-first experience.
It’s adaptable – you can have a new joiner version, one specifically for a window or just a general all-rounder.
It’s trackable – it can be sent as a link by text or downloaded by scanning a QR code. Either way we get statistics that let us know who’s viewing it when.
Want to try the thing?
Here’s an example – scan the QR code below or open this link on your phone.
Comms Team Online
(Re)introducing our mobile responsive, all singning, all dancing, client friendly website.
The comms website has a new look – its been on the yoga retreat, sailed through low carbing, smashed the 6 week ab challenge and has come back bigger, better and more flexible than ever before.
Everything you want to know (or share) about us lives there. Have you had a look yet? If not then get clicking…
www.thomsons.com/thecommsteam. It’s full to the brim with useful information – cue our 5 reasons why you should visit…
- it’s the one client facing holder of comms information on who we are, how we work and what we do for our clients
- it’s designed to engage by communicating and sharing examples – via our portfolio and other examples of multimedia work
- it gives you the data to back up the importance of comms in employee engagement as well as the creative to get them excited about working with us
- it opens a window into the comms team to encourage a follow up consultation with the team experts
- it helps you understand the detail of the packages we offer
Make the most of the website by:
- understanding the site structure and creating a bespoke narrative for each client with content that is relevant to them
- not sending the link but showing it to the client to act as a conversation starter, giving the client the opportunity to ask questions
- giving us feedback on your experiences so we can improve the site with every update
Clear? Off you go then. Click on the link and take a walk on the comms side.
Comms on Confluence
Our first, not the last, but definitely our everything
Last year we launched the first communications confluence pages, a safe haven for presentations, product examples and general comms information.
It’s home to all the things we think you might need (hopefully our everything). So, it’s always worth taking a look there before launching a 12 day expedition to track down the awesome PowerPoint slide you saw us use that one time. Hopefully it’ll be there, waiting for its next moment in the sun.
But…if it’s not then let us know. The current pages won’t be our last and we’re planning to add to them each month so the more feedback we get, the better they’ll be. Plus we’re now tracking page views so we can see how useful they are….*cough* check if you say you’ve looked but really haven’t…(only joking/not joking).
Seriously though, take a look…