THE CHALLENGE: Scaling measurable communications impact campus-wide and beyond.

The Communications Department at Augusta University oversees all the communications to the university’s more than 20,000 employees and students by managing a large network of communicators across the organization. A team of two from the department, Rachel Robbins and John Jenkins, is responsible for reaching that eclectic mix of students, professors and staff, as well as physicians and health care workers in the affiliated health system. 

As the central communications professionals, they manage 25 communicators spread across the 10 colleges and universities that make up Augusta. For example, the College of Nursing has its own communications professionals who send out a newsletter every week to the nursing students. Their newsletter highlights what’s going on in that particular program, congratulates staff members on achievements, spotlights students and covers events happening around campus.

Robbins, the Central Communications and Marketing department’s Senior Communications and Marketing Analyst explains, “It’s no small feat to leverage the power of our distributed communicator network. Before Poppulo, we had 27 different communicators spread across 11 colleges and two health care systems – all with different messages and audiences – communicating with everyone.”

The communicators had no organized way to create engaging emails and more importantly, could not target them to a specific college, group of employees or students. As a result, some communicators were sending daily emails to 20,000 or more people. 

Jenkins, Internal Communications and Publications Coordinator at Augusta University says, “It got out of hand. Too many uncoordinated emails meant that many were not read. There was no policing on our end and that was costing us a tremendous amount of money. Communicating effectively meant enabling our wider network of communicators to send targeted messages in a much more controlled and coordinated way.”

Reducing noise and creating clarity was key. To do that, Robbins and Jenkins were looking to align and empower their network of communicators. “Our goal was to turn our extended team into experts in delivering personalized, relevant and targeted content. Our communications experience platform, Poppulo, made that possible,” says Robbins.

THE SOLUTION: GOVERNANCE, TARGETING CAPABILITIES AND EDUCATION

To achieve their goal, Robbins and Jenkins designed their Poppulo environment to give each communicator access to only those individuals in their department with pre-designed templates. Regular training videos and a Poppulo FAQ on the Intranet equipped them to tailor engaging and measurable communications to their specific audiences.

The governance capabilities of Poppulo meant that Robbins and Jenkins could allow and indeed encourage their team to “be the communicators they wanted to be.” For example, Robbins sends a weekly newsletter, Jagwire Weekly, to all 20,000 students and staff. 

The central team also has the capability of reaching the whole campus via email as needed for important announcements. However, the governance feature restricts anyone else from sending communications to the entire university. Instead, individual communicators can send more targeted content to the students and employees in their own departments and colleges as required.

THE RESULTS: COMMUNICATORS CAN FOCUS ON WHAT THEY ARE SAYING AND HOW THEY ARE SAYING IT – NOT THE TOOLS THEY ARE USING. 

“After we showed the team how easy it was to create templates, target emails and personalize content, the overall volume of communications increased but average open rates tripled. The reason for this seeming paradox: people are only getting emails that are relevant to them. 

Today, we are effectively reaching more students and employees with clearer, more targeted communications,” says Robbins. In addition, the templates give them the power to accomplish things they could not before, and they are not afraid to experiment.

TOP TAKEAWAYS: WORK TOGETHER AND BUILD RELATIONSHIPS

Robbins is hyper-focused on the content that engages each audience. She knows that when emails are current and trendy, they do better. She recently changed the design of the newsletter and saw a marked increase in engagement – simply because it had a crisp, modern appearance. 

She notes, “Every year, the school takes an aerial photo of the entire class. We then email the students asking them if they can find themselves in the photo. That is always a huge hit. We encourage people to have fun. In fact, the subject line we can never top is the one offering free tickets to campus events.”

Robbins and Jenkins shared some of their key tactics for those wishing to amplify the impact of a small communications department.

Carry out regular refresher-training sessions to drive momentum and promote innovative ideas from the team.

Ensure communicators understand the power of data-driven analytics to monitor and increase open rates. This encourages them to experiment and find out what works best for each audience.

Adopt a personalized and conversational tone, which is central to driving engagement.

At Augusta, all communicators are part of a Communications Council where they learn from each other and share ideas and insights. This has been an invaluable learning forum.

Robbins concludes, “Our theme is, ‘Be the communicator you want to be.’ We have built up a close rapport with our team of communicators and they trust us. They have seen how we can help them be more successful. Now they come to us for advice when needed and run with it themselves when they don’t.”

Education

Augusta University

A communications team of just two people at Augusta University took advantage of enterprise-wide governance capabilities to empower dozens of communicators 

Targeted emails and personalized content help Augusta University triple open rates

VWFS kicked off an entirely new DE&I initiative after an open forum where senior executives listened to a diverse group of employees share their experiences. Deeply touched by what they heard; management decided to relay these stories to others in the organization. Using Poppulo’s omnichannel platform, a full-blown DE&I communications program has since taken root and become a permanent part of the VWFS culture. The new approach incorporated three components: listening, educating and change. The General Manager of Communications and Engagement is one of the project leads and explains,“We wanted to cultivate a work environment that is open, authentic and based on trust, and enable employees to be their true, authentic selves 100% of the time.”

Enabling people to confidently speak up and tell their stories.

Celebrating and embracing differences and utilizing those differences to achieve the best business results.

Removing bias and ensuring the same opportunities are available to everyone.

Sharing the diverse culture with external audiences, making VWFS a desirable place to work – for everyone. 

VWFS leveraged Poppulo to foster a true sense of belonging amongst all employees:

Internal Communications kicked-off its new communications and engagement strategy with an off-site event where it asked all the employees what diversity meant to them. The insights learned were used in follow-up Poppulo campaigns.

Next, IC invited people to meet with Board Members and senior management to discuss DE&I in a safe, open environment coined Creative Coffee. The entire Board and 30 employees participated. In an emotional and eye-opening session, employees shared heart-wrenching stories of discrimination, whether it was in childhood, the workplace, society, due to the color of their skin, disability, religion or sexual orientation.

IC worked with employees to create a series of videos themed 100% Me. Poppulo’s omnichannel platform gave the employees a safe platform to share these stories and bring them to life.

Today, the 100% Me series celebrates all different types of diversity including ethnic, racial, sexual, neuro and religious diversity. In addition to the videos, each week the Poppulo newsletter focuses on a different type of story, ranging from the meaning behind the Pride flag to who inspires you in the organization.

VWFS is not afraid to make it fun. For example, IC took advantage of how the UK celebrates National Superhero Day and decided to honor its “diversity superheroes”. Using Poppulo, employees nominated colleagues who were fostering DE&I. Poppulo’s custom banners and drag and drop components made executing the campaign easy. The campaign culminated with a winners “reveal" on National Superhero Day – celebrating those employees who heroically act with integrity to inspire positive change in the business. They added a superhero name generator, and the response was overwhelming with an 81% open rate.

The General Manager sums up the impact it made, “By changing the behaviors and the mindset from the inside out, VWFS naturally and organically started growing the diversity of the business rather than focusing on quotas and not doing things in a true, authentic way. For the first time, people within the business are starting to understand how diverse VWFS is as an organization.”

Today, the 100% Me videos are on the company LinkedIn feed so that anyone can listen to the information rather than just reading it. VWFS has had positive feedback from job applicants who cite the videos as the reason they applied there. For example, one new hire said, “It made me feel more confident during the interview process.”

VWFS expanded the 100% Me series to include sensitivity videos where employees provide short videos about terms they find derogatory or offensive and why, and what are more the appropriate terms to use. Since people want to talk about DE&I, but are reluctant to, for fear of getting it wrong, these videos help people feel more comfortable about getting it right.

The company now has DE&I advocates in every department. Managers across the organization are onboard. Today, the 1,200 employees at VWFS are more informed, engaged, and motivated.

VWFS has surpassed the goals it set for its communications initiatives. Thanks to these efforts, being part of a global organization means that having a diverse and inclusive company is not only a priority but is something to celebrate.

VWFS continues to place DE&I at the top of its agenda and is currently launching a reciprocal mentoring program that will enable better two-way communication, aid broader understanding of some of the challenges faced by individuals and drive a more open and inclusive culture. 

She concludes, "Poppulo is a great way to deliver the message and help us celebrate those people who act with integrity to create positive change in the business."

Finance

VW Financial Services UK Ltd

When one of the world’s largest car finance companies used Poppulo to launch a DE&I employee engagement initiative, it saw instant results – including an 80 percent open rate in its weekly newsletter.

Increasing the representation of diverse faces and voices throughout the organization at Volkswagen Financial Services UK Ltd. 

THE CHALLENGE: GOING INTERNATIONAL WHILE KEEPING IT PERSONAL 

When Gilead Sciences made inclusion a core company value, it took its DE&I program to a whole new level. The mission was to create and foster a work environment  – around the world – where differences are valued and all people are involved, respected and connected.

Implementing that goal would require taking a holistic communications approach that would work on an international scale while also keeping it local, even personal.

From the get-go, Gilead’s Public Affairs and I&D Teams worked together with the Employee Resource Groups on the new DE&I communications plan. Nishma Patel, Senior Specialist in International Public Affairs at Gilead, in her role as communications lead for the Australia, Canada, Europe (ACE) region, leveraged Poppulo’s omnichannel platform to make it happen. 

Our definition of diversity encompasses diversity of thought, diversity of background, ethnicity, religion, sexuality… in short, what makes you, you.  Inclusion was then defined as bringing all of this together. We needed a way to put this value into action. Poppulo provided it.”

The Poppulo omnichannel platform gave the DE&I Team the capability to handle communications differently in each country while still maintaining overall governance and the ability to scale.

For example, the Gilead PRIDE Alliance had its own account and controlled all the LGBTQ communications worldwide. This account featured employee stories and personal messages from the leaders in all its PRIDE newsletters. People took comfort from the newsletters because it showed them it’s normal to be LGBTQ.  

It even encouraged people to come out at work. Patel says:

“The ability to reach thousands of people through Poppulo is brilliant. All of our collateral – the videos, Vimeos, Youtubes are presented beautifully in Poppulo. 

"The consistent and streamlined way in which we could tell people’s stories via the Poppulo newsletter made a huge  difference. The fact that everything was in one place was very valuable.  We were able to roll out awareness training sessions online for people to become advocates for LGBT inclusion and for allies as well, to understand the stigmas around LGBTQ

"The result was that the LGBTQ employees no longer felt different,” 

Poppulo made it easy for Gilead to measure tangible progress around DE&I. Using Poppulo’s metrics, the Team demonstrated the value of its communications to leadership. Open and click-through rates identified how much an issue was resonating. 

Leaders got actual statistics and benchmarks to measure progress. Poppulo CSMs provided insights into benchmarking data from other pharmaceutical companies; these industry averages on click and open rates brought the ‘outside-in’ and helped create more improved and tailored messaging.

THE RESULTS: Communications that are driving DE&I at Scale

Effective communications is enabling Gilead to create an inclusive work environment internationally, where everyone can bring their true selves to work. By making it possible for employees to share their stories in every location and providing the resources so that all employees feel safe and protected everywhere, the company is making DE&I relevant to everyone.  

Today, Gilead publicly supports DE&I special events around the world and works with local governments to create change and foster DE&I.

Gilead recently conducted a series of short DE&I surveys to get feedback on employee sentiment around the world. In Switzerland, employees noted the lack of women at a senior level. In response Gilead has increased by +20% the number of  Women in the Swiss Leadership Team and by +10% in the whole affiliate.

As a result of their efforts, Gilead Switzerland has been granted the Swiss LGBTI label for demonstrating special efforts on DE&I, especially for the LGBTI Community.

Externally, Gilead funds organizations to bring down barriers in countries where being LGBTQ is illegal. A point person on the ground looks after employees, answers questions and gives advice.

Gilead has leveraged the unique functionality of Poppulo to communicate its DE&I programs on a global scale, closing the gender gap that previously existed.

Poppulo enables the PRIDE Alliance to easily keep in touch with employees working at home. The most recent campaign focused on the glimmer of hope about being able to meet in person again and rolled out various collateral levels available for all employees to download, including PRIDE t-shirt designs, zoom backgrounds, face masks, fans for the heat and more.

Gilead continues to increase diversity in leadership with more black men moving into leadership positions. Post George Floyd, Gilead introduced an Advancing Black Equity Strategy and created a Black Equity Position at a VP level. Today, a black man who identifies as gay, holds the position and works with the CEO on DE&I.

“We face the unique challenge of global communicators of implementing DE&I programs at scale. Yet DE&I is personal; it's about hearing, understanding, and acknowledging individuals' experiences. Through Poppulo, you can speak to the employees’ range of experiences and situations when communicating on a global scale.”

Pharmaceutical

Gilead Sciences Inc.

How the ability to create personalized connection in global communications through Poppulo's omnichannel platform was key to DE&I success.

Gilead leads the way with successful DE&I implementation

The challenge: Aligning people and company goals to drive business results

As a contractor providing business process services to government agencies in several countries, 

 employees are distributed across a variety of locations, often working in highly secure and regulated environments. Maximus treats each team as a separate business unit, making it challenging to effectively communicate with employees and keep everyone aligned around company goals and initiatives. To address these challenges, Maximus adopted an integrated platform that allowed the Internal Communications (IC) team and business unit managers to connect, align and engage with its 34,000 employees on a consistent and timely basis.

Our initial communications goal was to help improve the overall company performance by creating a stronger alignment between our business strategy and our people. We wanted to enable our leaders and business unit managers to operate at a higher level – and it would all start with how we communicated with our employees.”

— Jared Curtis, Director of Communications at Maximus

To ensure that the program was successful, Jared and his team opted to take a data-driven approach to Maximus’ communications strategy. They wanted a fact-based method to determine how, what, when, to whom, and why messages were delivered.

The solution: Using an integrated platform for scalable communications

Using Poppulo’s Enterprise platform, Maximus implemented a holistic approach to its internal communications program. This approach leveraged four key capabilities: effective governance, personalization, data-driven analytics, and multiple communication channels.

Using role-based security, integrated calendaring, collaboration, shared content, and template libraries, Jared developed a governance model that allowed his IC team to work with other departments across the organization while maintaining visibility and control over communications. The IC team built an ambassador network among leaders and managers across the organization to assist with driving change and encouraging interactions. This approach improved messaging alignment and increased the reach and impact of the central IC group.

Jared leveraged this model across two key comms channels: email and mobile devices. Mobile was especially important given the complexities of the working environment for many Maximus employees. And when the pandemic hit, it became clear that a mobile app would be essential to reach employees who were at home without access to the office email system, particularly for sharing HR-focused items.

In designing our communications platform, we knew it would be critical to offer employees the choice to receive information and engage with us on their channel of choice. We have 7,000 employees using our mobile channel now. We can specifically target those on the Poppulo Mobile app for communications or even send on a different schedule.”

Content and tactics were guided by data, using in-depth metrics on time sent, open rates, and engagement levels across channels and departments. But this focus on data was not limited to just Poppulo data. “We knew a successful integrated communication platform that was driven by analytics and data would not be possible with just one data set. We needed to merge the Poppulo data with other components, whether it was Grammarly, Word, or other applications, to understand the readability, length, and other metrics of the emails. As a result, we have a holistic view built with the core metrics from Poppulo, enabling us to be more effective with our communications and guiding other team members to success,” said Jared.

Maximus uses this data to create communications strategies for larger campaigns.

We can set goals, metrics, determine audiences, mitigation steps, engagement tactics, and more to share with our leadership to set realistic expectations. Data is the key to how we communicate and take action.”

This data-driven approach was integrated with personalization for greater impact. To accomplish this, Maximus wove together various data sources including integrating its Workday employee data with Poppulo to segment communications by business unit, level, location, and more. The filtering captured trends of what was popular among the different groups for accurate targeting of the communications. And the integration reduced the workload on the company’s IT team by automating the maintenance of up-to-date distribution lists. Additionally, the Maximus team built an ambassador network among leaders and managers to assist with driving change and encouraging interactions.

The results: Driving quantifiable results across all channels

The combination of governance, multiple channels, data-driven campaigns, and personalization has enabled Maximus to optimize its employee communications activities. The results have been impressive:

An 80% open rate of its communications; with a 90% open rate among supervisors

A higher than expected average reading time of three minutes and 30 seconds

Insights that indicate Mondays and Wednesdays are the best days on which to share communications

Connected one-third of employees and growing through the Poppulo Mobile application

Top takeaways for enterprise communicators

Maximus optimized the impact of its employee communications by:

Extending the reach of the IC team by enabling a network of ambassadors while maintaining overall control

Governmental

Maximus

Leading government contractor, Maximus, implemented an integrated employee communications platform using a data-driven approach and multiple channels to improve company performance.

Aligning people and business goals through integrated employee communications

The challenge: Communicating how and when the employees needed

Stewart Milne Group is one of the U.K.'s award-winning independent housebuilders and leading timber systems providers. With more than 800 employees spread across offices, factories and housing developments, the Internal Communications department needed a streamlined method for disseminating information across all the sites. This was especially important during the period of change and uncertainty brought about by the pandemic.

While employees had access to a SharePoint Intranet site, they often struggled to access it, making it difficult to share information related to their training, HR and leadership messages. Employees on sites and factory floors had limited access to company email to get updates. As a result, there was a sense among staff that they didn’t feel like they were part of the business as they did not know what, how or why any changes were occurring. A more integrated platform for employee communications with multiple channels and the ability to create two-way engagement was needed to drive greater clarity and a sense of inclusion.

We decided to do a staged approach where we first implemented Poppulo Email and then brought in the Poppulo Mobile app. The goal was to reach all of our employees on the channel of their choice and provide them with the information they needed in a quick and consistent manner. Since 50% of our employees are non-desk-based, we required a communications platform that would effectively handle multiple communication channels simultaneously, and we found that in Poppulo.

— Kirsty Morrison, internal communications manager, Stewart Milne

The solution: Building out communication channels for engagement and Inclusion

With the ultimate goal of boosting employee engagement across the company and promoting a sense of belonging, Morrison began with email communications as the first step. She used SMS messages to reach the non-desk-based employees to inform them of an email update, but results were not measurable and it was a costly option.

We implemented the Poppulo Mobile app to best reach our workers on factory floors and sites and already have a third of workforce using it. It has become key to communicating with employees who weren’t in the office or who were on furlough to ensure they were aware of all changes in real-time.

In launching the Poppulo Mobile app, Morrison opted for a methodical approach. “We had a select group of Director and Senior Managers and representatives from all levels of the organization work with us to understand the type of content that resonated, discuss new ideas and act as ambassadors with their teams to get others engaged or demonstrate how to interact with the content,” said Morrison.

The Poppulo Mobile app serves as an information hub for employees. Quick link sections to learning and development, connected with the payslip and benefits programs worked best.

“Workers who are on a job site or traveling to meet with a client or at home can just grab their phone and know the resource is there,” said Morrison.

As the mobile content tends to be short, snappy and with lots of emojis and visual content, it drove higher engagement. The people side of the content has been the highest engaging thus far, whether through human interest posts on the history of the company, sharing of employee photos or for events such as Apprentice Day. Morrison also built out video content with the Executive Chairman, CEO and Senior Leadership teams on the positive side of 2020 and the company’s direction following the pandemic, which drove insightful engagements on the app.

This approach was highly successful in driving clear communications during the company’s internal restructuring. Using the Poppulo platform, employees were surveyed to understand how they were feeling throughout this time. From this feedback, Morrison worked with managers and leadership to address uncertainties through email and mobile communications to allay employee concerns.

“This was not something we had done before. We were able to get real-time thoughts and feelings, connect employees with Senior Leadership, share the 5-year growth plan and how it impacted employee’s learning and development plans and more. We eliminated any guesswork and put the effort into the content that the employees needed to address their fears,” said Morrison.

The results: Simplifying communications creates sense of belonging

In building out its integrated communications approach, Stewart Milne saw success in reaching and engaging with its employees including:

Savings from removing the SMS outreach feature, where they were charged per text message

Engagement with one-third of the employees, and growing every day, using the Poppulo Mobile app, with a goal of reaching as many employees as possible in the coming year

Using video as the most engaging content with longer viewing times by employees

 offer employees the ability to receive a wide range of information, from HR items to culture posts, on the platform of their choice and choose how to engage with that content.

 helps Stewart Milne know which content is favourable, such as the email promoting the Poppulo Mobile app launch, which remains one of the most highly read emails to date.

 ensured that during times of change, whether it was a pandemic or restructuring, the IC team was able to partner with HR and the Executive team to respond quickly and give employees a clear sense of belonging.

Construction/Manufacturing

Stewart Milne Group

One of the U.K.’s leading independent housebuilders and timber systems manufacturers, Stewart Milne implemented an integrated email and mobile communications platform to build a sense of inclusion among its employees who were distributed across a network of offices, factories and housing developments.

Creating connections and belonging through times of change

World Vision is a global Christian relief, development and advocacy organization dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. With over 37,000 team members and working in 90+ countries worldwide, getting the internal communications strategy right is challenging.

Honestly I don’t know what we would be doing now without Poppulo. Poppulo has allowed us to turn on a dime to reach our employees on the device of their choice. And, our ability to analyze what content resonates with employees has helped us maintain and even increase our engagement levels.

— Christine Head, Global Internal Engagement Communications Manager

The Challenge: Limited agility, analytics and mobile access for communications

World Vision is a global Christian relief, development and advocacy organization dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. World Vision has over 37,000 employees located in 90+ countries, spanning six continents targeting the most vulnerable through:

Short-term emergency relief, such as providing food, shelter and medical care to survivors of natural or man-made disasters.

Long-term sustainable community development focusing on helping communities meet the legitimate needs its members identify, such as clean water, education, healthcare, agricultural improvements and sanitation

Working with policymakers and the public at the national, regional, and global level to build awareness around poverty and to address the unjust systems that help perpetuate it.

Yet, while the agency excelled in delivering a lasting impact on communities, its distributed organizational structure of offices around the world created internal communication struggles. Reaching employees in a timely manner was difficult. They could not easily access content on their mobile devices, often the only viable channel. Nor could they respond to or share feedback related to the information.

We want our field offices to be empowered to proceed quickly so we moved away from a command and control approach in relation to operations. Yet we needed to reach about 37,000 individuals, with more than half of them located in the field, to share important updates, messages and operational changes.

— Christine Head, Global Internal Engagement Communications Manager

The Solution: Delivering customized content that engages employees across multiple channels

The Poppulo platform has given the World Vision Communications team multiple ways to create and deliver personalized content that more effectively engages colleagues across the organization – with content easily accessible on laptops and mobile phones.

“Poppulo’s detailed analytics and A/B testing of subject lines and headings lets us identify what resonates best with employees, allowing us to improve the relevancy of our content. We can look at the top three pieces of content for the week and adjust our upcoming messaging based on that data. Not only that, but the greater insights from the two way communication and employees’ feedback through likes and comments, is helpful in developing our content strategy” said Head.

One important finding was that leadership videos, especially those from the president, are the most popular form of content. “The analytics showed us that employees want to hear from their leaders. Our president’s videos are far and away the most popular. We also saw that people want to hear about what their peers are doing to be successful. It is motivating for them.

Poppulo’s Event functionality is driving greater attendance at the monthly strategic Leader Talks, a virtual meeting over Zoom where leaders share information about their functional areas. In addition to raising the visibility of these events, the communications team uses Poppulo’s analytics to identify people who have not responded and resend messages to just those individuals.

“We’re able to share high-level metrics with our leadership and use that data from countries not impacted by GDPR to analyze ways that we can boost open rates and also know where we need to do a better job of engaging staff”, said Head.

Poppulo’s platform is designed specifically for rapid, high quality employee communications that can be tailored to each organization’s needs. The World Vision Global Brand team customized the communications format to give it an open look and feel that aligned with the agency’s guidelines for color, font types and imagery.

The Results: Clarity and agility for scalable, data-driven communications

The World Vision communication team is experiencing growing success including:

A 75% or higher open rate for leader targeted communications.

Improved event attendance with more targeted message distribution.

Increased employee engagement with sharing of authentic, moving stories and videos from the field.

The agility provided by the Poppulo’s platform proved to be invaluable during the recent pandemic. The communications team pivoted quickly from sending out three monthly newsletters to a bi-weekly communication to all employees. Additionally, executives receive, two monthly Ignite Global Leaders newsletters from the World Vision International President, and a monthly newsletters to leaders from Global Marketing & Communications.

We more than doubled our communications. There is no way we could have done that without Poppulo. During this time it was especially important for staff to hear from leaders and see them on videos. Our global president uses part of his biweekly video series called Window to Our World to share stories from field and funding offices.

— Christine Head, Global Internal Engagement Communications Manager

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