Over the years, this global manufacturing and construction company has undergone a complete transformation in the way it communicates with its employees.

After acquiring a company in 2019 with primarily Spanish-speaking employees, it became apparent that Roeslein needed a better way to communicate key information in multiple languages. With many mergers and acquisitions on the horizon, Roeslein’s communications team tasked with finding a scalable solution that would enable the company to translate comms and better reach their desked and deskless workforce—today this is comprised of over 195 construction workers, over 520 manufacturing floor workers, 180 field workers, and 420 office workers.

Initially, the team started using its marketing email platform for internal email comms because the tool was already in place. But with employees working in a variety of roles at a growing number of locations, the comms team quickly realized they needed the ability to look at how comms performed by role, location, and campaign in order to understand if they were reaching each segment of their workforce—and that functionality was lacking in the company’s marketing email tool.

And since the team managing global communications was made up of only four people, they needed a consolidated platform that was easy to learn and use so that they could efficiently reach workers on all channels without having to manage disparate platforms.

Roeslein’s comms team also realized that its employees on the manufacturing floor weren’t receiving email comms due to a combination of lack of access to devices and regional laws restricting them from checking devices while on the floor, so the team began printing emails and posting them on message boards—costing money and time reprinting things every time a new email went out.

To address the communication gap with employees in its manufacturing facilities, the company implemented its first digital signage solution in 2018. While having the ability to push comms to screens in select facilities was beneficial, the comms team realized they lacked governance over the platform, resulting in a combination of outdated content and non-compliance with corporate branding and messaging guidelines.

To better reach and engage the company’s global workforce, both communications solutions needed to be optimized.

In 2022, the company began looking for a more user-friendly digital signage solution. Key requirements for the new platform included global scalability, powerful user governance, and intuitive content contribution capabilities. Having acquired several more US-based and international locations, it was critical that the company’s comms team could enable a balance of global and local content easily. Poppulo met Roeslein’s requirements, providing autonomy for location-specific communication champions to reach deskless workers with their own content, in their own language, without breaking brand guidelines, while also making the solution easy to scale and manage.

Although the initial reason Roeslein approached Poppulo was to replace an incumbent digital signage provider, the team soon saw that Poppulo would allow them to replace both their legacy digital signage platform as well as their email comms platform, further streamlining how the company reached its various employee segments. This realization quickly sparked a deep dive into the Harmony platform’s email analytics capabilities, as Roeslein’s comms team believed that more in-depth engagement metrics would enable better communication over time. It was critical that the platform also integrated with their existing enterprise tools like Microsoft SharePoint and Teams, which Poppulo enabled them to do through Feeds.

Over the course of four months, Roeslein implemented Harmony Digital Signage, Email, and Feeds at each of their existing locations.The communications team posts every piece of content on Feeds, which integrates with Microsoft Teams and SharePoint so that workers can access the information they need at any time. Employees also have the ability to sign up for comms by theme, enabling them to receive communications around the topics they care about. For deskless workers without access to devices or for those who don’t regularly check their email, relevant localized content is deployed to digital signage throughout 6 of their facilities so that they can receive information by glancing at the screens. The Harmony platform also allows users to easily translate comms into other languages without changing the user experience or look and feel of the comms being deployed.

Looking to the future, Roeslein’s comms team plan to roll out the Poppulo mobile app in late 2023 to further extend the reach of its comms for field and manufacturing floor workers—an announcement that will be included in one of the team’s other comms channels, its annual print magazine.

Roeslein’s new communications capabilities have become a critical part of the onboarding process, as the company continues to acquire more locations—especially those where English isn’t the primary language. Since implementing the Harmony platform, the team has been able to more easily communicate who their company is to new employees, easing the transition and ensuring everyone is aligned around the same mission, values, and goals. Today, all recently acquired companies go through an onboarding program designed to introduce employees to the company culture, and all of the communication channels—email, digital signage, Feeds, and eventually mobile—one at a time.

In late 2021, Roeslein acquired an oil and gas company based out of Denver and moved operations from an existing facility in the area to the new location. Unlike the existing facility, the new location didn’t have digital signage in place. Despite not initially buying into the value of digital signage, the executive director immediately noticed the difference that it made not having screens, and requested the comms team implement digital signage in the new facility as soon as possible.

Additionally, with Poppulo’s analytics capabilities, the communications team can see which employees are engaging the most with different pieces of content, segmented by location, role, and other key demographics. This allows them to identify the groups of workers that they aren’t reaching with comms so that they can look into the problem and adjust their strategy as necessary. Before Poppulo, the communications team saw an average open rate below the industry average of 63%. Today, they’re seeing 85% open rates across all channels—proving that there’s value in investing in internal comms.

Roeslein & Associates continues to grow quickly, acquiring new companies and adding new locations across the world, and the communications team is still looking to add new channels, grow their capabilities, and improve comms across the organization.

Construction/Manufacturing

Roeslein & Associates

While navigating frequent mergers and acquisitions, this global manufacturing construction company recognized the need for a consolidated comms platform to reach deskless and in-office workers through key internal comms channels.

Roeslein & Associates Consolidates Platforms to Improve Global Comms for Manufacturing, Field, and Office Workers 

 of American workers reported experiencing burnout in the workplace—and that number continued to increase throughout 2022.

Burnout not only affects company culture by negatively impacting employee sentiment, but it also costs companies in multiple ways. When someone takes time away from work to treat an illness, the company pays for the time and treatment. And when employees aren’t happy, they leave—forcing employers to spend time and money advertising for a new job, training new workers, and getting them up to speed.

None of this is new to Nancy Scicchitani, Senior Benefits & Global Wellbeing Manager at Nuance, or Meredith Mascolo, Senior Manager of Communications at Nuance. After the pandemic caused a massive shift in the world of work and burnout and attrition became a key focus in the media, Nancy and Meredith sought a solution to address the concern before it became a widespread problem at Nuance.

Burnout can cost a company three times the amount it would take to just address it.” — Nancy Scicchitani, Senior Benefits & Global Wellbeing Manager

Both knew that the solution for employee burnout couldn’t be handled solely by the IC or Benefits teams. After coming together and realizing that burnout is a serious business problem that they needed to tackle together, Nancy and Meredith partnered to implement a new employee communications campaign around wellness. They sought a way to consistently communicate about wellness initiatives and educate employees about burnout, without overwhelming them with a barrage of content.

To maximize the reach of their comms, Meredith knew it was essential to communicate about these topics through their most effective comms channel: email. 

The Poppulo platform enabled them to clearly communicate with employees through email, plus personalize and target messages for unique employee groups, and gather insight from metrics to continuously improve the way they communicate. Over three months, the Communications and Benefits teams worked together to design and implement their wellness campaign.

They started by using the communications channels they already had in place, including their company-wide weekly newsletter, called Take 5, which features all types of stories about products, wins, learning, recognition, culture, and other announcements. When they kicked off their wellness campaign, they started featuring articles on the importance of taking care of yourself, promoting wellness tools and challenges, and sharing resources the company invests in to show support for employees. Each edition also contains an employee survey on a relevant topic, built through Poppulo, to help gauge employee engagement and encourage employees to check out the next issue to see the results.

Every piece of content is posted on the company Intranet, and Take 5 points employees there so they know where all information can be found. The team also manages several Microsoft Teams channels—including a company-wide channel and a channel dedicated to wellness—that they direct employees to via newsletters to foster conversations around relevant topics, like self-care, healthy living, and fitness. Using newsletters and email comms to direct employees to channels like Teams and the Intranet drives greater adoption of existing technology, demonstrating the value of investing in tech.

In addition to Take 5, Nuance has three targeted newsletters sent to employees regularly. First, they have a quarterly wellness newsletter called Be Well, Work Well, dedicated to total wellness—including mental health, physical health, community engagement, financial well-being, and more. They also have a quarterly manager newsletter to share tools and resources with people managers, as well as a monthly career development newsletter. Each of these can be personalized and targeted by department or location when a message is only relevant to a specific audience.

I can’t imagine what my job would look like without Poppulo. I rely on it so much today—I never want to go back to the old way of communicating.” — Meredith Mascolo, Senior Manager of Communications

Since kicking off the wellness campaign, the team has seen high engagement and interest from employees. 

They’ve been able to share engagement metrics with leaders to prove that their communications are landing with employees, driving greater support for comms investment.

The beauty of Poppulo is the metrics. We can prove that our comms are working. We can say with certainty that people are looking at them.” — Nancy Scicchitani, Senior Benefits & Global Wellbeing Manager

In one example, a team of interns ran a two-week campaign called Work it Out to encourage employees to prioritize their wellness by making minor lifestyle improvements. They leveraged the Poppulo platform to direct employees to a Teams channel where they could participate, resulting in the involvement of more than 700 employees—a massive increase from previous programs that had less than 200 participants. The Teams channel was highly active, with hundreds of comments and high engagement. By using an integrated approach to communicate with targeted groups through Poppulo and drive them to take action, the team at Nuance not only saw incredible engagement through the metrics but also accomplished their overall objective of getting employees to talk about wellness.

Today, the Benefits and Communications teams at Nuance continue to work together to combat employee burnout through a consistent, integrated approach to employee comms. The engagement metrics they’ve seen with Poppulo prove that they’re maximizing the impact of their comms. Since implementing Poppulo in 2019, the team has seen an average open rate of 79%—beating the industry standard by over 15%. 

In addition to partnering with Benefits, the Internal Comms team has enabled over 25 users in various departments, including Marketing, R&D, Legal, Security, and more. “We have people across the whole company using Poppulo,” says Meredith, “People who aren’t even communicators but want to make sure their communications are in line with what they should be.”

Meredith and Nancy continue to look for innovative ways to leverage the full capabilities of Poppulo to communicate with employees about the importance of taking care of themselves—reducing burnout and, ultimately, driving value for the business.

Technology

Nuance

After seeing a rise in employee burnout as a result of the pandemic, the Communications and Benefits teams at Nuance partnered to boost awareness around physical and mental wellness.

Reducing Burnout at Nuance with an Integrated Approach to Employee Comms

In August 2021, global academic research and education publisher Cambridge University Press and worldwide assessment and education experts Cambridge Assessment came together to form a single organization: Cambridge University Press & Assessment.

The integrated organization has over 6,000 employees globally and an internal communications team of 15.

As with any merger, the integration created several operational and communication challenges, which were compounded by the fact that the majority of the integration took place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Creating Comms Cut-Through & Engagement During a Time of Change

Because communication can make or break any change initiative, it was decided to integrate the separate internal communication teams of Cambridge University Press and Cambridge Assessment before the integration of both organizations. The successful integration of both internal comms teams would play a critical role in shaping and influencing the overall integration.

The key priority and challenge for the internal communications team was to achieve cut-through with the communications that really mattered during a time of large-scale organizational change and a global pandemic.

This meant bringing topics of most relevance and impact up front and center for our global employee base. In particular, we needed to ensure calls to action were being received and acted upon, while also boosting engagement with people-centered content." —Kate Hughes, Group Internal Communications and Engagement Manager 

Data-Driven, Targeted Communications with Poppulo

Cambridge Assessment’s use of Poppulo for its internal comms newsletters prior to the integration was extended to the newly integrated internal comms team and this proved pivotal to overcoming challenges and achieving business objectives.

A few key factors were crucial for this success:

A highly focused use of analytics in Poppulo that enabled the team to make informed, data-driven decisions

A decision to consolidate several employee newsletters into a single newsletter every two weeks, reducing information overload

The ability to target, segment, and personalize relevant content for multiple audiences across different geographies

Frequent assessment of content performance metrics to guide ongoing newsletter refinement, leading to more prominent positioning of call-to-action (CTA) content

The result has been transformational, with engagement levels above industry and peer benchmarks. The fortnightly newsletter Connect News now enjoys open rates of 85% and click rates of up to 20%. Kate Hughes, Group Internal Communications Manager, led the transformation of the newsletter and is effusive about the role Poppulo has played.

We pretty much live, sleep and breathe Poppulo—it has revolutionized the way we work as an internal comms team, really. The biggest thing for us is the ability to target our comms to deliver relevant content to different audiences, and the data that Poppulo provides about how our comms are performing is invaluable. It really helps inform how we do our comms and gives us insights on where we need to focus more." —Kate Hughes

The internal comms team’s focus on content performance metrics has directly impacted engagement. Since the introduction of the global newsletter for the newly integrated organizations, they’ve conducted regular audits of content performance metrics, with an aim of continual improvement. 

Group Internal Communications Officer, Patricia Evangelista (based in Manila), played a big part in the analysis.

After the first 12 issues, we produced a detailed report on engagement using the analytics available to us in Poppulo and presented our recommendations to the wider internal comms team." —Patricia Evangelista

After another dozen issues, they again analyzed the trends in the data and made further recommendations for improvements, bringing the more operationally oriented, “need-to-know” content into focus and giving it more newsletter space while reducing the focus of global news into an “in case you missed it” bullet-pointed format. 

This allowed for more individual stories without increasing the overall length of the newsletter, giving maximum priority to the content employees really needed to focus on.

Looking at trends over time enabled us to identify improvements to the newsletter to boost engagement, for example by giving greater prominence to popular content and moving less engaging material to other channels." —Patricia Evangelista

These improvements proved significant, not least because the popular “need-to-know" type content also frequently includes calls-to-action, so achieving increased engagement in this regard meets one of the internal comms team’s key priorities.

The ability to target, segment, and personalize content is crucial for an internal comms team serving a complex network of different audiences globally.

“One of the best things for us about Poppulo is the extent to which we can target our communications to get the information that is relevant to the right audiences,” said Kate. “This targeting has to be highly accurate and precise, for example on a sensitive topic like bonuses that would require dozens of different messages to multiple audiences in diverse locations globally.”

Adding personalization to newsletter subject lines in January 2023 has further boosted engagement rates.

Targeting and segmentation also helps dial down information overwhelm for employees by delivering relevant information that people are interested in, instead of untargeted generic content that’s not relevant to them.

A dynamic weekly data sync from their HR information system, Workday, to Poppulo enables content targeting by location, product group, and department—and in the newsletter 

 there is a section targeted exclusively to managers.

Prior to introducing Poppulo, we didn’t have the facility to target, so people were getting a lot of content that wasn’t really relevant to them. But now, with the ability to segment audiences and personalize content, that has all changed and is reflected in our high engagement rates." —Kate Hughes

The IC team also believes that a mix of channels is essential for their comms strategy to be successful. “With a very diverse workforce in terms of geographic location and age demographics, we can’t have a one-size-fits-all approach to our comms channels, because everyone digests content in different ways,” said Kate.

People are individuals and have their preferred ways of consuming content so what we’re always trying to do is publish content across a range of channels and help people find what they’re looking for and need to know." —Kate Hughes

Cambridge University Press & Assessment has achieved record engagement with its new consolidated newsletter through data-focused content decisions driven by Poppulo analytics—Newsletter open rates of 85%, surpassing industry and peer benchmarks.

The ability to target, segment, and personalize content for multiple audiences across employee cohorts and locations has galvanized engagement levels with more relevant content.

A critical priority to create communication cut-through for the successful integration of two organizations—during a period of large-scale change and turbulence—has been achieved by Kate, Patricia, and the IC team using the Poppulo Harmony platform.

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