Hershey’s dynamic strategy for employee engagement

Hershey’s rich legacy stretching back to 1894 doesn’t make our workforce immune to modern challenges. Employees must navigate competing priorities, not having enough hours in the day, delivering results in a changing marketplace, and evolving with ever-shifting consumer behaviors and industry trends.

I stepped into employee communications in early 2024 after focusing on external channels and audiences. Hershey Communications is a team of innovative, top-of-their-game professionals with a strong external perspective and a deep understanding of employee needs. Combined with my focus on data-driven insights, we dove into what our employees were saying – either directly or more discreetly. At the same time, we were also becoming a new kind of company. With the integration of salty snacks brands, Hershey was no longer solely a candy maker, but a multi-category snacking company. Meaning we had to navigate operational changes, including organizational structure, on top of shifting external factors.

A few things became clear:

• Employees want more chances to ask questions and get answers, preferring brief communications from leaders over lengthy emails.
• Leaders and their teams need more training and resources to guide their work effectively and efficiently.
• Our colleagues felt the absence of dedicated networking time.

We evaluated what was serving our employees and what wasn’t. We spoke with other best-in-class communications teams at publicly traded companies and adapted their winning strategies to fit our needs. Here’s what we considered our guiding principles and subsequent actions:

All-employee moments can (and should!) amp up the energy.

We streamlined our 90-minute town hall meetings to focus on the CEO and business strategy, reducing content, meeting time and prep work. Now, we feature the CEO and select guests on a single topic in one hour. To include employees outside our headquarters, these quarterly events rotate locations, avoiding stuffy conference auditoriums whenever possible.

Make it happen: Review your meeting agenda to identify content that can be addressed differently to shorten the meeting. We removed earnings performance results, covering them through another channel, resulting in a more forward-looking conversation.

Plus it up: The energy of all-employee meetings comes from employee interaction. To foster this, we added 30-minute networking sessions with in-person and virtual options. Employees can connect in virtual breakout rooms over fun topics like favorite books, recipes and pop culture.

Communicating financial performance at a multi-category company requires a different approach – and not everyone has an MBA.

Ashleigh Pollart, manager of editorial strategy and communications at The Hershey Company

Employees want to understand the factors impacting their teams. After our public earnings call, our CFO delivers a 15–20-minute livestream on quarterly results, the macro-environment, and analyst reactions. The following two weeks feature “Ask Me Anything” sessions for specific questions about each business unit’s performance, creating a consistent cadence from broad to function-specific context.

Make it happen: Survey employees to gauge their understanding of the macro-environment and its business impact, and if needed, propose an informal livestream as an educational opportunity featuring your C-suite.

Plus it up: To make the messaging more accessible, define acronyms in the meeting chat, have leaders explain them live or use an acronym buzzer that prompts explanations. Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like. Use an acronym? Get buzzed and explain it.

Two-way dialogue is key.

Post-meeting feedback reiterated the need for Q&A time, stronger connections with leaders, and a chance to be heard. Our “Ask Me Anything” sessions help understand business performance and macroenvironment impacts, with leaders sharing updates before diving into pre-submitted and live questions.

Make it happen: Begin with your most candid leader who welcomes tough questions. Use the success of these events to encourage others. Don’t let the “Ask Me Anything” title scare you, we found that most questions are business-focused or career journey storytelling.

Plus up: Select a host from within the function to moderate the session, making for a more authentic conversation and a great recognition opportunity.

Harness what we know about consumers to better communicate with employees.

We adopted podcast-style learning and short videos for internal communications. Each quarter, we produce a 15-minute video with experts on key business topics, accompanied by an article for deeper insights. We also create short videos with our C-suite answering employee questions in 60 seconds or less, providing quick, accessible information without requiring another meeting.

Make it happen: Test the channel’s appeal with a simple, easily edited Teams or Zoom conversation recording before jumping into full-scale production.

Plus up: To drive engagement, we place 15-minute holds on employee calendars with a link to the new episode before it drops, allowing them to reschedule as needed.

Make it easier for leaders to lead.

Even experienced leaders need time to understand their teams’ needs. We now hold monthly sessions for directors and above to share the latest research and tools for developing soft and hard skills, and to connect with their peers on common challenges and solutions.

Make it happen: Partner with HR and strategy teams to identify gaps in senior leader understanding or action and build your agenda around these topics.

Plus it up: Host these meetings virtually and use a polling system to encourage dialogue and engagement.

Measuring the impact  and refining it

Qualitative and quantitative feedback are overwhelmingly positive. Post-meeting surveys reveal improved understanding, awareness and engagement, to the tune of 90% of survey respondents claiming clarity and higher engagement than previous results. While it’s too early to fully measure the impact on business or productivity, the positive signals in the data give us a sunny outlook. This year, we’ll fine-tune all that we introduced in 2024.

Our journey at Hershey proves that tackling common workplace challenges takes a deep understanding of our employees and innovative, agile communication strategies. Much of this work was inspired by what I learned at Ragan’s Internal Communications Conference at Microsoft HQ in October 2024. It’s amazing what we can learn from one another.

Ashleigh Pollart is manager of editorial strategy and communications at The Hershey Company.