Paving the path toward reaching your staff: Profiling the winners of Ragan’s Employee Communications Awards

Employees are your most captive audience, but not always your most engaged. When there’s an important message that needs to get through to them, nailing it the first time is key.

We identified several examples of comms initiatives doing just that — and doing it well enough to earn a Ragan Employee Communications Award last year. If you’d like to apply to this year’s edition of the awards, be sure to submit your entry by the September 20 deadline.

Best Remote Experience/Culture: Businessolver, “Workspace Anywhere”

The background: The onset of the COVID pandemic forced a major rethink in strategies for most organizations. That was especially true for dispersed companies. At Businessolver, the solution centered on a fully remote strategy with thoughtful touchpoints for maximized employee engagement.

In 2020, Businessolver implemented a remote work shift with weekly check-ins and frequent pulse surveys to get a read on employee sentiment from afar. The remote shift saw a positive move in employee satisfaction from 85% pre-COVID to 90% after the remote work move.

Along the way, the company created a more transparent and open remote environment through its “What’s Goin’ On” weekly debrief series, along with an increased emphasis on employee education modules and one-on-one communication with managers.

The transition to remote work has proved a major success in terms of employee approval, with 86% of employees reporting that they feel supported by the company remotely and 97% citing they feel increased productivity working from home.

The takeaway: With the right support structures and communications strategies, employees can feel supported working from home — and might even excel more than you thought possible.

Best Email Communications Campaign: Seattle Children’s Hospital, “Evolving Every Day”

The background: When you’re in the business of saving lives, the email communications you get from your organization need to be clear, effective and to the point. Recognizing this, Seattle Children’s Hospital worked to personalize and target email comms to its 14,000 employees.

The hospital put its email comms into different buckets for different employees, including an “InHouse Newsletter” to all employees, a weekly “Leadership Messages” series for supervisors, and “Central Broadcasting”, which are single-topic emails reserved for extraordinary emergencies.

This revamp in the process saw an uptick of over 62% in engagement rate from just one newsletter. Acting on feedback that cited a desire for more visually appealing email comms, Seattle Children’s is also refining its comms to include more eye-catching imagery going forward.

The takeaway: While some less well-considered email blasts risk getting sent to the “Read” folder immediately, a highly targeted and personalized strategy can help email comms reach their targets.

Best Workplace Culture: Hewlett Packard Enterprise: “Grilling Around the Globe” Video Series

The background: Return-to-office campaigns require nuance to get through to employees. At Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), the organization wanted to showcase its diverse employee base through a visually vibrant medium. With its YouTube travel show program, “Grilling Around the Globe”, HPE sent the hosts to workplaces around the world to “grill” employees on what working at the company meant to them and how HPE’s innovation impacts them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKewPBdAbNw

Following the release of each episode, the company gathered employees together for cultural events. The series proved a major success, with thousands of views on the company’s intranet site, HPE Insider. The videos even managed to break some internal records for viewership. As with any great show, the biggest measure of success is a series renewal, and HPE implemented a second season of the show for 2024 with trips to Japan, Poland and India on the docket.

The takeaway: Visual storytelling can help bring compelling narratives to life that transcend the written word and unite your global footprint around shared lived experiences

Remember to apply to this year’s edition of the Ragan Employee Communications Awards by the September 20 deadline. 

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports and hosting trivia.