David Moorcroft is senior vice-president of corporate communications for RBC. In his current position, Moorcroft is responsible for directing RBC’s global corporate communication activities. During his tenure as head of corporate communications, RBC has won more than 35 national and international awards.
Is technology contributing to information overload by making so much information available to employees that they can’t find what’s relevant to their jobs? Or is it helping to reduce information overload by making it easier for them to find what they need, when they want it?
The answer to that question depends not only on how an organization uses technology to communicate with employees, but on what it communicates. It’s not enough to simply develop online communication tools that allow organizations to “push” lots of information out to employees, or for employees to be able to “pull” out as much information as they want – the push/pull theory.
For technology to truly make communication more effective, it must deliver information that is relevant, easy to find, and aligned with a strategy. In other words, organizations must utilize a third “p” in their communication planning – “prioritize” for greatest impact.
Truly effective employee communication must also strike the right balance between meeting organizational messaging needs and providing interesting content that employees will actually read and respond to. Yes, employees need to understand an organization’s evolving objectives and challenges, but in order to move from being informed to being engaged, they must also understand where they fit in and how they can personally make a difference.
Rebuilding employee communication
These were the challenges we faced at the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) when we began rebuilding our employee communication program from the ground up in 2005.1 At the time, we were relying mainly on a traditional print magazine, an intranet site and e-mail bulletins to communicate regularly with 70,000 employees around the globe. But while these tools were helping us push out lots of information to employees and allowing them to pull out as much as they wanted from our intranet, it wasn’t helping to produce the level of employee alignment and engagement that we wanted.
As a result, we undertook some employee research to determine the type of information that employees needed most, how they preferred to receive it, in what quantity and how often. What we learned is that yesterday’s employee communication model isn’t equipped to meet the needs of today’s sophisticated knowledge worker – especially younger employees who are used to surfing the web to find exactly the information they want in a timely fashion, and who use social media to exchange views and learn from their peers.
KEY POINTS
- RBC began rebuilding their employee communication program in 2005 as the e-mail bulletins, print magazine and intranet site weren’t producing the desired levels of employee engagement.
- Research revealed that 91 percent of employees preferred online sources rather than print when seeking out information.
- An online newsletter was developed as a result of the research, offering articles, a blog, quizzes and opinion polls to encourage employee interaction and two-way communication.
- Now used by 70,000 employees, the newsletter has become a vital tool for sharing ideas and information.
Online preferred to print
In RBC’s case, our research revealed that only
1 percent of employees identified our print magazine as their primary source for information. In addition, 91 percent of employees chose online communication as their primary information source. Yet, print represented the largest component of our employee communication budget. In addition, while employees said they wanted more timely and insightful information on issues of relevance to them, we were choosing issues based largely on stale data such as yearly opinion surveys.
In order to address these shortcomings, we decided to develop a concept for an online newsletter that could become the center-piece of our new employee communication strategy. Our objective was to create a dynamic and interactive publication that would go well beyond the standard electronic newsletter that was simply e-mailed to employees in place of a printed magazine.
We wanted to do a better job of prioritizing our communication based upon what both the organization and our employees wanted. We wanted to enlist employees in helping us decide what was most relevant to doing their jobs better. We wanted to engage employees in creating a dialogue with each other and our senior leaders.
We also wanted to make it faster and easier for employees to “pull” out the information they wanted from our vast information database according to continuously evolving needs.
The launch of the online newsletter
The result was “INsite”, a new generation of online newsletter that we launched in March 2006 (see Figure One, below). INsite resides on our intranet so that it can take full advantage of the interactive software and computing power embedded in our server.
Each month, an e-mail is sent to all employees promoting the latest issue and providing them with a direct link to the site. Just one click takes employees to INsite where they move from being passive recipients of information to being active participants in a communication community.
The driving force behind INsite is our employees, who provide regular editorial guidance, engage in debates, provide suggestions, rate content and take part in polls. The feedback tools built into INsite allow employees to be heard, to influence content and to increase their sense of belonging.
For example, while we set a yearly editorial plan based on a number of broad strategic themes, many of the actual story ideas come from the “inner circle”, a virtual editorial board of some 300 employees. This is made up of employees from a wide range of job levels from entry-level to executive, and includes representation from a broad cross-section of geographies in Canada and around the world. Their job is to identify and pass along story ideas to the editor, provide feedback on editorial plans, and to ensure that information on and linked to INsite is as relevant and helpful to employees as possible.
Figure 1: INsite has helped engage employees with timely and interactive communication
Encouraging employee interaction
Once a new issue is published online, employees can peruse the contents, read what interests them, and rate each story according to a five-star system. Individual ratings are added to the cumulative scoring which is instantly updated, and the overall rating is prominently displayed at the top of the story.
If a story’s too corporate, too boring, or too irrelevant to employees, it will get poor ratings and readership. This process not only gives employees a highly visible and effective way to encourage informative and relevant communication, it also helps them navigate through the contents more effectively and use their time more efficiently.
The ratings also help shape content for future issues providing the editorial team a quick look at what’s working and what isn’t. Features that don’t rate well can be sent to the inner circle for insight and additional feedback on what can be done to improve stories.
The writing strategy for INsite revolves around making it easy, fast and enjoyable for employees to learn new things. For example, articles are usually limited to 500 words, are written for a Grade Eight education level and avoid jargon and corporate speak. On the initial web page, headlines are followed by a few lines of copy to grab the attention of readers, and then once hooked they are invited to click on the article to find the full text.
The moderated blog
Readers can also post opinions on a moderated comment blog, or “mod blog”, that appears at the end of each article and is designed to engage employees in dialogue about the subject matter.
The mod blog allows employees to support or challenge the point of view in the article, to provide additional ideas or suggestions and to ask questions. While a subject matter expert who wrote or provided information for the article may respond, it’s usually other employees with client-facing experience who jump into the dialogue to provide real-life advice and suggestions.
Readers who send in comments for posting can have their names suppressed if they wish, but the blog will show their geographic location. Most people prefer to include their name or initials on their posting, even when they have a critical or contrary comment, which helps to create a transparent and open environment for employee dialogue. While the mod blog is semi-moderated to ensure inappropriate items are not posted, we’ve never had to censor anything despite receiving thousands of comments.
Sharing feedback companywide
In addition to providing employees an opportunity to voice their comments, the mod blog also reflects employee opinion back to the rest of the organization.
For example, a story on RBC’s participation in an episode of the US television show “Extreme Makeover”, resulted in a flood of comments from employees across the company expressing their appreciation for what their colleagues did and their pride in belonging to the organization. Not only did these employees tell us how proud they were to work at RBC, their colleagues were able to read these comments and see this employee engagement in action.
This was a clear advantage of online technology over traditional print. The immediacy of the response and the amount of employee participation brought our communication to a new level.
The role of opinion polls and quizzes
Every issue of INsite also has an opinion poll or pop quiz that collects, tabulates and reports the views of employees back to them in real time. The objective of this research is to keep our finger on the pulse of employee thinking and knowledge while helping them understand how their opinions compare with their colleagues. This data is extremely helpful in helping us advise various businesses and functions about issues of interest to them, and in determining what kind of follow-up communication may be needed on certain subjects in future editions.
For example, a poll on our emergency information line, a phone line that employees are to contact in case of disaster, such as a power outage, helped us assess employee awareness levels of this tool. The results (over 60 percent of employees taking the poll were unaware of the line) told us that more communication was needed and we subsequently ran a story in the following issue on the emergency information line.
At the end of each poll, and depending on how an employee answered the questions, they’re also given links to articles and tools on our intranet. This provides an opportunity to correct misperceptions or lead employees to more detailed information on the topic.
On average, about 3,700 employees participate in each poll or quiz, which provides us with a statistically sound sample based on our universe of 70,000 employees.
Providing a powerful search function
For employees who want more information on a topic addressed by INsite, every article contains a hyperlink under a heading called “recommended reading” that links to related material within the RBC intranet. These links make it easier for employees to find exactly what they’re looking for rather than having to navigate through hundreds of icons and pages. In fact, one of the biggest complaints our employees used to have is that they didn’t know where to go on our intranet to find the information they were looking for. But with INsite, we do the searching in advance and provide our readers with easy-to-use links to the most relevant information.
We also developed another online tool to help employees navigate quickly and easily to information that they need. Every week a new ad, called “Take 5” is posted on the homepage of our intranet. Take 5 very simply leads employees to new information, tools and websites every week. We ask employees to take five minutes a week to link to the information and learn something new.
Every edition of INsite is archived and is available online for ongoing reference and use. New articles are also linked to past stories on similar topics to help preserve institutional knowledge and facilitate research.
How the site was designed
The robust and unique features of INsite were developed based on research conducted by our employee communication team over a five-month period in 2005. This work began with iStudio of Toronto, a website design and communication firm, using their iPublish collection of online best practices. We then engaged other external partners including a communication consultant and PollStream Inc. of Toronto, whose interactive technology is used to power the mod blog, article rating and polling features of INsite.
The upfront development cost for the creation of INsite was CDN$65,000. Internally, we also spent CDN$100,000 to build the necessary technology infrastructure to support INsite’s functionality on our intranet. Since all production of INsite is now in-house, it costs just CDN$500 per issue to produce.
ROI and targets for INsite
In terms of return on investment (ROI) for the organization, we have three main goals for INsite. The first is to promote awareness among employees of RBC’s vision of “Always Earning the Right to be Our Clients’ First Choice” for financial services. The second is to help increase the overall level of our employee engagement and the third is to promote continuous learning for employees so that we can do a better job for our clients.
While INsite is just one and a half years old, it has already made a significant contribution to these goals. For example, employee support for our client-centric vision has jumped from 70 percent in 2005 to nearly 95 percent this year. Our employee engagement scores have increased from 82 percent in 2003 to 87 percent today and we’ve been able to save more than CDN$300,000 per year on our employee communication budget.
In addition, the interactive capability of INsite has allowed us to do a much better job of prioritizing our communication for greater impact. We now know on a daily basis what kind of information our employees want from us, and how well we’re doing in delivering it to them. This allows us to make course corrections and address emerging communication needs in a much more timely fashion.
For RBC’s 70,000 employees, INsite is more than an award-winning newsletter – it’s where they go to learn, share ideas and find information that really matters.
A success story
While INsite is still relatively new, it has already received recognition as best practice in employee communication from a variety of sources. Its most important endorsement, however, comes from RBC’s 70,000 employees, who are avid supporters of, and participants in, the online newsletter. For them, INsite is much more than an award-winning newsletter – it’s where they go to learn, share ideas and find information that really matters to them and their clients.
1. RBC discuss their restructuring program further in “Realizing RBC’s new vision for employee communication” SCM, October/November 2006.
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