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October 12th, 2007 Segmenting at Intel to improve comms

A case study from Melcrum's report, Mastering audience segmentation shares an approach used by Intel to gain a better understanding of different employee groups and their communication needs.

A global study at the technology company in 2005 revealed six "segments" and provided insight into how employees from these groups preferred to receive communication. Here's a summary of two examples:

1. Customized Culturalist
The largest segment, this comprised nearly one third of employees, and included workers who spent the least amount of time online. These employees placed considerable importance on e-mails from their business group and their division VP. They had the highest use of e-mail and meetings to communicate with their peers.

2. Satisfied Knowledgeable
This segment felt well-informed by business groups and received most of their information from the corporate website. They had the lowest use of phone calls, voicemail and meetings to communicate with their peers.

The data from the research was organized and summary results shared with internal communicators in business groups, and region-specific data with internal communicators worldwide. The data contained geographical, business group and individual contributor vs. manager demographic information, enabling Intel to segment on these levels but not to identify individual employees.

The aim was to allow local practitioners to use the data to improve their local communication activities, by focusing on their strategy and the channels used, and how best to tailor programs to employees.

The report shares similar case-study examples of segmentation techniques applied to internal communication.

Mandy Thatcher
Editor
mandy.thatcher@melcrum.com

P.S. The new Melcrum podcast is ready to download. It features interviews with Kay Winsper who talks about managing change at Siemens, and Job Van Harmelen on engaging a globally dispersed workforce at TNT.