Challenge:

An organisation of approximately 500 people with several distinct areas of work, prepare training  materials and events for large external private and public organisations. The organisation had a  refreshed brand update over 12 months ago however most staff are still using the old brands and  templates. There has been no consistent approach in the brand the organisation uses or for the  format of events they host since the brand refresh.

Many of the events or training sessions run by this organisation are attended by the same audience,  who inform the organisation of the confusing brands and event layouts.  The organisation hopes to  train its employees to use the same templates to ensure consistent messaging when hosting  external events.

Selection:

Mind mapping tool. I have selected this tool as I feel asking the “what is” and “what if” questions  were the most suitable to assess and change the situation for this challenge.

Application:

Firstly the team aimed to establish what branding the employees of the organisation was using and  where they were going to get this information. Volunteer staff from the different work areas were  asked to come along to one of three information sharing sessions and share their current method in  pulling together branded training material.

An electronic voting exercise was also conducted via the company intranet to poll a few simple  questions;

1. When preparing a presentation for an external meeting where do you go to find the correct  organisation PowerPoint slide?  a. The intranet template guide  b. Your desktop, you have prepared lots of these materials before  c. You ask the marketing and comms team to create the presentation so you don’t have to  think about it?  2. If you need to run a small event relevant to the work in your team, do you?  a. Engage an external company to host the event for you, sometimes at a cost?  b. Visit the intranet template guides to check for guidelines?  c. You ask the events and comms team to help you run the event so you don’t have to  think about it.  3. Do you know the intranet has a range of materials and guidelines to assist you in preparing  standard company documents and guides to help you host events?  a. Yes  b. No

Insights and approach:

The results were interesting. A very large number (over 280 employees) completed the three  question survey with the following results. Question one informed most employees had old

templates saved on their computers. Employees reported further at the face to face information  sessions that they had not be instructed to use a new template so continued to use the old brand.  Many had no idea their documents required a new version.

Question two uncovered groups within the organisation were paying external providers to host small  events at a cost to the organisation. The information sessions revealed staff from these areas  thought the company’s events team existed only to service large company events and did not know  this team could help them host these events at no charge. Employees were also not aware that the  events team had placed a large amount of training material, including hosting your own event  checklists, on the intranet for all employees use.

Question three followed on from this, confirming most of the employees had no idea there were  documents available on the company intranet to assist them with the new company brands  guidelines, ready to go templates, along with guides and checklists on how to run your own event.

It was quickly identified that employees had not been properly educated in the new style guides and  their applications.

To resolve this, the team created a new intranet home page, featuring information on the branding  and training updates. The page called “Mycomms” is a series of images and messages the user can  click on to help get them to a template or guideline with minimal fuss.

This issue could have been resolved very easily at the time of the initial brand change.

The results from the “Mycomms” pages have been extremely positive. The new branding is now well  represented on all material leaving the organisation. Staff have been positively engaged with  updating all documentation and is in line with the audience expectation.

Exact figures have not been confirmed but it is clear a significant amount of money has also been  saved on staff arranging external companies to organise team events. It was honestly the smallest  change but by asking the right questions, staff are behind the company rebrand and money is being  saved.

