Case Study

Challenge

Two large, diversified financial services firms had recently merged. The newly-combined company—now consisting of more than 80 business in total—needed a clear picture of its complex internal communication landscape and employees' preferences and needs. Our goal was to determine how to integrate and enhance the organization's communication practices to better inform and engage employees and promote one-company culture.  

Solution

To address this challenge, we:

• Interviewed top executives, along with other key leaders, to understand their vision for the combined companies and their definition of communication success
• Administered a survey to a sampling of employees to determine what was working and what wasn’t as it related to channels, messages, and the communication culture of the organization, and followed this with focus groups
• Conducted an inventory across all businesses then assessed all current communication channels based on survey results, focus groups and best practices
• Conducted an in-box exercise to analyze the messages received by various stakeholder groups
• Developed recommendations that addressed an effective mix of channels, an approach to messaging with a strong emphasis on storytelling, leadership communication initiatives and integration of communication across businesses
• Designed and facilitated a 1 ½ day off-site with communicators from across the organization to share recommendations and provide them with a workbook and process to plan for and implement the recommendations in each of their businesses

Results

• One year later, the survey was repeated and scores for communication effectiveness increased by 50 percentage points