Creation Finance
Financial Services
Europe
850
Creation Finance is part of one of the world’s biggest banking groups. They are a leading provider of innovative credit solutions and customer programs, providing credit facilities for nationally recognized UK business partners in the retail, motor and home improvement sectors.
The business has nearly 1,000 employees based in England, Northern Ireland and South Africa, with the majority working in customer contact centers. The company’s employees include a diverse range of people working in vastly different roles.
The business has experienced rapid growth over the last couple of years and is undergoing a transformation that will see working culture and practices continue to change at pace. This means that communication is key to keeping the workforce engaged, informed and enthused about what the business does.
Jennifer Hayward is Senior Internal Communications Manager for Creation Finance. It’s her job to set the internal communications strategy and channel plan to improve employee engagement, as well as to manage the tactical day-to-day delivery of all internal campaigns.
The existing communications tools being used were letting Creation Finance down. Relying heavily on traditional corporate emails, it was clear that messages were taking too long for employees to read them, if they read them at all.
For management, these communication black spots were concerning. Important information was likely being missed or ignored, which could lead to time-sensitive tasks being overlooked.
More importantly during a time of transformation, uninformed employees were likely to be less engaged with the organization and what it was seeking to achieve.
These challenges meant pressure was on to find a better internal communications platform.
SnapComms was introduced initially to the company’s operational employees, before being rolled out to all employees. Three channels were selected that would complement each other and deliver the communication requirements of the business.
Desktop tickers provide fast delivery and high visibility, displaying as scrolling text across the bottom of employees’ computer screens, similarly to newsfeeds.
Screensavers are passive yet powerful tools with strong visuals and high repetition to make them the perfect choice in promoting company values, events and employee initiatives.
Desktop alerts ensure high impact to get employee attention immediately, whether via desktop, mobile or digital signage.
The SnapComms channels were used by different departments across the organization for specific communication needs.
Tickers have been used extensively for time-critical announcements that employees need to see, such as reminders of imminent deadlines. Jennifer feels that part of the reason for the success of the tickers is that, “It's immediate and you can link out to something if you've got a bigger piece to say – it’s not too intrusive.”
The recruitment team in Human Resources used desktop alerts to advise staff of job vacancies. This is especially valuable because loading vacancies on the company intranet requires coding experience, which few people had. The alerts have been well-received by staff, who welcome the pop-up announcements about available roles.
Creation Finance have also used screensavers a lot, including embedding video to add more visual interest and really bring the messages to life. Jennifer adds, “Our in-house design team do a lot of work for internal comms and always produce really professional, eye-catching screensavers. We change them up a lot to keep them fresh and interesting for staff.”
The SnapComms channels include a range of special features to make message cut-through more effective and management easier. Jennifer has made good use of several of these.
Messages are set up in advance and pre-scheduled where possible, which enables communications to be sent to staff at exactly the right time for maximum visibility.
Recurrence is used for certain messages to remind staff to read or act on unopened messages. The intervals between initial send and reminder can vary from every four hours to as little as minutes, depending on how critical the message is. This provides important reassurance for communicators that high-priority messages are being read by 100% of staff.
Jennifer uses previews as a quality control test to see how messages will display, prior to sending. As she freely admits, “I'm really obsessive about checking.”
Internal governance over the communication process has been important to Jennifer. “Previously quite a lot of people had access and nobody had any control over anything. I've got people together to talk about how we should use it a bit more thoughtfully. If I need to send out lots of snaps [SnapComms messages] in a week, I'll let them know so that we're not overlapping and all sending stuff out at the same time.”
Control over the process has been achieved through limiting administrator access to create and publish messages. There are two people in the recruitment team, two people in Corporate Social Responsibility and two in communications.
Since Jennifer began using SnapComms to deliver internal communications she has been pleased with the results – and feedback from staff has been extremely positive.
She lists her favorite things about SnapComms as the screensaver channel, the immediacy of message delivery and the ability to schedule messages. “Scheduling is probably the most useful thing for me. I've already set a message to go live when I need it to so I can be off doing whatever else I need to do.”
A recent staff survey offers further validation of the introduction of SnapComms. “We've just had an internal comms survey and staff say that one of the key things they use are screensavers. That's probably the most effective.”
By improving message delivery and providing greater confidence that staff are engaged with organizational comms, SnapComms is helping Creation Finance position itself for future growth.