One small step back one giant leap forwards — Melissa Masterton — The AA

Notas del editor

1. At the AA we now have a fantastic intranet; engaging colleagues, and driving behaviours. But turning the clock back to around the middle of last year, I was new in my post and the chief exec was piling on the pressure to launch a shiny new intranet. It was great that he was a big fan of employee engagement, and the old intranet really was very old and not fit for purpose – so there was an urgent need to replace it. And we actually had budget allocated!! We’d engaged scarlettabbott as our internal comms agency to support and drive the project – so what was stopping us from surging ahead? The approach that I and the agency took was to put the brakes on. To pause, to think, and to plan the route. Where were we going, and why?
2. So we started down the road of trying to find out what the business needs from a new digital platform. And that piece of research needed to include everyone from the guys in vans, to the people in call centres, to head office staff. And it needed to play a big part in delivering our strategic objectives head on. What would connect and engage colleagues? What would drive collaboration and innovation? So we looked at ways the intranet could increase our employee engagement score, and at how it could help deliver our new 5-year plan, DRIVE. We got scarlettabbott in to run focus groups, to interview leaders, and to facilitate workshops where we dived deeper into what it all meant. The process stripped us pretty bare.
3. And all this was rather revealing! We unearthed some high-level aspirations, like the need to engage frontline workers on mobile devices. We defined personas. And framed the project in a series of outcomes (read examples of outcomes).
4. And concurrently with this, we commissioned scarlettabbott to look at existing content on all our channels, working out what needed to be ditched, what needed to be migrated, and what needed to be created. We worked up launch content, trained up champions across the business, and developed new formats and treatments. And behind it all was the question WHY. For each piece of content – what strategic objective did it serve? What outcome did it deliver? What behaviour did it change?
5. And having undertaken a solutions analysis in the context of a detailed specification, we contracted with Unily and commissioned the design and build, again working closely with scarlettabbott. Each decision was framed not by ‘what looks nice’ or ‘what felt useful’, but rather by ‘what best delivers against the outcomes we are working towards?’. We also worked hard at bringing everything together, into the hub – all our apps and tools and microsites, brought together in one place. But despite being almost obsessively strategic in approach, we ended up with something which was very cool and stylish, and worked really well for us.
6. Underpinning everything was a pillars-based approach to strategic delivery. There’s no time in this ‘lightning talk’ to go into these in detail, but both launch and sustainment were informed by clear and tight governance and plans for engaging leaders, measuring success, and recruiting a network of content creators.
7. The launch was a key phase for us – combining comms, collateral and on-brand JELLYBEANS. A winner! We sent them to home addresses with explainer postcards – and it really drove first-time access to the platform. And they tasted nice.
8. So, some quick numbers from the immediate post launch analytics. 87% is MASSIVE for the AA – that’s thousands of guys in vans, and workers in call centres, engaging for the first time ever with the rest of the business. Really exciting!! And some awards nominations inevitably followed…
9. But more important for us by far was the impact on our engagement scores, as evidenced by the annual Our Voice survey. Going back to our outcomes defined in the research phase, ALL of these metrics showed very significant increases. (examples)
10. But we’re not resting on our laurels. Our intranet is an evolving entity, and we’re driving it forwards, pushing what it can do. Targeted content, Teams integration, recognition badges, and a whole lot more are on the AA roadmap. All continuing to be supported by our fantastic agency scarlettabbott, and driving strategic outcomes further.
11. Thank you!