Operational efficiency International case study
Talking shop: Vodafone’s
global comms
Vodafone wanted to make its internal communications two-way,
less siloed, and more accessible for all employees. On top of this it
needed to be at a global level too. PETER CRUSH reports
The organisation
A decade ago British-based
multinational telecoms giant
Vodafone was infamously
known as the business that
issued one of the biggest
pre-tax losses in corporate
history (£13.5 billon, or £37
million per day). The past 12
months haven’t exactly been
easy either. Last Autumn it
reported a €7.8 billion loss
for the first half of the 2019
financial year due to the
merger of Vodafone India
with Idea Cellular. Meanwhile Q3 revenues fell
£0.8 billion after adopting the new
International Financial Reporting Standard
IFRS 15.
Having grown to become the world’s fourth
largest telco by number of mobile customers
(it operates networks in 25 countries, has
partner networks in a further 47 and has
100,000-plus staff worldwide), Vodafone’s
internal story is ever-changing. Recently,
for example, it announced it would extend
its existing network-sharing agreement
with Telefónica O2 in the UK to include
5G services.
The challenge
“We’re a communications-based business, but
what we were increasingly finding was that
making connections and increasing
engagement with our own people could be
significantly improved,” recalls Tahni
Morrison, Vodafone’s global digital
communications manager. In 2017 she began
exploring options for how this could be done
at a global level.
She says: “Although we had an existing
internal communications infrastructure –
notably our intranet where people could see
the same information across a given country –
we felt it was quite one-way. It was also very
siloed, and the real issue was that not everyone
was as up to date as each other; especially our
retail staff who do not have access to their own
desktop PC.
“What was clear was that we needed to
bring new technology into play – something
that would bring with it a new mindset, where
communication could also be two way,”
she adds.
The strategy
With Vodafone not wanting to design a
solution itself, Morrison decided to canvass
the HR technology market. She selected
workforce communications platform
SocialChorus to be rolled out across 25
markets. Respective internal comms country
heads were involved at the start of the process,
and as each phase was rolled out.
For HR and internal communications
administrators there are dashboards that show
open and click-through rates for pushed
content. At the employee level the solution
exists as an app that staff have on either
their work or personal mobile phones/
devices (or both). The app carries both local
and global content.
“The amount of content we have to push
out has always been quite high – we aim for a
minimum of three pieces per day, sometimes
Vodafone aims to push out three pieces of content a more. Which can add up to about 300 to 500
pieces per month. But rather than reduce
content because we didn’t think people were
seeing it, we decided to stick with our comms
output but make what we communicated as
visible to people as possible.”
So when a piece of content arrives staff see it
on the app like a text message, with a number
in the corner of the app icon to indicate there
is an unread message. This disappears as soon
as it’s opened.
“Although it’s a UK-run project, prior to
rollout we got all of the heads of internal
communications together to consult on it, and
come up with a plan to promote it back in
their own countries,” says Morrison. “We
launched it locally in waves from September
2017. Desk employees also have it as their
launch page when they turn their PCs on each
day, along with a few other of their work
widgets and personalised news feeds.”
The result
According to Morrison, not only are frequency
targets of daily, weekly and monthly
communications still being met, but there are
also a host of background metrics available to
gauge the penetration of communications.
“Thanks to what we believe is a more
engaging way to hear from us, 65% of our
employees globally are consuming our
messages each month, although in certain
other countries – particularly Greece – it’s
much higher, at 95%. The global average for
click-through rates on featured content is
around 20%,” says Morrison. “This is a
48 HR June 2019 hrmagazine.co.uk
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