Hard-Hat-Wearing Employees Don’t Have to Be Hard to Reach

KWI created a rallying cry campaign for disengaged construction workers at a large telecom company. With a creative, multimedia approach to executive communications, employees became more engaged, and the organization was able to achieve their goals, enabling about $271 million in additional revenue.

Hard-Hat-Wearing Employees Don’t Have to Be Hard to Reach

How KWI helped a large telecom company penetrate the hearts and minds of frontline employees across the country with content they actually cared about

Situation

Our client was a large telecom company that had a team of about 1,500 frontline construction workers dispersed across the country. They were responsible for building and expanding the company’s physical network. Hard-hat-wearing men and women, in trucks, working in the elements — not exactly easy to reach with important communications from corporate. Add to that, constant changes in workforce, processes and tools. To say employee engagement was suffering was an understatement.

Solution

The KWI team created a rallying cry campaign designed to unify employees across teams and regions and to establish buy-in to the company’s 10-year roadmap. The “Build to Win” and subsequent “Primed to Win” campaigns featured a multimedia approach to executive communications with initiatives like:

An “ask me anything” video series
KWI-led Gallup Strengths-based coaching for frontline leaders
A custom change management program
An employee-focused communications playbook specifically crafted to engage frontline employees by creating momentum from the ground up

Outcome

Employees noted higher work satisfaction ratings and successfully met delivery goals as a result of the campaign — all while scaling to three times the volume of work in 18 months and onboarding two times the number of employees and vendors. The program became the internal gold standard for building a change-resilient organization, winning several company awards and successfully meeting the organization’s goals, enabling about $271 million in additional revenue for the client.

Key Stats

80%

Average Open Rate

We achieved an 80% average open rate for executive communications.

86%

Average Open Rate

A daily roundup email of telecommunications industry headlines resulted in an 86% average open rate.

333%

More Views

Weekly roundup email of “good news” from the field generated 333% more views than company averages.

91%

Adoption Rate

The department enjoyed an adoption rate of 91% for our “meeting-in-a-box” toolkit for leaders.

10

Points

The construction team’s engagement index was 10 points higher than the previous year and outperformed all other internal departments, as well as external benchmarks.

Change Like You Mean It

There’s never been a better time for wisdom.

As data abounds and artificial intelligence multiplies, tasks are getting simpler. But work has never been more complex. It takes knowledge to discern insight from information. It takes empathy to navigate the pressures and politics of the modern workplace. It takes craft to forge plans into stories, emotions into engagement and disorder into design. It takes perspective, which is earned through years of confronting and overcoming the most difficult business and life challenges.

So we’ve assembled a team of experts, listeners, connectors and creators to build elegant solutions to intricate problems, choreograph grand transformations and turn our clients into rock stars.

Change Wisely…