Inspired by JFK's meeting with a NASA janitor, Swindon Borough Council set out to create a vision that united all its employees and demonstrated the contribution that everyone could make to the council's success. Kirsty Ramsden, lead for internal communications, explains all.
Context
Our 2014 staff survey showed that only 47 per cent of our employees felt that the council had a clear vision and identity that they understood and related to. We ran a series of focus groups following the survey which also suggested this so we started to develop a clear vision and priorities for the future that people could really get behind. We have fantastic people across the council delivering some brilliant frontline services and we wanted everyone to understand the important role they were playing in our organisation.
What we did
In response to this feedback our members and leadership team created our Vision for Swindon, which focused on establishing a strong economy, a low-carbon environment, creating compelling cultural, retail and leisure opportunities and excellent infrastructure. They also developed 30 pledges of specific activity so that we had tangible ways of measuring whether we had been able to deliver our vision. While the new story was strong in itself, the communications team had the important job of embedding the vision into the organisation and launching it in a way that inspired, motivated and engaged our employees. We decided to stage a big launch event at Steam – a railway museum that the council owns. Swindon has a rich railway heritage so we felt that it would be the perfect backdrop for us to reflect on the successes of our past and our opportunities for the future.
To make the event engaging we really maximised the railway theme. We had a teaser campaign with tunnel imagery and turned the email invitations to our launch event into old fashioned railway tickets. Inside the museum we created a tunnel of pledges so attendees could read about the 30 activities we had committed to and our leader gave a key note speech on the vision, and the role everyone played in achieving it, in the station waiting area. Our staff then moved through to the ‘buffet car' area where we hosted a chance for staff to meet senior leaders and talk about the issues in a more informal way before heading to a platform area with stalls from departments across the council explaining how they would be working to support our vision. At the end of the event we gave people the chance to write their own pledges and feedback on some cardboard bricks so we could build a ‘wall of thoughts' from our staff.
The impact
We had 1,200 employees attend the launch event and the anecdotal feedback was extremely positive. Our Vision for Swindon campaign resulted in 65 per cent of respondents in the 2016 staff survey saying they felt a clear vision of the future of Swindon Borough Council had been communicated – an increase of 18 per cent from the previous survey.
And in the same survey 86 per cent of people said they understood how their jobs contributed to the council's vision, priorities and pledges. This was a new question for the 2016 survey to set an organisational benchmark.
This campaign also had an external impact as we won an award in the prestigious 2016 Chartered Institute of Public Relations Pride Awards. We picked up silver in the Internal Communications campaign category for the South of England and Channel Islands regio.
Why it worked
It worked because we found a really engaging way to present the idea which was completely different to the way we had launched new initiatives in the past. I think it also worked because we continued delivering the message even after the event finished. We encouraged managers across the council to talk about the vision with their teams, something that was vital to the success as our surveys had shown us that employees thought really highly of their team leaders. They proved to be some of our most valuable advocates. We also created a dashboard so people could stay up-to-date with how work on the pledges was progressing and created an anniversary event so that staff could meet the teams responsible for each of the pledges.
Lessons learnt
Keep promoting your message even after the hard work of the launch has finished and if there is a chance to think creatively and do something different don't be afraid to try. Your staff will thank you for it.
Want to know more?
For more information please contact Kirsty Ramsden.