Tasked with communicating to a dispersed and largely ‘on call’ workforce, Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service had to find a way to get their messages across quickly and effectively. Internal communications manager Katie Loates explains what they did. This case study forms part of our internal communications toolkit.
The context
In Hampshire, around half of our firefighters are retained and respond to incidents from their day jobs. They’re not in the office a great deal which means it can be difficult for them to pick up communications in the same way whole-time or office-based staff would. Add to this the fact that face-to-face communications can also be challenging as they’re spread across more than 50 different fire stations, they can be a really tough group of people to reach. We have only got a few hours a week to connect with them so we had to develop an approach that could thrive despite all those constraints.
The plan
We did a bit of research with this group which showed that they had limited access to our corporate IT or email facilities so we knew that we needed to avoid those as channels as far as possible. We do have a staff newsletter and magazine but they’re quite rich in content so again, not wholly suitable for employees with such limited time. Elsewhere in our communications team we were making some excellent use of digital and video technology but felt that we were not really making the most of content by using it across all channels. We decided to combine these two things and create Fireflash – a TV style news bulletin to communicate with our internal audiences.
The execution
Working with our in-house video producer we headed out into the organisation to film some short clips of the key things happening across the service that month and the things that were on the horizon. We deliberately kept the episodes to a maximum of 4 short stories with a pacey format, to retain readers’ interest and get our messages across in the limited time we had. We added a few ‘news in brief’ sections to capture some extra pieces of information and also encouraged user-generated content to help strengthen some of our stories and get people across the service involved and engaged in Fireflash. We decided to make FireFlash a monthly bulletin to allow people to consume the key pieces of information from the month in one go and shared across both our corporate IT channels and YouTube so that employees with limited access to our corporate system could access the news on any device and at any time.
The impact
Viewing figures for Fireflash have grown steadily over the last year, with a rise of more than 50 per cent year-on-year. Every episode has shown an audience retention of at least 50 per cent and this is rising steadily to over 60%. We’ve seen an increase in the number of people coming forward with their own stories to include in Fireflash, particularly from the hard to reach groups we were trying to connect with, so we’re confident we’ve been able to achieve our objectives. You can also feel a buzz in the stations and teams where people have submitted content, which is great for our general levels of engagement.
The format has proved so successful and attracted so much interest that we have also used it to produce a public-facing version – HFRS News. Audience retention for that channel reached 75 per cent which was fantastic and allowed us to show the public the full breadth of services that the fire service deliver, something that they don’t often see.
Why it worked
The bitesize news format works because it’s informative and quick, exactly what our remote workers are looking for from their internal communication. It provides an employee voice and allows staff teams to directly talk about their news, stories and updates. It has also worked from a practical point of view because it has allowed us to maximise the reach of content that we were already producing rather than having to create brand new stories and updates. It has made use of the digital and creative skills already in our communications team, which helps people to stay motivated in their work and it’s a format that’s adaptable for both internal and external communications, which means we can get twice the impact from the work we’re doing.
Lessons learned
We are constantly reviewing Fireflash to make sure it’s fit for purpose and we recently gave it a design overhaul so we’ve learnt how important it is to keep looking for ways to improve your channels, even if they are already successful. We’ve also learned the importance of working closely with our colleagues in IT to make sure that our technology infrastructure isn’t a barrier to employees accessing the content. It’s an ongoing piece of work but we’re making good progress.
Want to know more?
For more information please contact Katie Loates (Internal Communications Manager), Rob Penn (Creative and Digital Manager), or James Morton (External Communications Manager).
Learn more about Fireflash