Reaching the hard to reach. A thorny enough challenge and, coupled with a transformation and challenging markets, it’s no wonder that British Gas needed a canny way to give its 12,000 colleagues – 10,000 who are customer facing, a burst of positive energy.
Our solution: a print publication, delivered to doorsteps, filled with strong photography of colleagues front and centre (beautifully designed with purposeful stories, of course).
The result? Improved engagement scores, better conversations and more connected colleagues. A mag that’s helping teammates understand where the business is headed, how it’s growing and the role they’re playing in its future success – a headline to be proud of.
For more than 200 years British Gas has been keeping its customers’ homes warm. But it was facing challenges: market conditions meant that excellent delivery from its 10,000 frontline people was more important than ever. Those fixing boilers and answering phones are crucial to the organisation’s success, growth and transformation – they need to know just how instrumental they are.
But frontline colleagues are hard to reach, with limited access to emails or intranet and they needed a boost. Our challenge was to speak to them, to reignite their passion and get them on the growth journey.
How do you reach frontline colleagues with limited access to online channels, on the road, in the office and at home? Cut through with print.
We kicked off by sitting down with colleagues, uncovering what content they liked and the stories they wanted to see. We tested treatments and brainstormed features, zeroing in on the layouts and pictures that landed. Colleagues even came up with the name: The Source.
This was balanced with the wants of the British Gas comms team: to help people understand where the business was headed and how it was growing, while offering up something new, interesting or celebratory. In a collaborative editorial process, we made sure each story hit these objectives – only then did we interview, pen articles and manage stakeholders to bring the magazine to life.
To do these stories justice we packaged it all up with beautiful design, exceptional photography and even a custom envelope so colleagues knew, as soon as it fell on their doormat, that it was their mag.
Colleagues are reading it, leaders are loving it and stakeholders are clamouring to get into its pages; in just three issues The Source has become the go-to channel for frontline teams. The warm welcome colleagues have given the mag shows that it’s cutting through the noise and delivering the messages they want and need.
Not only is the magazine a hit with colleagues but it’s helping to move the dial, contributing to an engagement increase of 11% in the nine months between issue one and issue three. The comms team has also reported that it’s helping leaders see the value of internal comms. In just a few months colleagues are more inspired by the organisation’s purpose and feel it’s better at communicating its goals and strategies. Now that’s what we call a hit.
