AstraZeneca
Challenge
AstraZeneca is one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies, paying paramount attention to internal communications. 2006 was a significant year in the history of their Focus - Employee Satisfaction Survey when the questionnaire was posted online for the first time. Participation previously was obligatory for everyone and due to the new system the management feared a lack of motivation for joining in the survey. Our goal was to attract employees' attention to complete the online form and achieve more then 80% participation rate.
Solution
Following a short analysis of the survey itself and the company culture, we have decided to prepare an over-all communication campaign, where the main concept was authenticity. We presented several concepts from which the client accepted a very direct, straightforward headline: "What do you think?" Since the most appropriate subjects of the survey were the employees themselves and the budget was rather limited, we have based the creative concept on the employees. Talking faces explain the importance of the questionnaire in relation to relevant employment subjects such as compensation, career development, management style, etc. For delivering the message we have prepared various headlines, interviews, run a photo session and finalized the artworks together with the Communication Department of the client. The campaign was lead by the HR department of the Hungarian AstraZeneca, the PR division contributed by organizing the internal communication.
Tactics
The management planned a rather long, 2 months campaign - due to the summer holiday period - which consisted of 3 phases. It is complicated to keep alive the attention of the target audience for such duration, so we decided to start with a teaser campaign to raise interest. Later, in the introduction period - "Faces" - the creative concept was extended by employee statements answering the teaser debates. Several employee interviews were published on the intranet and posters, giving an informative edge to the creative concept. In the countdown period employees have been invited to fill the questionnaire, prepared and analyzed by an external company. In this complex phase we have switched to more direct messages and used the on and offline mediums extensively. These reminded all employees on specific channels in relation to the headlines such as door hangers saying "Have you entered?" and floor graphics saying "Are you over it?" We also used bottleneck stickers and tray layers in order to cover all possible working areas. In addition the intranet displayed a real time counter showing the participation percentage. At the end of the campaign there were several follow ups, such as newsletters and direct mails thanking the employees for participating and informing them on the results.
Results
During the campaign the management received a lot of feedback. Employees were amazed and they were eager to know more about further details. The completition rate of the survey was 83%. and based on this, we and our client considered the campaign entirely successful. The project is a good example of a local management of a multinational company not content with simply using corporate questionnaires. AstraZeneca truly wanted to learn about their employee's opinion, allocated the necessary resources for this purpose, and subsequently acquired the results that benefit both the company and its employees.