BACKGROUND
UKSV were approached 4 years ago by the leadership team of the Commercial Division to become strategic partners providing a support role for Employee Engagement, having provided a number of one off projects and consultancy since 2007. The project included everything from communication updates (print and video), town hall meetings and large customer facing events.
From the word go UKSV had a dedicated account team working with Close Brothers to provide valuable insight and external agency experience in communications and employee engagement. Throughout this period the UKSV team were investing a significant amount of time understanding the client’s business market, the needs of internal stakeholders, employees and customers. As a consequence UKSV were appointed as a strategic partner.
THE CHALLENGES
The commercial division had a need to create an Employee Engagement strategy to support the roll-out and day to day delivery of the overall commercial strategy. The communications needed to be focused, relevant to the individuals sharing real time best practise across the country, in an engaging and cost effective way.
THE SOLUTION
UKSV team approached this project as a 3 stage process Discovery: Research: Delivery. This involved the key stakeholders and a team of representative employees across the business engaging in a series of workshop days lead by the UKSV team to establish the employee’s needs. The workshops were centred on the business strategy and the needs of the employees. As a result the UKSV team could fully research the needs of the business and recommend the most effective tools to communicate going forward. At the same time UKSV conducted a Communications Audit of all the various channels currently used in order to understand engagement touch points and their effectiveness.
This was conducted over a six week period and enabled UKSV to present their finding and recommendations alongside a proposed plan of action.
RESULT
UKSV created a new communications plan taking into account the available budget, the clients IT infrastructure and harnessing the internal marketing team’s ability to drive and bring the programme to life. Two years on, the channels are still in place with UKSV’s communications team providing ongoing expertise on an annually reviewed basis. Close Brothers have hired two internal Communications Managers that UKSV support on a weekly basis bringing the combined team of communications experts up to eight. The on-going result and relationship has been a resounding success with the client committing to this way of working going forward and the UKSV team being recognised as trusted strategic partners from CEO to employee local champion level.
SERVICES PROVIDED
- Employee Engagement expertise and consultancy.
- Strategic support and input into Communications messaging and delivery.
- Creative concept development.
- Creative design and print.
- Creative asset creation to supply to the Banks internal Intranet team.
- Editorial story writing and content creation.
- Local and national event creation and support as required.
- Training and coaching in Intranet use, posting stories and creative writing.
- Video creation and production of content, hosting on website etc.
- Employee of the month recognition and reward.
THE CLIENT
Close Brothers is a leading UK merchant banking group providing lending, deposit taking, wealth management services and securities trading. Established in 1878, Close Brothers Group plc employ 2,900 people, principally in the UK, are listed on the London Stock Exchange and are a member of the FTSE 250.