Virgin Trains
Working the channels: Understanding your audience and streamlining communications
Background
In just over three years, Virgin Trains' internal communications
channels grew from none to 12 - a large number for the 3,200
employees to negotiate. As a result, the company had evolved a deal
of internal 'noise' for a relatively small workforce to absorb.
Our job was to audit the channels and analyse the findings. We
agreed our objectives as:
- establishing the role and value of each channel
- understanding how they all worked together
- finding out how the audiences rated them
- establishing whether any rationalisation or changes were
necessary.
The solution
We adopted the 'Virtuous Circle' in our approach. The process is
simple:
- establish what there is now
- ask employees (and the company) what they think of it
- make appropriate changes
- ask them again.
We conducted 10-minute face-to-face interviews with over 200
employees in seven main locations a sample size sufficient to give
us results accurate to within +/- 7 percentage points.
Our findings were illuminating. Although employees were
generally quite satisfied with communications, they felt there was
a large and diverse repertoire of information. In addition, a
significant minority said they would prefer fewer and more
effective channels, preferably with line managers playing a more
important role.
The result
Our recommendations included:
- all channels to be rebranded under a single name
- introduce a single (multi-edition) print publication
- ensure intranet and email access for all
- relaunch the phone/online news service
- improve the use of line managers across all channels.
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