Hewlett Packard Enterprise User Experience Strategy Applied to Internal Communications

The project took place in the last few months while working for HPE and managing internal communications in an organization of 7000 people across the globe. Alongside drafting emails and working on a brand strategy for our engagement activities, I took the initiative to do primary research and propose content formats that satisfy both the organization’s goals and the audience’s interests.  UX offers the best of both worlds!

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Here I outline the insights from the qualitative research I ran to understand the audience’s interests and motivations to read or watch information at work and their pain points related to internal communications. Then I applied the insights to propose content formats and improve communications.

HPE’s current communication practices

Organization’s brand

From a few workshops that I led with the team members, I discovered that the company is seen as traditional, has complex processes and inefficient communications, and is seen as low-cost, not adding value to the entire HPE structure.

Furthermore, the brand is defined by the archetype of the hero, and often communications included words like being a disruptor, bold moves, bold goals, and acting with humanity to change the world. A lot of the visuals also included bold and simple shapes and colours that could be easily identified and distinguished.

Communications practices

Topics in the newsletter we had were not mutually exclusive or collectively exhaustive. There was an overlap in different categories of the newsletter of what was being shared and in which category it was shared. Additionally, the decisions about what information should be included in the newsletter were made last minute based on the information that was available from the colleagues.

Communications were also often fragmented based on the project work that is being done and duplicated in different channels.

They were on brand visually, though the message was lost and not tied to the organizational behaviours.

The main distribution channel was email. Some of the information was uploaded to a SharePoint page and also shared in a Slack group.

Content types were often written text with images as well as recordings and some videos.

The tone of voice was often dry, respectful, and matter-of-fact as it is often typical for corporate communications.

Organization of the communications

The team consisted of 2-3 people who were doing communications and supporting the project requirements of the colleagues to inform others about the project, program, or event.

Metrics were not kept track of, and there weren’t any audience insights collected based on what was being shared and from other data sources like primary and secondary research.

Communications often followed a top-down approach and had to be aligned with what is being done on a higher level in the hierarchy of the organizational structure.

The company used Excel to manage projects, so there wasn’t great visibility over what other communications people were engaged with or what their calendars looked like. Communications were fragmented based on the level of hierarchy in the structure though they followed a common theme with the programs that were being published on a global level.

The internal audience

A large majority of the target audience consisted of individual contributors who were engaged in supporting the customers of the company in different business segments across the globe from Japan to Tunis to North and Latin America. Another part of my research included the management-level employees.

1) The audience only had 1-2 minutes to read or watch information. The company was not always aware of it or paying attention to the context of the user, so I saw videos being produced for up to 15 minutes and more without providing a written summary of the main points.

As one of the interviewees stated he saved a lot of materials he found interesting to watch for later like improving his LinkedIn profile, though he never went back to watch them as he didn’t find the time.

2) Headline keywords including relevant job, team, and location impact their decision whether they get to read a newsletter or not. That is due to the fact that they are interested to read the information that is related to their line of work and could help them improve their skills or help the customer in a better way. The drive for self-improvement is a major one when looking for information.

3) Pain points included not having time to read or watch information, communications being too much, and not being specific to their interest.

Strategy

Based on my insights about the brand and the audience, I came up with a few adjectives to express in different ways across the formats.

Formats

Updates from senior leaders

I noticed that we didn’t have any news from senior leadership in the organization and we rarely heard from them as well as took into account the fact that employees didn’t have the time for lengthy meetings. From previously organized meetings, the attendance rate was rather low.

So, to provide such news, I came up with a format that aimed to deliver updates about the organizational direction.

Inspire

The objective of the content format is to share success stories and change how the team members feel about the organization. That is why I try to express a positive feeling in the header of the email. The text shows movement in type in line with the brand story of Life within the Element which is always moving, changing, and expanding.

Besides the positive feeling, the format aims to show the expertise of the team members. We aimed to deliver more content that would help people learn from those success stories. If it was a success story, we wanted to share the secret to success and motivate others to take the necessary steps to achieve their own goals and wishes.

Why would this format work?

1. From the insights, I’ve learned team members would like to improve their skills, so that is also the idea behind making it a more educational rather than experiential type of newsletter.  We expected that it would be engaging for them as they would be able to learn from the know-how of others on the team.
2. The email also included helpful links and resources related to the topic that is being discussed in the current edition of the newsletter. Once we had a career change story, so useful links were added to the career program that helped the team member made the move to another team, and links to open positions or career advice were added as well, so that they can do to improve their skills. The idea was to show commitment to helping each other succeed and learning from each other. 
3. This format positively impacted our engagement goals as I got feedback from team members that they enjoyed sharing their stories.

Main elements of the newsletter

The main elements include the header, the content in the body including a lead summary of the story, and CTA to read the article as well as a feedback form at the end of the email where team members could select one of the two options and share their opinion.

Gathering feedback was essential to iterate and improve the communications plan and strategy. I introduced the design of the feedback form in the emails and was very grateful that people enjoyed it and shared their comments.

Lean and Kaizen Case Studies

The case studies were another format that we did to show that the organization is innovative and willing to become better and more efficient. That was another pain point for most employees working there. Furthermore, not many of there were aware of the Kaizen training and how to submit their proposal for a Kaizen project.

Also, we wanted to show that we are innovators and show the value of Lean and Kaizen work that is being done. I was a big fan of the Kaizen case studies and the format in particular as we could show accurate data on how we have become better at the end of the project. It was also a good way to recognize team members who have worked together on the project and show a collaborative spirit.

Community Makers

The Community Makers was a resource group whose aim was to support culture and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion activities. On the other side, we were responsible to bring fun activities that team members can take part in.

Besides doing the communications for the format, I also did the brand strategy for the group based on my target audience insights and created communications that aligned with the brand values and personality.

The idea for the brand was to offer fun and relaxing activities during a busy day for the team members. Thus, our brand personality was also fun and had a calming vibe to it. That was portrayed through the use of bloopers and the happy relaxing vibe of hip-hop rhythms in brand videos.

Productions and Resources

With the help of a Kanban board, we managed to keep track of the workflow and the tasks that needed to be done. I was responsible for sourcing the materials, editing, and creating most of the communications.

I also kept track of the performance of the newsletter, links, videos, and other posts on Slack and SharePoint to see what performed well and not so well.

In brief

It was a great pleasure to collect all sorts of materials and turn them into an inspiring story. Part of the fun involved connecting to a variety of people from around the globe (our colleagues from Japan, China, Costa Rica, Sofia, Alpharetta as well as many other locations) and interviewing them about their achievements. Some people were on a two-year intensive black belt course and managing 10 kaizen projects as operational leads while others were looking for a change and working on it by undergoing formal education when finally the right opportunity appeared to make a vertical move to another organization. And I’m so glad to be able to talk to those people and share their stories.

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