Internal Communications Experience

Employee Engagement

Having an informed and engaged workforce is critical to a business' success. I have held two roles leading employee communications, including my most recent role at SI Group. A key responsibility of employee communications is to connect employees to the business' goals & strategy and help them understand how their role played a part in that. This has required me to form close relationships with every part of the organization, source and write news stories, and distribute them through the intranet and internal newsletters. I also produce an hour-long all-hands global broadcast each quarter, working directly with the CEO and leadership team.

At GE Renewables, I created and executed a learning series to dive deeper into important topics as well as a unique series called "Leadership Confessions" to humanize our leaders. 

COVID-19 Response

The Coronavirus pandemic created an unprecedented challenge for internal communications and employee engagement.  The first step was partnering with the IT organization to ensure employees had the access they needed to work remotely as well as developing resources to support employees as they unexpectedly shifted to working from home.  To maintain morale, I created and led an employee taskforce to elevate employee concerns and needs in addition to brainstorming supportive communications.

The most significant communication I led was a weekly video communication from our CEO and executive leadership team that kept employees up to date on COVID's impact on our company and provide reminders of our safety precautions. Over the weeks, this communication channel evolved to include guest speakers from deeper in the organization and business updates. Executing these weekly episodes required me to develop topic ideas, coordinate a virtual recording with the leaders and guests, edit the video and upload it to Microsoft Stream, create an email communication that featured the key messages written in the CEO's voice, and get all required approvals in less than a 24-hour period. Since starting in March 2020, I have created more than 100 weekly episodes . This effort contributed to a recognition with the Spark Award, which awards the top performers in the company (25 out of 3,000). 

Employee Engagement Surveys

Engagement surveys have played a significant role in developing internal communications strategies throughout my career. In my role at GE Renewable Energy, I was hired into a newly created role specifically to address the feedback from a company-wide engagement survey. Through my work, employee engagement increased by 8% points over two years.

At SI Group, I led the execution of the company's first ever employee engagement survey, end-to-end. This included sourcing the vendor, managing contracts and budget, leading the taskforce that developed and deployed the survey across a global workforce split between professional and manufacturing roles (79%participation), organizing the results report-out, and developing and executing the action plan. 

Culture Communications & Events

In addition to keeping employees informed, a major part of my roles in employee engagement were to foster each organization's unique culture and improve to employees' working experience. I did that in a few ways including creating and leading global engagement committees to execute global and local employee events.

GE Renewable Energy had an extremely unique culture - one of highly passionate employees who come to work each day with a mission in mind. I led several events that highlighted different holidays from around the world such as the Chinese New Year and Diwali. These events were not only fun but they also helped employees learn about the cultures of their global colleagues. We also organized events around other holidays that embodied Renewables' values like Earth Day and Global Wind Day. 

Leadership Support

I pride myself on the relationships I'm able to build with all leadership throughout an organization - leaders who have very different personalities and styles. Having a trusted relationship is key when coaching them on improving their communication efforts and developing a full strategy. I enjoyed discovering their voices, developing a plan to match it, and working them one-on-one. 

One example is of a senior leader who did not want to follow in his predecessor's footsteps of doing quarterly email updates to his very diverse and remotelylocated teams. To better fit his style, we instead started a video blog for this charismatic leader. Every other week (or as needed), we would record a personal video message in one take. I edited the video and outlined his key messages in the text of an email, capturing his unique casual style. The video and text were then emailed to his 1,500-person team, which received rave reviews.    

Manager Development

In addition to the Renewables Energy business' unique culture, it was an unusually young workforce, with the average age being 33. Because of this, employees with little people-management experience were rising through the ranks. Once we identified this gap, I developed a campaign to support these new or challenged managers. The first part was called "60-Minute Manager," and hour-long learning series that put an experienced manager in the spotlight to share their experiences and help coach other managers through challenging situations. The second part was call "60-second Manager." This was a bi-weekly email series that helped managers through tough situations or business news that they may not feel fully comfortable talking about. Each email included the information each manager needed to know, a section of easily printable talking points to use at their next staff meeting, a calendar of important dates, links to additional resources, and a piece of advice from a fellow manager who was an expert on the topic. This not only provided advice but also allowed us to give recognition to that manager.

At SI Group, I was selected to be part of a 3-person team that developed and rolled out a program to foster managers' coaching skills in less than two months. The success of this program led to the development of broader leadership development program. This effort contributed to a recognition with the Spark Award, which awards the top performers in the company (25 out of 3,000). 

© Copyright Melissa Quesnel