Yolanda Noble, Chief Executive of dsicmm 

Internal communications are increasingly recognised as critical to a firm’s success.  Employee engagement and motivation can be greatly enhanced if the same standards of quality, clarity and image are applied to internal communications as are seen to be implemented with external marketing and customer service. 

Personalised colour communications

However, at the same time, firms are experiencing constant pressure to reduce costs – so there is a trade-off between the two.  Recent developments in print and publishing technology are coming to the rescue.  The cost of colour output has fallen dramatically and now digital techniques are allowing each document to be personalised to the individual without a huge cost-implication.  I draw upon recent statistics and experience to describe how personalised colour communications – print and web, are being used to enhance employee motivation and engagement, describing real-life examples.

Internal communications

Recent developments in variable colour printing – where content and text can be altered for each document printed – are revolutionising the extent to which this customer communications can be personalised.  Research from GI Insight last year has confirmed the close correlation between the personalisation and relevance of customer communications and the levels of customer satisfaction achieved.  So, personalised communications and reporting tangibly help to cement and develop customer relationships (and therefore the amount of business done with each customer). 

However, it appears that most of the discussion about current capabilities and cost-efficiency of variable has been focused only on these external communications.  Interestingly, a good proportion of the variable colour work being processed by production companies is in fact in the area of internal communications.  This point needs to be recognised more widely by HR and management professionals.  If internal communications are produced to the same standard as external communications, then employees feel valued, appreciated and motivated.  If not, then the opposite is true.

Case study: rewards & benefits

Take one real-life example, implemented last year for a major high street retailer.  The company has tried historically to communicate effectively with their employees regarding their remuneration and reward packages.  When surveyed independently by a well known research organisation, it was found that over 40% of employees thought other companies offered better benefits. This was not the case and the company wanted to demonstrate this effectively to their tens of thousands of employees.

The company was using considerable resources to negate this issue by sending out large numbers of non-integrated information regarding their employment benefits.  Previously, employees received a standard communication, with an invitation to visit their HR department to receive any further information and were sent various communications though the year (P11D, P60, details on car schemes etc).  The packs were very generic and impersonal. 

The company’s objective was to help employees fully recognise the value of their package and reduce the reliance on HR to provide the information to each individual.  At the same time the revised communication was to be produced in a manner that would help reduce resource, production and distribution costs.

Digital branding

Whilst appearing to the customer as a neat and easy to read communication, the new integrated, personalised document was in fact an exceptionally complex piece of digital print to generate.  This was primarily due to the fact that data had to be collected from nine different sources and that information combined to produce a single piece of print output.  Data was delivered to the production centre from these nine different data sources, including three streams internal to the company’s systems and six external suppliers where administration of benefits is outsourced (e.g. third party car leasing company and administrators of share schemes, pension). 

Using a proprietary software platform the raw data was integrated and utilised to drive not only content from look-up tables, but also to pull-in appropriate imagery.  Data also generated colour pie charts to clearly and graphically represent salient points that the company wished to communicate.  Booklets were dynamically produced with images scaled and text wrapped accordingly; this all being driven by each employee’s profile. The resulting fully variable colour digital document, takes into account the wide range of potential benefits that an employee may receive (e.g. salary, bonuses, staff discounts, profit share and share options, pensions, company cars and health benefits).

Results

This was achieved through the latest variable colour print technology at a cost within the previous mono budget.  Additionally, in post production research, employees’ perception of the benefits of working for the company has improved considerably, which should lead to a long term decrease in ”employee churn”, keeping skill sets within the business and reducing training and recruitment costs.

Finally, the booklet was also able to provide self help for employees, enabling them to follow up directly with the service providers any additional information they may require.  This has released the burden from HR Managers having to provide this information.  The requirement for HR departments to hold stocks of pre-printed material has also reduced remarkably.  In summary, this has created a considerable saving on overheads for the business.

Personalised colour

In conclusion, although recent advances in technology have made variable, personalised colour a commercial reality for many companies, across the whole of their customer base, not just the high value segments.  However, major cost, efficiency and effectiveness benefits are also being reaped by its use for internal communications too.  Employee retention and satisfaction is a critical business issue in our low-unemployment economy and the role of personalised communications in supporting those goals stands in need of wider recognition.