Communications is an integral component of daily operations at CIBC Collections. To keep employees informed the company uses a variety of mediums including team huddles, newsletters and bulletins. However, with four offices in three cities, communication consistency and timing have always been major hurdles. With the speed of business continuing to evolve, CIBC needed a solution that would help bridge some of the department’s geographic and information gaps.

High Road Communications developed a bilingual communications-based intranet system designed to improve communications and prepare employees for future Web-based services. Our initial research indicated that most of the Collections call centre employees had limited time to access online resources. With this in mind, High Road concluded that the online environment needed to be easy to use with succinct content. The premise was, “Tell me what I need to know right now and I’ll find the rest later.”

Feedback on the new intranet has been overwhelming positive. Employees feel more informed and managers are confident that their team now has access to important
information necessary for their jobs.

How do you engage employees at a level that stimulates corporate growth, collaboration and innovation? These were the questions posed when RBC Financial Group approached High Road Communications to move employees from being informed to being engaged.

High Road worked closely with RBC staff and internal stakeholders to define a communications vehicle that met the needs of a diverse range of employees. Content strategy was defined in collaboration with RBC and included discussion on strategic initiatives that define RBC’s core strengths, including competitive intelligence, business development and financial literacy.

With this knowledge the monthly, bilingual online publication, RBC Insite, was born. RBC INsite provides a number of feedback options to increase a sense of belonging and collaboration – from dynamic polls to article rating, related reading, e-mail feedback, and article commenting.

The feedback has been incredibly strong, with hundreds of comments posted, story suggestions put forward, and an average of 150 article ratings per issue, suggesting that High Road has successfully turned RBC’s informed employees into engaged employees.

As a pilot project, High Road developed an internal micro-site focused on the topic of Sustainability – a core corporate commitment by Sun Life to its shareholders, customers and employees.  The micro-site let employees share ideas around sustainability initiatives, large and small, that could be implemented within their home or office environment. Employees were then able to rate and comment on suggestions.

As part of the pilot, High Road developed Sun Life’s policies on participation and engagement using social media tools.  These policies enabled Sun Life to proceed with open and un-moderated posting of content.  Within the first three days of launch, Sun Life received more than 900 posts, 4,500 votes and 1,200 comments.

Building on the success of the pilot project, High Road then moved to transform the corporate communications platform within The Source, Sun Life’s corporate intranet.  All news stories and articles are now published directly on the intranet and grouped by geography and topic.  Employees can rate, comment and tag these articles and regular columns have been introduced, such as “Leaders Talk”, to encourage dialogue with management and to help communicate across the organization.