Charting Smarter Employee Journeys in the Pharma Industry

Running an internal communications campaign without measuring every stage of the employee journey is like driving to an unfamiliar destination with turn-by-turn directions that are missing every third step.

You know where you are and where you want to go. But a lot of guesswork and leaps of faith are required in between. You could be miles out of your way before you realize you missed a critical turn.

Likewise, you can plan the campaign, send out the emails, and monitor open rates. But did employees engage with the content? Did they understand the purpose behind the communications? Did the campaign change behavior or influence opinion?

Answering these questions is essential in the pharmaceutical industry, where employee communications are heavily weighted toward regulatory and compliance issues.

Leaders are under tremendous pressure to ensure operations are in compliance. Internal communicators, in turn, must ensure that employees understand why compliance is important and that they fulfill their regulatory requirements.

A webinar by Poppulo’s Kieran Ivers on internal communications success in the pharma industry provides four crucial insights into how to create employee journeys that aren’t built on leaps of faith. The key is to build thoughtful, meaningful metrics and purposeful engagement strategies into the campaign.

Take Stock of Your Starting Position

You can’t pack for an extended trip if you don’t know what you need. The same holds true for an effective employee journey. If you don’t have a deep understanding of employees’ knowledge about or opinion on a topic, you are left to guess about what you need to communicate and how.

Poppulo’s benchmarking survey tool provides communicators with a baseline view on key strategic questions prior to the campaign. The system will deploy the survey to a statistically relevant number of employees within the target group. Communicators can then use the results to plan the employee journey, from the nature of the content to how it will be delivered.

After the campaign is run, the survey will again kick in to assess the percent change in opinion or knowledge about the topic. If the results show the goal has been achieved, congratulations! But if the results are less favorable than planned, communicators know exactly what they need to target during the next campaign.

Invite Employees to Take Action

What fun is a journey if you don’t get to do anything along the way? Building calls to action (CTA) into the campaign is a smart way to both drive and measure employee engagement. By its nature, a CTA makes a communication an interactive event. Employees can be invited, encouraged, or required to take action following their review of the material.

A CTA could be a request to review and sign a code of conduct. Likewise, it could be a survey that measures a change in behavior or opinion. Surveys can also be used to gauge how well employees understand a topic after the communication is sent. If the results show low understanding, communicators can tinker with the messaging or the campaign itself to better address areas of weakness.

In addition, Poppulo makes follow up on the CTA easy. Instead of blanketing employees with a half-dozen “in case you haven’t completed our request” emails, communicators can quickly run a report to see who has yet to follow through on the CTA. A follow-up email can then be sent to the stragglers, thereby helping to reduce inbox noise for the general population.

Check Engagement Across All Channels

Communicators are well versed about the benefits of reviewing open and click-through rates. But how is each communication performing within the big picture of the campaign?

Poppulo enables communicators to dig deeper by providing metrics on how content performs across email, internet, video, and social channels. Communicators can see in real time where they are getting the most bang for their buck.

Poppulo users also have access to Maximize My Reach. This invaluable tool enables communicators to see who has engaged with campaign content on the intranet. From there, they can create a distribution list of employees who have not seen the content and nudge them in the right direction.

Tailor and Refine

There is much research into best practices for employee communications. Poppulo goes a step further by offering communicators a treasure trove of information about what works within their own organizations.

The platform’s social media tools are designed to improve engagement by inviting employees to interact with content. At the same time, these tools shed light on how employees are responding to the campaign. Every like, rate, and share provides important clues into the material and formats that are earning the most attention.

Poppulo also offers key insights into the best time to send communications and which formats employees are likely to appreciate. They can also see where specific content lost employees’ interest. Internal communications teams can use this real-time data to continually refine their communications to promote engagement.

The platform can even break down engagement based on function, location, and job title. The result is a window into which areas of the company are responding to a campaign and where communicators need to redouble their efforts.

Metrics That Matter, Made Easy

Poppulo’s built-in analytics provide communicators with the guidance they need to make sure they are on the right path, every step of the way. When combined with intuitive tools and interactive elements, communicators can transform the employee journey from a rote set of communications to a true strategy of discovery and change management.

It takes the guesswork out of what’s working—and it provides communicators with concrete results they can tout to members of the leadership team.

Learn more about how internal communicators are creating more effective employee journeys by downloading the IC Industry Success – Pharma webinar.