People-First Transformation: How London Borough of Tower Hamlets Leverages Poppulo to Drive Internal Change

The Challenge:

In 2023, London Borough of Tower Hamlets embarked on a major transformation to reshape how it delivered on its top priorities, which ranged from providing homes, to accelerating education, empowering communities, and investing in public services for a clean and green future.

It also wanted to establish itself as a Borough Council that listens to and works for everyone. The transformation program, called People First, required the changing and reshaping of roles and services within the council, leading the Internal Communications team to create and deliver a series of communications designed to:

• Support employees during the transformation
• Increase visibility of senior leaders
• Support a culture of transparency and two-way conversations
• Ensure staff felt engaged in the council’s continuous improvement journey

The Solution:

The transformation program necessitated a communications-led culture change within the organization, with the Internal Communications team working in alignment with other key stakeholders, including the Strategy and HR teams.

Building on previous communication-led and data-supported impact in initiatives implemented through the Poppulo platform, the internal communications team sought to expand on this with new ways of reaching and engaging multiple staff audiences and stakeholders.

Poppulo really helped us expand what we were doing because we were able to show the level of two-way engagement, statistics, what’s working and what’s not working. That’s been a big part in helping us engage with our staff and improve on what we achieved previously."—Asha Isaac, Internal Communications Manager, London Borough of Tower Hamlets. 

The Results:

The London Borough of Tower Hamlets’ leadership commitment to significant transformation was underpinned by an awareness of the need for culture change throughout the organization, if it were to achieve its goals.

Consequently, with hard data from Poppulo analytics proving the success of the council’s internal communications across several initiatives—from positive behavioral change to increased employee understanding of key issues—Asha and her comms team were made an integral part of the transformation program, working in tandem with the Strategy and HR teams.

Poppulo’s communication analytics have been instrumental in helping the comms team and the organization’s senior leadership understand how employees are engaging—or not engaging–at Tower Hamlets, arming the communications team with the necessary data to change the messaging for different audiences or change tactics or strategy.

An example of this in action was the employee My Annual Review program, where Asha and her team were able to analyze and compare engagement stats with completion rates, moving the dial from 25% in 2022/23 to 93% in 2023/24. This depth of knowledge as a result of quick and ready access to Poppulo analytics played a crucial role in the transformation program.

When the transformation came in, it was felt that there would be a need for a resource to really help with it and use the knowledge that our team has. And that was as a result of the impact that our communications were having. Not people just looking at something on a surface level and saying: ‘that looks great’, but by really going into our engagement statistics and showing that it’s worked and has had an impact."— Asha Isaac

For the change transformation initiative to be successful, Asha and her team introduced a suite of different methods to engage with staff, for example, online and face-to-face events, manager briefings, etc., as well as email newsletters and other digital communications.

The success of these different engagement methods has been due to the newsletter through Poppulo, to get the message out there to our employees—half of whom are online— in a really interesting and engaging way, which the platform enables us to do. Poppulo has played a major part in improving overall comms platform and especially two-way communication with our staff through the ability to comment and give feedback."—Asha Isaac

During this period of change, it was important for internal communications to ensure leaders were highly visible, approachable, and were clear and concise with their messages. Their goals for the leadership communications campaign were to:

• Increase visibility of senior leaders 
• Improve staff perception of senior leaders, including strengthening trust in leadership and enabling two-way conversations
• Ensure staff are engaged in Tower Hamlets’ continuous improvement journey
• Increase understanding and bring about behavior change via key messages around the importance of compliance and effective people management
• Support managers during the transformation, given their essential role in managing change at a local level

To achieve these goals, the team executed a range of communications—everything from a Chief Executive Roadshow and Tea & Chat sessions with the Chief Executive to online meetings with the Corporate Management Team, and a Staff Conference and Awards ceremony.

The engagement and behavioral changes as a result of Asha and her team’s communication strategy were impressive.

The transformation program hinged on engaging people and gaining their support. Poppulo's role in our communications strategy was instrumental in making this happen."—Asha Isaac, Internal Communications Manager, London Borough of Tower Hamlets. 

There was a significant increase in attendance at existing events and an enthusiastic uptake of newly introduced events, which provided opportunities for two-way communication and promoted messages around the transformation journey.

• Chief Executive Roadshow: Employee attendance doubled compared to previous years
• Behavior/organizational culture change following comms campaign: 93% staff completion rate for My Annual Review staff appraisals, up 25% from previous year.
• Staff Conference and Awards involvement: Biggest attendance ever, with an almost 400% increase on the previous year
• Employee understanding of key issues: 84% positive feedback, showing “very good” or “good” understanding, up 38% from the previous year

In addition to the success of the transformation comms campaign, the use of Poppulo has been extended. From initially being used to create and publish a single newsletter for staff, Asha and her team have expanded how they use Poppulo to engage with Tower Hamlets councilors and members, and have also introduced three directorate newsletters.

From a platform that was initially used just for a weekly newsletter, we’ve really utilized it to engage with multiple audiences and different parts of the organization. And that’s come from other people seeing how our comms are landing, and then wanting to use Poppulo themselves. It really helps that the platform is so accessible and user-friendly.”—Asha Isaac