A briefing encounter — Mark Owen — Affinity Water
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That special someone is out there, the one person who hasn’t received your communications, here’s how we found ours…
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A briefing encounter — Mark Owen — Affinity Water
- 1. How do you know? A Briefing Counter That special someone is out there, the one person who hasn't received our communications, here's how we found them…
- 2. Affinity Water – What's our world like?
- 3. 16,600 km of pipes 3.7 Million Customers 900 million liters per day
- 5. Not just different locations, obviously we have different people
- 6. Sam, a customer hero About Sam: Works shifts covering 7am to 8pm during the week and 8am to 8pm at the weekend, answering queries from our customers across. 6 Challenges, Goals and Ways of Working • I use the Wave for the Bistro menu, Rivo, Standby Database and Language Line • I only read the news on the front page • I can never find the document I am looking forward • I would like all the information that help me do my role in one easy to access place • I like to have a mixture of local and corporate news • I look up people sometimes but I use Puzzel a lot of the time Ways of working In Office Out of Office Ability to work anywhere In Meetings On Phone Email Documents Works with Customers Works with Colleagues Job Role: Operational Contact Advisor Technology Software Puzzle UAD
- 7. But there was a problem Well, a few, but we’re just looking at one today.
- 8. What was the problem? 8 Number 1 - No Consistency… During the Month Meeting OccursDrip fed comms
- 9. What was the problem? Number 2 - Faith it was forwarded Comms Message Top 70 Leaders List managed by CEO EA A ‘barrier’… ? ?
- 10. What was the solution? 10 We Created Consistency During the Month Meeting can be more flexible One Combined Kit / Pack
- 11. What was the solution? Direct Access Team Brief Full list of leaders (160+) Manually collated And updated Process, Priorities, Key Messages
- 12. But there was another problem
- 13. The next problem Filling in the gaps ? ? Open ended, old SharePoint form ’classic’ untouched by Designer Who’s receiving it? Who’s briefing it?
- 14. The next problem So from this…
- 15. The next solution To a Briefing Counter PowerApp + SharePoint Simple ‘tick box’ Exercise +
- 16. Results.
- 17. ? 70 ish Top managers Receiving the email 108 managers Briefing their teams 863 employees (of 1417) briefed.
- 18. 108 managers Changes due to churn, but we can keep on top of it with Pivot! tables 863 / 1417 employees We use the long list from HR and track down who hasn’t received it and their managers
- 20. Our Next Problem to solve… Climate Change? World Peace?
Editor's Notes
- M: Hi We are from Affinity Water M: I’m Mark - Technical Genius problem solver extraordinaire - Also known as Intranet Manager K: Hi I’m Kirsty - Voice of the people, No to just sending stuff out and yes to all things strategic and thought through - AKA Internal Communications Exec And we’re here to talk to you about our Briefing Counter – that is also known as our Team Leader Briefing pack merging traditional communications with modern technology. But more on that later first we want to tell a little more about us and the problems we were facing this time last year….
- 16,600 km of pipes is enough to reach from where are standing today to Sydney We have 3.7 million customers and if they formed a conga line that would get us to the other side of Antalya in Turkey Both of which receive more rainfall annually than London (584mm) Sydney (1200mm) Antalya(1000mm)
- M. We’re the UK’s Largest fresh water supply company. K. We supply parts of the south east with fresh clean high quality drinking water M. Please look closely, as that’s an overlay, we’re not that big of a company. But you can see how we cover an area around the edge of London, going from parts of leafy Surrey, to built up Barnet, to the wilds of deepest darkest Essex. With the additional challenge of the Tendring Peninsula and Dover / Folkestone in Kent as outlying self-contained supply areas.
- K. So we’re pretty spread out, but we’re not only in different locations, we also have different people in different roles. K. Production staff getting the water out of the ground and rivers M. Operations staff dealing with leakage so it gets to the customer K. Those in Customer Service M. Those down a hole fixing pipes K. Samplers and Scientists making sure the water is of high quality M. And Desk drivers like us who support the business, Comms, Finance, Regulation, HR, etc…
- K. We borrowed the slide from last years Intranet Now and applied it to those personas. Understanding how they worked, what they worked with, and the challenges they faced…
- K. But there was a problem
- K. How things were, different communications were drip fed out during the month. Safe Driving updates, Health and Safety toolbox talks, and so on, but managers only organized a meeting once a month to update and brief their teams, so the onus was on them to collect the emails throughout the month ready for their meeting.
- K. Those communications themselves were only sent to a list of our top 70 leaders, a list that was controlled by the CEO’s Executive Assistant, and then we worked on faith that the emails would then be forwarded by them to their reports and so on, in the hope that everyone would get the brief…
- K. Our solution. We combined the separate communications into one page on the Intranet, released on a day we listed for the year ahead, so managers would know when that info would be there and when they could organize a meeting for that months brief. Giving them consistency and reliability so they could plan their meetings to suit them and with everything they needed.
- K. We wrestled control from the Executive Assistant. Once we pointed out how silly it was relying on faith of forwarding that the right information was getting into the right hands. And started building a list of managers who do the actual briefing. Sometimes this was a manager of managers as a larger department, sometimes it was a one to one.
- K. But there was a problem
- M. But there was another problem. We still didn’t have a proper measure of who was receiving the brief and who wasn’t. We had an old SharePoint list (that I inherited…) that was used to record all manner of things.
- M. Any old safety activity was thrown in to here for recording purposes. If at all.
- M. Our solution. A more tailored focused app. We used colour coding borrowed from the desk calendars for consistency and then once you’d built up a list of your team, you then just needed to tick who’s received the brief that month. Simpler and more focused the better. In my mind, and App should focus on one thing really well, and in stark contrast to a form that you could throw anything at, and the had to sift out the data you needed…
- K. Results…
- K. We went from literally having no figures and a vague understanding of how information cascaded through the business to having a much better idea.
- M. Where we could keep a track of managers comings and goings through restructures, joiners, movers and leavers, and so on against a ‘true’ list of who we’re paying a salary too. We don’t aim for 100%, some people aren’t present on meeting days, are off ill, some are contractors who won’t receive it, but we can drill down and analyse if needed
- K & M. We got things under control…