Building employee communications into the world’s largest gaming company

The merger between two of the biggest players in the gaming industry resulted in the world’s largest gaming company and needed a strategic, integrated and consistent approach to employee communications. Engagement Strategies was retained to plan and implement a series of integration communications to support the efforts of the organization.  This included specialized messages, newsletters and employee meetings in order to ensure that employees understood the unified direction of the company.  The merger also led to various department consolidations which resulted in reductions of the workforce in various areas of the company.  Engagement Strategies provided strategic counsel to executives on the most effective approach to communicating these changes to those affected as well as the employees who remained on staff.

As a result of the merger integration work, Engagement Strategies extended its contract to develop a strategic employee communications program that would serve as the foundation for how the employee communications function would operate moving forward.  In addition, we provided tactical communications support to ensure employees remained informed about company vision, business strategy, company news, new initiatives and management expectations. Our support also included employee communications across the enterprise, speech writing and strategic counsel.

Engagement Strategies served as the interim employee communications team until a senior manager of employee communications was hired in 2009.  We assisted our client with the search and selection of the candidate, and as part of the on-boarding process, Engagement Strategies worked side-by-side with the new manager to ensure an efficient knowledge transfer.

Along with the new manager, Engagement Strategies worked to manage the implementation and launch of the new employee portal, including micro sites for various functions.  Support included project management, content creation, content mapping and vendor selection.

In late 2009, the company also conducted an employee engagement survey.  Engagement Strategies provided counsel on the survey design as well as communication support to ensure a statistically relevant sample of employees responds to the survey.  As a result, almost 80% of employees responded to the survey.  Communication support included leadership messages for executives, management communication tool development, communication planning and execution.