How Vulpia fought Covid-19 with the help of better employee communication.

How did Spencer help Vulpia through Covid-19?

Vulpia is a Belgian service-driven organization that has been providing quality care for the elderly since 1996. It owns both nursing homes and residential care centers across the country. For Vulpia, a human approach with respect for and attention to all residents is key. To be able to assure quality care for over 3.500 elderly people in over 40 centers across the country, Vulpia employs over 2.500 people. And that is why they care much about their employee communication as well.

Spencer helps decentralized organizations to communicate effectively to different groups of employees thanks to artificial intelligence. Spencer also taps into people’s habits to increase employee engagement.

“In every country around the globe, everyone’s respect for people working in the health care sector has grown tremendously. That is no different here at Spencer. And we’re glad that in these difficult times at least we could be of help in making internal communication easy.”

Can’t wait to find out how Spencer can help your organization make employee communication more effective? Let’s have a chat.

A better connection between headquarters and every care center across the country.

At Vulpia, most of the employees do not have a company email address. And only a limited group of staff members have a company smartphone. Most people working for Vulpia are doing health care work, on the floor, with limited access to computers. Internal communication mainly happens through the manager.

Vulpia needed to find a solution to reach employees in a direct way. In a way that is close at hand for everyone and does not necessarily require a company email account. To restore contact between headquarters and every single care center.

Mehdi Van Nuijs, Cluster Manager @ Vulpia — Reconnecting headquarters and care centers

Working perfectly together with Vulpia’s existing systems.

Vulpia chose to work with Spencer for a couple of reasons. Spencer’s approach appeared to be very much in line with how Vulpia works. But the solution Spencer offers allows for an easy connection with existing systems and for countless other integrations. Which makes it a good fit for the future.

Rolling out Spencer on a voluntary basis.

Vulpia is an organization that still relies a lot on face-to-face and printed employee communication. There, Spencer is considered an additional communication tool that everyone is free to install or not. It is the personal communication solution, allowing employees to receive information wherever they are.

Keeping up with the speedy pace of employee communication after Covid-19 struck.

If somewhere clear internal communication makes the difference between life and death, it is in the health care sector.

Only one month after Vulpia’s launch of Spencer, COVID-19 struck. During any crisis communication is crucial. With Covid-19 even more so. Every other day, the Belgian government sent updates with new guidelines and directions. Those had to be known and understood by everyone in the organization and implemented virtually immediately.

Sharing different messages with different audiences.

During the lockdown, there was a need to send everyone new info and directions up to 3 times per day. That is where Spencer came in. With Spencer, you can easily send different messages to different audiences. So, if e.g. you are a caretaker or a nurse, you got the exact information necessary to do your job.

“Vulpia made sure its teams got daily briefings with very clear instructions. Also, our people were able to review the information whenever necessary. In order to make that happen, Vulpia’s teams could rely on Spencer.”

Communicating with confidence in times of crisis.

When working with printed information, there is no certainty that the information has even been seen. Posters get outdated and when not removed in time, information that is no longer relevant keeps hanging around. Keeping paper information up to date simply requires a lot of effort.

With Spencer, employee communication becomes a lot easier. You write the message, choose the appropriate audiences and simply publish. Moreover, you’re certain that everyone receives the information simultaneously. During a crisis, that is not a detail. It is critical.

“During a crisis, having to use different communication channels to reach everyone, complicates everything. That is why, personally, I prefer working with Spencer.”

In most companies, managers do not always come standard with great communication skills. For this reason, delivering messages the way they were intended does not happen most of the time. With Spencer, messages don’t change when conveyed. They come with all the subtleties and every comma and period you put in. Producing the desired effect.

Ann Houtmeyer, director of 2 residential care centers @ Vulpia — Indirect employee communication changes your message.

So easy all generations in the workforce are using it.

Most organizations have employees of mixed generations. Fact is, not everyone is as skillful when it comes digital communication. The same goes for Vulpia. Some employees have limited experience with digital solutions. But that doesn’t stop them from using Spencer.

“There is no learning curve at all. Not for anyone who uses Spencer daily. But neither for people like me who put content into Spencer. For most things, it works very intuitively. And that is something I value.”

Using Spencer, however, is effortless. Both for communication managers and daily users.

Mehdi Van Nuijs, Cluster Manager @ Vulpia — Spencer makes employee communication really user-friendly.