How Delhaize keeps their employees informed and engaged

Key learnings about how to communicate with a highly decentralized and diverse workforce from Laure

When Laure started working as the internal communication manager, there were quite some challenges she was facing. If those challenges look familiar to you, you will learn a great deal from her in dealing with them and making the switch to internal communication of the next generation while avoiding the pitfalls.

1. Understanding your challenges

• Are you working with old tools which do not allow for direct access on the shop floor or through a smartphone?
• Is your communication slow? Is there no direct communication line? Can’t you make a difference between urgent and less urgent information? Is it reactive rather than proactive?
• Are you using too many channels which makes your people feel lost?
• Is your communication top-down only? Is there a good balance between information and inspiration?
• Do your people really feel like they belong to your company? Do they understand the bigger picture? Are they proud to be working for you?

2. Digital offers a great solution fast to the same extent that you have a great communication culture in place already

In order to cope with all the challenges, Laure chose to work with Spencer. In the case of Delhaize, Spencer is called Lio.

Lio brings all the internal communication to one place. And at the same time, it offers a lot of tools as well.

Lio provides employees with news, tasks, urgent communications, documents, polls and surveys, links to other tools, information about who is who, information about sites and locations.

With Lio employees have access to their team calendar. They can request for holidays, give notice of absences, send and receive messages and consult their working schedule.

One place to do almost everything simplifies life a great deal. But an important reason Lio is working so well today is because Delhaize already had a strong culture of interactive events and communication in real life.

3. People don’t feel like reading much. Communicate as visually as possible

Think about the posts you thumb through on Facebook every day. It is always the image (or the video) that makes you decide in a fraction of second whether you will engage with a post or not. The same goes for your internal communication. People don’t like to read. As a company, you have to accept that and communicate visually wherever possible.

4. Break down your messages in digestible chunks

Recap your messages. Keep highlighting the most important topics so people truly understand the message you are trying to get across. And remember never to drown people in information.

5. Repetition is key to successful communication

It is not because you get your message once on your people’s radar that they will understand you and act accordingly. Things are never that easy with communication. Not only do you have to break up your message in digestible chunks, you also have to make it speak to their mind by making your message as specific as possible. On top of that, you have to repeat your message. And then repeat it once again.

6. Make sure the right person gets the right message

Nobody today is pleased to be included e.g. in email-traffic that is of no interest to them. The same goes for all communication. We only want messages that have value for us. Messages that help us out with our daily life. That is one of the strengths of Lio: it brings relevant messages to the right audience at the right time.