ESG 23 Final Single pages - Flipbook - Page 37
COMMUNICATION AND DIRECTION
SETTING
Communication and dialogue are vital within RWS.
It includes all types of communication and consultation
between RWS colleagues on all manner of topics including
business direction and performance, operational matters,
social issues, environmental concerns, well-being and
various other areas of common interest.
Connecting colleagues with our strategy,
purpose and values
Last year we developed a new strategy, purpose
and values for the Group and launched them to our
stakeholders. This year, with travel becoming much
easier, we incorporated more in-person senior leader-led
town halls into our communication mix, and re昀椀ned our
messaging around strategy to make it both simpler and
directly connected to the speci昀椀c work of our frontline
colleagues around the world.
In June we again brought our Senior Leadership Team
(SLT) together in the UK to remind ourselves of our
organisational purpose and values, and to review
and assess progress on our medium-term strategy.
This ensures we align our most senior team with our
organisational goals before bringing everything to life
throughout the business under this group’s combined
leadership.
Our purpose is 'unlocking global
understanding' and our values are:
WE PARTNER
WE PROGRESS
WE PIONEER
WE DELIVER
In a challenging macroeconomic environment, clear
focus is more important than ever and the business has
adopted the acronym 'EDGE' to ensure that all colleagues
are clear about the Group’s current priorities; EDGE
stands for e昀케cient delivery, growth and engagement. Our
cadence of communications provides context, rationale
and examples that bring each of these three components
to life, from our CEO-led communications and our monthly
company newsletter, to updates about our transformation
programmes and the regular town halls that take place
across divisions and functions.
Responding to feedback from the 2022 engagement
survey, we increased the frequency of our all-colleague
virtual town halls, hosted by the CEO and CFO, from
twice a year to quarterly. This has been well received in
dynamic economic circumstances.
In September we introduced a powerful new Microsoft
Teams' community for all people leaders in the business.
Our middle-manager group expressed a desire to be
more pro-actively involved and informed of important
organisational developments in order that they might be
better equipped to play a more active role in explaining
and supporting the delivery of these messages and
changes as they are rolled out. This people leaders
Microsoft Teams' group will be a key channel for involving
them.
To help drive adoption of our values, this year we
launched our 'Ambassador Awards' which is our 昀椀rst
all-colleague Recognition and Award Programme.
Twice a year each of our divisions and Group functions,
choose one colleague or team as their best exemplar
of each of the four values. These 24 half-year winners
receive a 昀椀nancial award and their stories are published
and promoted internally to recognise their exceptional
contribution and inspire great work generally in the next
period. These half-yearly awards roll up to an Annual RWS
Award ceremony at the end of the year where the best
of the in-year award winners for each of the four values
are recognised directly by the CEO for their e昀昀orts with
a grand prize. This programme has proved very popular
and we had more than 750 entries over the course of
the year.
During the year we also had two good opportunities
to introduce better communication technology across
the Group – in January we implemented project
‘Highlander' which moved all colleagues around the
world onto a single instance of Microsoft Teams and
one single instance of Microsoft Viva Engage (formerly
Yammer). This has enabled colleagues to collaborate
with one another much more e昀케ciently, and provides
demonstrable practical evidence of our commitment
to our ‘Partnership’ value.
We are also now fully ramping up communications in
support of our Project Unify which moves our technology
stack a signi昀椀cant step forward with the progressive
implementation of new enterprise technology for Finance
and HR during FY24, again on the Microsoft platform.
SOCIAL RWS Holdings plc — ESG Report 2023
37
