1.Situation

The level of employees’ satisfaction represented for DHL’s management an important subject, constantly being present on the company’s agenda.

As a result of DHL’s acquisition by Deutsche Post, a new project was launched internationally to measure the level of internal communication and satisfaction of DHL’s employees.

2.Task

As a Brand Communication Manager in DHL, I worked on the implementation of this study. The main objective of the first phase was to include DHL Romania in a pilot program along with several other countries. The scope of the pilot program was to test this study and its impact inside the organisation, and then to replicate the study in other DHL organizations all over the world.

Besides the opportunity of an internal communication assessment, the inclusion of DHL Romania in the pilot program was also contributing to the prestige of our organization at regional and European level.

The response rate of the employees to the internal study was the main quantitative criteria based on which a country would be included in the pilot project.

3.Action

I took the implementation guide and the standard questionnaires developed at the centre level, and I sent them to all the departments with the request to be consulted and then individually and confidentially completed by our colleagues. Given the subject of the internal study, the respondent and responses confidentiality was the most important element for a correct reflection of the company’s internal situation. For this reason, beyond the normal actions to promote the project, I took all the steps to ensure that respondents and their answers remain confidential.

4.Results

Phase 1 targeted the partial implementation of the project in 5 countries including Romania. After the end of this phase, I participated as a DHL Romania representative in the project assessment session, where DHL Romania was congratulated for involvement and results, the response rate of our organization being 92%, clearly superior to other countries that showed response rates even under 50%.

Obviously, the rationale behind this clear positive differentiation was highly debriefed during the project assessment, as the implementation guide and questionnaires were identical in all five countries.

So we found that the implementation model in Romania was differentiated versus the implementation from the other countries in two essential points:

-ensuring the confidentiality

-ensuring the understanding of the purpose of the study and the impact that answers will have in the future inside the organization.

I have supported these two points through continuous information within the organization, through repeated follow-ups, through meetings with managers and colleagues. Through informal discussions on a common and maybe an uninteresting subject, but with potentially major impact in the company.

5.Key Leanings

I remember this project because it was my first exposure at international level, occasion when I understood that we were professionally competitive. And I also understood that little things that were not mentioned in an implementation guide can make a big difference in terms of final results.

Notification: MYPRODUCT reflects my real professional experience and expertise as well as my subjectivity. I do have a profound respect for all the companies I collaborated to and for all the people I worked with. It is not my intention to approach any sensitive, confidential or offending information related to companies, projects or people. If you the reader deduct or recognise companies, projects or people in my examples, I kindly ask you to respect MYPRODUCT and my professional and ethic approach and to not share any detail, information, situation, name, company.