Client Case Study

Crafted a “political campaign strategy” to align employee thinking, enable decision making and action

Challenge:

Just three years after narrowly failing to unionize a regional plant at one of the nation’s largest beverage companies, a prominent labor union garnered the necessary union cards to petition for another election. The company recognized that its traditional way of communicating its position through letters, fliers and mandatory meetings (which had resulted in winning the previous election by a mere seven votes) would not be successful this time. Management needed to do better, and sought a new approach.

Actions:

• Developed a communications strategy modeled after a political campaign. This involved listening on both emotional and rational levels to understand what makes the plant employees “tick” (e.g., what makes them want to work for the company; what bothers people; where do their motivations lie?), as well as becoming grounded on common work experiences of employees and team leaders (e.g., most had not worked in a union environment or didn’t think life would change with a union).
• Created a communications platform that stressed the positives about the plant and appealed to employees’ motivational needs, building a pro-employee, sustainable effort to develop long-term positive and productive relationships with employees.
• Constructed messages so they could be delivered to employees through team leaders in day-to-day conversations. The campaign platform gave team leaders – who were the critical link to the front-line – a way to create dialogue around the union in their day-to-day work. They were supported by a week-by-week communications campaign, which included daily meetings to share messages with team leaders, as well as posters, fact sheets, Q&As, etc., which provided an infrastructure that enabled supervisors to shape the dialogue with employees.

Results:

• Secured a “no” vote to union representation by a 3-to-1 margin.
• Prompted an astonishing voter turnout of 98.5 percent.
• Altered the perceptions of even the most-doubtful leaders: “I never saw anybody run a campaign like this,” said a company labor relations specialist. “I was skeptical. It was very different from what we were used to. I’m a believer now….you can’t argue with results like that.”