12 min watch with captions and full transcript
In this interview, Sally shares her tips for:
Sally shares her rebel insights, like:
Communication, as we grow as a business, is only going to get more challenging the more people we have and the more sites we have, so we need to be able to scale our approach.
For me, it's around the power of the message and being able to talk to people–and get them to talk–about what you want them to know.
DEBRA COREY: Hi there. I'm Debra Corey. I am the co-author of Build it, a Rebel Playbook for World Class Employee Engagement. I'm here today with Sally Park from Krispy Kreme. Very excited about this conversation. Not just because I love Krispy Kreme, but because I love the topic that we're talking about, which is communications. Sally was very helpful and provided one of the plays that's in the book, which talks about how to be a rebel when it comes to open and honest communication.
What I really like about this play is they put their own twist on it. They made it their own unique way of communicating in a way that really spoke to their employees, so I'm really excited that we could talk a little bit more about this today. Why don't you start out maybe just tell us a little bit about Krispy Kreme for maybe that 1% of the world that do not know who Krispy Kreme is.
SALLY PARK: For those who don't know, we make doughnuts and very delicious doughnuts.
DEBRA COREY: Very delicious.
SALLY PARK: We have about 960 employees thereabouts in Australia at the moment, so our business is really diverse. We have people in support office. We have people working in retail who sell the doughnuts. Then, we have the superstars behind the scenes who are the ones who make the doughnuts for our customers.
DEBRA COREY:From a communications perspective, and I've been in retail before, it's really challenging. Definitely.
SALLY PARK: Yeah, it is tough, because we have people who might work eight hours a week to people who work full-time. The people who are eight hours a week might only be school students or uni students who, for them, Krispy Kreme's not a huge priority. So for us, we need to figure out a way to engage them at a level that's consistent and convenient for us as a business, but also in a way that they're going to respond to as well.
DEBRA COREY: So, it's the convenient aspect, and it's also with the different generations and different types of jobs. It's how do you engage them differently, so-
SALLY PARK: Absolutely.
DEBRA COREY: You had to be a rebel then, which is a perfect segue into the why. Why did you decide to mix it up a little bit?
SALLY PARK: For me, I wanted a way for us to be able to communicate with our people from a central platform and really centralize the communication. A lot was already happening in the business, but we wanted to deliver it in a more consistent way, take more control over the message. We looked for a product to be able to do that-
DEBRA COREY: Right.
SALLY PARK: ... so we could communicate clearly and easily to our people.
DEBRA COREY: That's a good move into the what then, so the what was a centralized platform?
SALLY PARK: Yes.
DEBRA COREY: Why did you decide that that was going to work? I ask that only because in retail, a lot of people shy away from things like that, thinking, "Well, who's going to be looking at a platform when they're off making doughnuts, selling doughnuts, those types of things?"
SALLY PARK: I think that was the risk for us, because we aren't a business who has people who are in front of their screens all the time. If we were in a more white collar work environment, with a more captive audience, I think it would have been easier in a way to implement a similar platform to what we've done. But, we needed to come up with a solution anyway and just take a risk on doing something a bit different and moving away from where we were, which was ad hook e-mails, which people didn't read and uninspiring presentation-
DEBRA COREY: Or posters. I used to do-
SALLY PARK: Or posters.
DEBRA COREY: That was really in about 10 years ago, yeah.
SALLY PARK: Sometimes posters still have a place-
DEBRA COREY: Yeah.
SALLY PARK: ... because you do need some visual representation in store, but we wanted to be able to communicate more to people in a more interesting way.
DEBRA COREY: Definitely. That's why I think that, when it comes to being a rebel, it's different in each company, because I'm in a high tech company. I have a platform, because everybody's sitting in front of the computer, but in retail, it is rebellious to take this leap and to rely on the platform.
SALLY PARK: Yes.
DEBRA COREY: How did you go about developing it? What was the secret that you put into the platform?
SALLY PARK: We worked closely with the reward gateway team to come up with the initial structure. We wanted to develop an interesting looking homepage for our employees to visit and engage with, and then we also needed to come up with a communication strategy as well to get the right information from the right teams within the business to share with our people to let them know what's going on within the company.
DEBRA COREY: So, the name of the platform is?
SALLY PARK: It's called the KK Mix-up.
DEBRA COREY: How'd you come up with that? I like it. It's great.
SALLY PARK: I think it was a bit of brain storming. I don't know who was the person who came up with the idea, but yeah, it's kind of stuck now.
DEBRA COREY: It's something that you talked about like the homepage has to engage people, and the name has to engage people also.
SALLY PARK: Yes. We also needed to get people to understand what it was all about as well, because it was completely new, so to get them to understand that they can come to it for a variety of reasons. That was really important for me. I didn't want to just create one platform for one purpose.
DEBRA COREY: Yeah.
SALLY PARK: It needed to serve multiple purposes, so people can come there for news. They can come to nominate for our recognition program, to send thank you cards, and also if they're a shopper like me, save money on the rewards as well.
DEBRA COREY: You talked about a communication strategy, which again is really important. What did you do in your communication strategy? What did it look like?
SALLY PARK: We came up with a set structure on, and dates and topics that we wanted to get from the business so we could build some consistency and regularity around the communications, but that is actually something that we did struggle with to get from the business, is getting copy from them in a reasonable time with photos that's engaging. It's been quite a lot of work to get that information from the people in our team. We've needed to write a lot of the content ourselves as well, so that bit has been a bit of a struggle. We're still getting the business used to submitting information and learning how to write things in an interesting way.
DEBRA COREY: I think that's a really important lesson, because a lot of times we think people are getting engaged with it at the beginning. Sometimes as much as you don't like it to be, it is a bit of a trickle effect, little by little. Then soon, it's like a Krispy Kreme doughnut. Pretty soon you realize you can't live without it.
SALLY PARK: Exactly. I think that's the point where we are now with the platform, because it's been in for about two and a half years, so people know what it is. They know what it's about. Our nominations for our reward and recognition program has increased significantly since we've moved it online, because it's much easier to nominate. People get instant acknowledgement of the nomination as well. The spend on the programs increased as well. What we just continually need to get better at is more regular and consistent communications from the rest of the business, so that's going to be our focus for next year.
DEBRA COREY: But, I think it really talks to the point about just because you put something in, it's not going to work on its own. You have to constantly, you have a strategy at the beginning. Then, you have to continually communicate and find different ways.
SALLY PARK: And find out what works for the people as well.
DEBRA COREY: Yeah.
SALLY PARK: We've tried to split the information up into more smaller chunks.
DEBRA COREY: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
SALLY PARK: You can go to this page for this type of information, and this page for this information.
DEBRA COREY: Right.
SALLY PARK: But, we find that that doesn't really work well either, because it doesn't necessarily increase the engagement with those articles, so we've gone back to keeping it all in one place, and then people can find the information and read the information when it interests them.
DEBRA COREY: But, it's good that you're talking to your people. Finding out what works, and then not being afraid to change.
SALLY PARK: No. I think that's what has worked well for us is we have evolved in the past two and a half years, and tested different things and tried different looks of the platform, to make sure that we're coming up with a solution that's going to work for us in the long term. Because, communication as we grow as a business is only going to get more challenging the more people we have and the more sites we have, so we need to be able to scale our approach.
DEBRA COREY: As far as the results, the outcome, you've talked about people engaging with the recognition program. What have you seen as the benefits of taking the risk?
SALLY PARK: For me, it's around the power of the message and being able to talk to people in a way and get them to talk about what you want them to know. It's a bit of a trick to get their attention and to be able to communicate what you want them to know in a short, concise manner.
DEBRA COREY: Yes.
SALLY PARK: But, there's power in repetition, and that's what we're really going to be focusing on in the next 12 months or so, is thinking about what our tone of voice should actually be. How we want to communicate the message, and if at the end of the article, what are the one or two things that we want the person to walk away with, because they're not going to read four or five paragraphs of text.
DEBRA COREY: No.
SALLY PARK: It needs to be short, sharp and to the point.
DEBRA COREY: Yeah. I think those are really important tips when it comes to communications, which leads me to my last question about tips. You've just gone through this. You've been doing it for two and a half years. If someone is inspired and thinking, "I'm going to take that leap. I'm going to do something like that." What words of wisdom can you pass on to them?
SALLY PARK: I would be really clear about what your reasons for wanting to introduce a platform are, so you can come up with some [KPRs 00:08:49] to measure whether it is a success or not. We also weren't super clear on, when we launched, what the product was all about. We decided to do a staggered launch, because we thought the whole thing would be a bit too much for people to understand, so we just did three bits.
We started with the spending, and then we introduced the reward and recognition, and then we introduced company communications, but we found that people who logged in at the beginning who weren't interested in spending just didn't log in again. It's been a bit of a slog to get them to re-engage with the platform. If I had my time again, I would think more about the launch and do it in one big hit and get people excited about it, so that the engagement and interest in the platform is there from the start.
DEBRA COREY: That's a really interesting point, because I've had challenges with that one myself when I'm introducing three, four, five products. Do you do it at once? Do you do it in piece meal? I think it really depends on what you're trying to achieve. I don't know if there is one magic right answer.
SALLY PARK: No. I think it would absolutely depend on the business that you're working for and people's capacity and appetite for change as well. I know with our people, and with the short attention span now, short and to the point and minimal but regular communication is really the way to go.
DEBRA COREY: Any other tips on remote workers, because a lot of people again, as I said before, really shy away about doing these types of things with remote workers. When are they engaging with the platform? When are they using the platform?
SALLY PARK: I don't have any data specifically on when people log in, but I think the nature of the platform is that it is friendly enough for you to be happy to open it on the weekend. I know that I do open it if I need to buy a voucher or something like that, so I do use it outside of work hours. I think that's the strength of it, because if it was a internet platform that requires you to log in when you are logged into the company network, people would only engage with it during work hours. But, because it's accessible 24/7, I think you're more likely, particularly with our people who are not in the office, to get them looking at it on the way to the bus or on the way to work. Whatever. It doesn't have to just be when they're on shift.
DEBRA COREY: So, make sure that you have something that is accessible for anyone at any point in time, because you are right with different ships, shifts. Ships? Shifts. You can have it at all points in time.
SALLY PARK: Yeah.
DEBRA COREY: Great. Well that's been really, really helpful. I think for me, the key takeaways about the communications are really to know your audience as you said. I love the point that you made a couple times about how you need to do things short and sweet, because attention spans are so short these days.
SALLY PARK: Absolutely.
DEBRA COREY: Just keep evolving it and growing it. I think that's what makes you a rebel in that you're continuing to make it better and better year on and year out. Thank you very much.
SALLY PARK: Thank you.
DEBRA COREY: I really appreciate that. For anybody else who would like to read the play, either in the book, or actually listen to some more of these types of interview and plays, we've put lots of information on the website. It's rebelplaybook.com. Last but not least, don't forget to go out and be a rebel yourself.
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