Improving communications inside Building Operations
2016
For the 2016 snapshot, each Director visited their staff in their areas to speak with them about communications and how we can continue to improve. Using the same basic research premise—a short questionnaire combined with a facilitated discussion—the Directors worked with their teams to hear where we’re working well and where we should focus.
Key findings from the 2016 Snapshot included:
- Clear evidence that Building Operations is an oral culture. While email, posters, and other documents are useful for archiving information or providing backup or expanded data; most Building Operations staff want to hear about major job-affecting information directly from the supervisor and large big picture change from their Director/Managing Director.
- Crew Talks and their supporting materials are the number one opportunity to improve our internal communications.
- Reputational and campus-wide communications are the opportunity on the horizon.
2016 Documents
2014
In the first weeks of September 2014, the Managing Director and Communications visited all 700 plus employees of Building Operations to learn about communications within Building Operations. From those discussions, it’s clear we’re ready to work together to tackle the big things affecting Building Operations. Different decisions will require different discussions, approaches, and speeds. But, regardless of our process, our conversations will be public so we can all be part of it and understand exactly what is happening.
Our first step is to work on the tools we use to communicate; because that is the foundation for all of our efforts. You told us the communication tools are not working for you and gave us specific ideas about how to fix them:
- Face-to-face communication
- The Building Operations digital signage network
- The email system and email newsletters
- The Building Operations website
During the Communications meetings we also gathered a lot of operational feedback. We are working to put the processes in place to work with you on assessing this feedback and publicly addressing it.