Early Childhood Education Franchisor

Clear, transparent communications are an important part of every organization, but especially critical in distributed organizations. And no organization is more distributed than a franchisor.

Challenge

When a new marketing leader joined a national franchise for private preschool education, he found an organization committed to effective, transparent communications, but ironically, with many communications challenges. From internal employees to franchise owners, and from franchise owners to the end-users (the parents of children at the educational facilities), there were issues big and small stemming from poorly-crafted communications, a poorly planned communications department infrastructure, and a lack of understanding of the communications needs of the different audiences.

While the instinct can be to push out a communications strategy based on past experience, this seasoned marketer chose to bring in fresh eyes – Albert Communications – to unpack and understand these relationships. The goal was to evaluate the effectiveness of the organization’s far-reaching communications efforts and the structure of the entire communications team.

Solution

With Albert Communications on board, the franchise launched a strategic communications assessment: Albert’s proven, research-based, engagement to evaluate a communications strategy and team.

The first step was to hear from everyone – literally. A mix of communications team members, franchisors, third party partners, and company leaders participated in wide-ranging, one-on-one qualitative interviews with the Albert team – 24 in all.

While the findings from the qualitative interviews were illuminating, this was just step one. These insights formed the foundation for a quantitative survey that was distributed to the internal employees and franchisees to get an even deeper understanding of the effectiveness of the organization’s communications strategy.

Results

The Albert strategic communications assessment was effective in gathering insights, but those insights were painful. They painted a picture of a department and business that was not effectively communicating with its target audiences, which was causing friction.

To right the ship, the Albert team suggested three critical changes to provide better balance to the communications team, and improve overall communications effectiveness:

• Hire a dedicated person to lead corporate communications. Albert Communications helped craft the job description, interview the finalists, and coach the new hire once she assumed the role.
• Establish a corporate communications council for company-wide transparency and alignment. Regular meetings extended engagement, insured transparency, and offered greater understanding of the organization as a whole, by removing communications (and operations) silos.
• Modernize the internal communications mechanisms. What was in place needed a facelift so that all communications were consistent, which was important to an organization that truly cared about communicating.

Ongoing Commitment

These changes dramatically improved communications and transparency at the organization, which improved implementation of strategic initiatives, transparency, and morale. The organization has continued to work hard to ensure franchisees are engaged and well-informed through the use of ongoing surveys to franchisees – large and small; urban, suburban and rural; male- and female-owned; seasoned and new.

The process and commitment to improve communications continues.