Hugo Boss Australia Successfully Managed Employee Experience & Critical Communication During a Global Pandemic!

The Problem

When the majority of your employees don’t have access to a company computer or email address; company-wide communications become a challenge.

Throw in a global pandemic and the challenge intensifies. 

During a pandemic, communication becomes essential. Organizations needed the ability to quickly reach every employee – and a solid way of ensuring the critical information was being received. 

Unfortunately, traditional methods weren’t cutting it. 

“We were finding emails weren’t necessarily getting attention – they were getting forgotten or pushed to the side,” says Rhiannon Jarrett, HR Business Partner at Hugo Boss Australia. 

With no visibility on who was receiving the information and who was leaving it unread, the HR team at Hugo Boss Australia knew they had to find a better way.

The Solution

The team had already been using Enboarder to onboard and offboard employees for years, and knew first-hand how easy it was to cascade information through the platform. 

“When communication is critical, Enboarder absolutely felt like the best platform to use. It was clear to us that being able to reach our employees across any device (computer, phone, tablet) was the most efficient and effective way to reach all of our employees. It was also the best thing we had for alleviating some of the pressure from the line managers who were trying to feed the information to the wider teams,” says Rhiannon.

So, the Hugo Boss Australia HR team decided to get creative. 

They started using Enboarder to send out COVID-related updates from the managing director to all employees. 

“It enabled him to talk to each of our employees, giving an update on different departments in the business and what they’re doing,” explains Abbey Watson-Smith, Human Resources Coordinator at Hugo Boss Australia. 

“From there we brought in tips for mindfulness, how to look after your mental health, cleaning standards updates, handwashing videos and payroll related updates.”

The flexibility and adaptability of Enboarder meant the team were able to tailor communications for specific employees – from warehouse to retail and office-based employees – as well as ensuring everybody received company-wide updates.

The Results

Enboarder has proven to be a powerful communication tool for Hugo Boss during COVID-19. 

In addition to ensuring critical information is being received, they’ve harnessed the ability to create crucial two-way communication between HR and employees. 

“I integrated a questionnaire that we sent to our retail team to see how they’re feeling about returning to work, how they felt about the communications they were given over the past few months, and how they might be going with their physical and mental health,” says Abbey. 

“We received a lot of positive feedback and we’ve had employees reach out to the HR team to say thank you, feeling valued and that Hugo Boss really cares. It’s been a great way for our retail employees to communicate with us.”