Performance at the Front Line: RevGen’s Huddles Tool

Author: Kate Toole

Author: Jennifer Barton

What can you do when your company, or even just one department, is so big that it’s difficult to communicate important updates to your staff and ensure they’ve been received and understood?  

There are obvious options – for instance, the communications team can send a mass email to all the frontline employees and just hope that it is read, even by those who may be out of the office. However, there’s no guaranteed way to know if the message has gotten through to everyone. Plus, if the communication is particularly time sensitive, the risk that it hasn’t been delivered effectively is even higher.  

So, when our client posed this question, RevGen knew there had to be a better way. 

The Challenge  

Our client, a global corporation with over 50,000 frontline employees, faced significant challenges in effective communication and information dissemination. The sheer size and geographical dispersion of the workforce make it difficult to ensure that critical information reaches all employees promptly and consistently. Moreover, they lacked a reliable system to track whether important messages had been received, understood, and enacted by frontline staff.

This communication gap not only hampered operational efficiency but also posed risks to customer service quality and overall organizational performance. The absence of a streamlined, traceable communication system created bottlenecks in change management initiatives and impeded the company’s ability to respond swiftly to market changes or internal improvements. 

The Solution: Huddles 

To address these critical communication challenges, RevGen designed an innovative solution that was unique to the industry. The result was an integrated communication platform that streamlined information dissemination and also enhanced accountability for the whole organization. By leveraging this approach, they transformed their front-line team meetings, referred to as huddles, into powerful engines of organizational alignment and efficiency. 

Implementing the RevGen Huddles Tool 

RevGen designed and implemented a tool that offers a dynamic and engaging method for a leader to prepare, organize and deliver team huddles. The tool is integrated seamlessly with the organization’s performance management platform, including functionality designed for huddle facilitators, usually supervisors, to present content with ease and business leaders to distribute content and track whether the information was delivered in a timely manner. 

Facilitators: Empowering Effortless Frontline Communication 

Frontline supervisors schedule and lead weekly huddles, utilizing the huddle tool as the primary feature for these crucial team connections. These regular gatherings serve multiple purposes: 

1. Information Dissemination: Supervisors use the tool to share important updates, policy changes, and strategic directives from upper management. 
2. Customize Content: While maintaining consistency with organizational messages, supervisors can tailor discussions to their team’s specific needs and challenges. 
3. Team Alignment: The huddles ensure that all team members are aligned regarding goals, expectations, and current priorities. 
4. Track Attendance and Engagement: Supervisors can easily monitor which team members have participated in huddles and engaged with the content. 
5. Two-way Communication: Employees can ask questions, provide feedback, and share insights, creating a more engaged and informed workforce. 

Business Leaders: Tracking Delivery and Engagement 

The RevGen communication tool extends its capabilities beyond frontline supervisors, offering powerful features for business leaders across the organization: 

1. Broad Reach: Leaders can broadcast a single message to over 50,000 frontline employees simultaneously, ensuring consistent communication across the entire organization. 
2. Change Management: The tool simplifies the process of introducing and implementing changes, allowing leaders to communicate updates effectively to customer-facing teams. 
3. Traceability and Accountability: The integrated system tracks message delivery, allowing leaders to see which frontline supervisors have conducted their huddles and shared critical information and which front-line employees were delivered the content. 
4. Employee Engagement Metrics: Leaders can monitor how employees interact with the content, including view rates, engagement through polling, and acknowledgment of communications. 
5. Interactive Content: The tool supports various content types, including text, images, videos, and interactive elements like polls and quizzes, making communications more engaging and effective. 

Conclusion  

RevGen has created a comprehensive approach that has dramatically improved information flow, accountability, and engagement across the entire organization ensuring that critical information flows efficiently from top leadership to frontline employees, while also facilitating bottom-up communication. The result is a more connected and informed organization. Within the first few months of deployment, the organization currently conducts approximately 800 huddles per week and the volume will grow as more of the organization adopts this capability.

Interested in how RevGen can harness technology to help your company improve communication? Contact us today to speak to one of our experts.

Kevin Able is a Principal Architect in RevGen’s Digital Enablement practice.  He is passionate about delivering practical solutions that drive value to his clients.

Doug Luehrs is a Director of Client Success at RevGen. He is passionate about building strong teams and putting innovation to work while delivering products and services that have a superior customer experience.

Kate Toole is a Manager in RevGen’s Digital Enablement practice. She specializes in tailoring and elevating application designs and development based on her client’s needs.