It’s 7 o’clock in the morning in Melbourne, and hundreds of workers are counting on Transdev to get them to work on time. Public transportation is a big job in Australia and New Zealand. The company relies on almost 6,000 Transdev employees operating more than 2,000 vehicles and vessels carrying 145 million customers each year.
As the leading provider of multi-modal transport solutions in Australia and New Zealand, Transdev knows what it takes to create a safe and streamlined commute. The company is committed to innovation and consistently turns challenges into opportunities for its customers and employees at every stage of their experience. Safe travel is the cornerstone on which Transdev was founded, and their safety record is a testament to this focus and their continued growth and success.
At Transdev, communication is critical to a job well done. But because their crews are dispersed across transport networks in cities and rarely sit at their computers, the company found that their previous internal communications channels, which included email, letters, and pin boards, weren’t reaching all workers. They began searching for internal communication platforms that they could test for greater reach by connecting office-bound and on-site employees via their personal mobile devices.
It was often difficult to operate communications for all workers, since everyone had different methods of receiving messages. Some employees needed to be addressed directly while others expected to be called or written.”
Guillaume Mauboussin, Technical Business Analyst at Transdev
Along with the challenge of communicating with a workforce on the move, Guillaume Mauboussin, Technical Business Analyst at Transdev, along with the company’s internal communications team, found gaps in the workflow for employees who needed varying access to forms, documents, and more.
To begin the process of transforming internal communications at Transdev, the team searched for various solutions to test with employees and internal stakeholders.
A Successful Employee App Pilot for Internal Communication
Mauboussin heard about Staffbase and found the cooperative approach to customer success to be a good match for a pilot solution. Staffbase offered Transdev quick assistance to launch a pilot employee app in only six months called mytransdev with a focus on flexibility, user experience, featured plugins, and customizations needed for the initial scope of their internal communications project.
Since the launch of the pilot in November 2017, the employee communication app has been well received at Transdev with approximately 50% of workers adopting the platform in three months.
“Through the app, our workflows are improved, and users can access all the data in the app while they are on the move,” said Mauboussin. “Targeted information is passed along simply, and staff have an easy way of entering vacation requests, notifying managers about sick leave, and viewing shift schedules without having to go directly to an office.”
“It’s really good — I like it. I use it for daily operations such as for sharing working sheets and rosters. The app includes everything I need to communicate with my colleagues,” says Chantal Braham, a Transdev employee in Sydney who is happy to have the app.
And David Read, one of Chantal’s colleagues, confirms the app’s ease of use. “It is easy, I’ve got everything for my working day. It is really helpful to see the rosters in the app and the timetables of arrivals and departures as well.”
The Initial Plan for the Employee App Pilot
Mauboussin says that the mytransdev pilot was supported by the company’s executive team and given to three operational teams in order to test how a mobile platform would be received and how the new technology could best be used. Initial feedback from the pilot was positive.
Employees reported that the app was simple to initiate and offered easy access to information and communication. The most popular pilot features included the company directory; a timetable showing when buses and trams depart; educational pages on injury treatment, mental health, and wellness; and group chats where employees shared ideas and exchanged information.
Within mytransdev, Mauboussin allocated administrative rights to various communications professionals within the test departments. This allowed for targeted content, department-wide messaging, top-down department communications, and push notifications that could be directed to each employee group.
According to Mauboussin, employees also quickly learned how to create and share content via mytransdev. Employees contact one another directly using the chat function, or they share information via a blog-like chat with everybody in their department. Users also receive smart push notifications to stay informed of their group activities.
“If an employee sees a colleague using the app, he or she installs it as well. It has been one of our most successful changes,” said Mauboussin.
The Future of mytransdev for a Global Workforce
“With a pilot, we were able to thoroughly test which plugins were supported at Transdev, which files can be uploaded, and how much time the team needed to adopt the app,” said Mauboussin. He also wants to explore using the app for automatic translation to improve communication among a multilingual workforce.
“The app really improved communication between the on-site workers and the offices. The easy access no matter where you are, the connection between the colleagues, and the embedding of different files had a great impact on our workflow. We really appreciate using the Staffbase employee app,” Guillaume concludes.
7 Tips for Starting a Successful Pilot with Staffbase
- Conduct a survey with people from every area of your organization to establish clear objectives for your communications platform.
- Ensure that senior leadership champions your project and involves themselves in the launch of your pilot for greater engagement.
- Create a clear timeline to gather metrics and assess feedback from your test.
- Identify and gather a diverse group of employees who are likely to adopt the app early and share feedback.
- Enlist and train content contributors whose use of the tool will increase the reach of targeted messaging and provide oversight for user groups.
- Secure a system for receiving and responding to feedback to guide the growth of your platform.
- Contact Staffbase.
How is your organization dealing with changes in internal communication? Drop a comment in the section below. We’d love to hear from you!