Giving employees, and then the world, an update on the organization’s reaction to flight reductions.
United Airlines took the idea of making internal comms external a step further by making a memo to employees its primary message to the world during the government shutdown that delayed and canceled flights across the country. In addition to employees’ email inboxes, the memo from United CEO Scott Kirby was distributed on social media and other external channels for the world to see.
“Everything we were saying to our employees, we would have said to general audiences as well,” Steve Restivo, vice president of global corporate communications for United Airlines,
The note shared information about the mechanisms of United’s plan to cut back flights during the government shutdown, the impacts it would have on customers and some words of thanks for the airline’s employees for rolling with the situation.
These reductions will start on Friday, November 7, and we will continue to make rolling updates to our schedule as the government shutdown continues so we can give our customers several days’ advance notice and to minimize disruption for them and for all of you.
United’s long-haul international flying and our hub-to-hub flying will not be impacted by this schedule reduction direction from the FAA. That’s important to maintain the integrity of our network, give impacted customers as many options as possible to resume their trip, and sustain our crew pairing systems.
Instead, we will focus our schedule reductions on regional flying and domestic mainline flights that do not travel between our hubs.
We’ll use our app, website and push notifications to communicate to customers directly if their flight changes, and to offer rebooking options. We want to provide them with as much information as we can and in a way that’s simple and easy to understand.
Restivo told Ragan that the trials of COVID taught his team to focus on the organization’s employee audience first.
“Through the pandemic, we came to a realization early on that the best course of action for us was to be as direct and open and transparent with our employees as we could — good news or bad or somewhere in between,” Restivo said. “We also knew that what we were telling employees was going to be newsworthy. So we said to ourselves, Employees are our most important audience. Let’s treat them that way and let’s tell them everything first.’”
Here are a few elements of the United comms team’s employee-first messaging plan worth highlighting.
- Make your employees ambassadors by informing them up front. Restivo said that while the majority of the message addressed the impacts customers would feel from the shutdown, that was by design — it was meant to equip employees to face those concerns head-on. Unlike an information dump from on high, these words are framed as empowerment tools for employees to help them do their jobs. “For example, one of the elements of the note was a refund policy even if your flight wasn’t impacted,” Restivo said. “We wanted employees to know we were doing that so they could become ambassadors of that message. The communication had to address what was happening, how we’d manage through it and how our culture of doing the right thing should inform employees’ work over the next few days. It was as much a tone-setting exercise as it was informing employees.”
- Clarity in a crisis beats perfection. Restivo told Ragan that the reaction speed the team built up during COVID was undoubtedly helpful for getting the message out quickly. But the details and directives for employees within the memo were the most critical part of the communication, allowing employees to know United’s situation, their role within it and the path forward for all parties. That clarity can make a huge difference in how employees receive a message. “As a team and as an airline, we have the instinct to communicate with detailed information and in a coordinated way,” Restivo said. “That’s just part of our culture now.”
- The memo is the foundation upon which more team-specific communications are built. The memo from Kirby is undoubtedly the key piece of the employee communications puzzle. However, the steps that follow it are of great importance as well. Restivo told Ragan that the memo went to nearly 100,000 email inboxes, as that was the most efficient way to reach the employee audience. But the comms cascade can’t end there. Restivo also said that the employee-centric note is the cornerstone of this particular comms push, with more specific, team-level comms that follow the wider message. This helps make the situation clear up front, while allowing for more nuance and complexity in follow-ups. “We then have a series of communications that spring off of the note that are more work-group specific,” he said. “For instance, our contact centers then have to take that foundational communication, and then there’s some more prescriptive work that they have to communicate among their workgroup on, like how to handle calls as they’re coming into the call center.”
Restivo said that getting the note out to employees first was tactically important to inform people of the shutdown’s effects on airline operations and day-to-day work, but also key to preserving the employer-employee relationship during a crisis.
“That relationship is personal and it’s emotional,” he said. “And it’s something we have to protect.”
Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.
The post A look inside United Airlines’ employee comms strategy amid shutdown chaos appeared first on PR Daily.
