Marita and Annelies at Mia have both navigated a long way through the waters of internal communication. And for Sara Lee too. “Seven years ago Sara Lee Belgium asked us to lay the foundations of their internal communication. Soon after came a period of transition and transformation in the company, expressed in the slogan: “Imagine the Power of the new Sara Lee”. It was in this spirit that we created the staff magazine Imagine. Now it's the turn of the new employer branding. It’s the perfect opportunity to examine the whole project in detail.”

More Inter Action
The occasion was the new employer branding, but the real starting point was the results of the Engagement Survey in which members of staff could share their vision, including their opinion on internal communication. In particular, they pressed for more transparency and more interaction between management and staff.

Annelies: “We considered this to be an important objective in our strategy. Communication, definitely, but not top-down one-way traffic. It has to be clearly recognisable as relevant information. And more than communication.”

Marita: “To us interaction seemed like a concept that encompasses a lot of things. Interaction is more than just words. Action and reaction. Being able to adapt to each other. And we also thought the hint towards interactive events online was an interesting idea. We could build on this in the future.” And of course this concept was also in Mia’s genes: More Inter Action.

Mia & Sara Lee
For the development of the Interact plan, Mia consulted a mix of profiles from the management team, in which both the HR management and business executives were represented.

On 15 October the new staff magazine Interact was brought out. From now on it will be published three times a year. Powerful stories with strong signals seeking reactions. In the meantime the Interact newsletter also came into being. The publication will be e-mailed to office workers and handed out in the print version to production staff. Will Interact lead to more? We’ll find out next summer, when the project is evaluated.