William Hill: Employee engagement app enhances people experience post-merger

When William Hill’s Digital Division acquired the Mr Green online gambling company it needed a swift way to welcome 450 digitally-savvy new colleagues and inform the existing team about the acquisition and new ways of working.

From day one there were key information needs: ‘need to know’ information such as a warm welcome; merger comms about the two organisations; and ongoing news and updates as the integration progressed.

The team wanted to maximise the impact of internal communication with their target audience, to go beyond integration stage into inspiration – and ensure strong employee engagement measurement.

To deliver an effective internal communication meant delivering a successful digital employee experience. With the audience already working within a digital environment, we developed a bespoke onboarding app with clear, planned content. This was the ideal way to reach and engage people who would appreciate something with more insight around their needs than only a corner on the intranet.

Our 2Gether onboarding app gave both audiences important welcome information alongside content about the two organisations as well as ongoing news and updates about the integration and broader topics. A particularly useful feature was the live questions area where employees posted unfiltered questions for response.

2Gether was made accessible through multiple website platforms until the teams could be fully integrated onto one intranet, and a list of users was preloaded into the system to make their login swift and simple. We also built the app to be sustainable and flexible beyond the integration stage.

In the first few weeks more than 67% of the 450 Mr Green audience were using the app. Between June and October, employees actively engaged with the app 45% more times compared to the previous three months.