Case Study

Why culture completes the circle: Helping StaffCircle challenge the UK performance management market StaffCircle exists to combine performance management and employee engagement into one cloud platform that measurably improves workplace culture and automates processes to deliver greater operational efficiency. These data-driven insights provide the basis for informed decision making and a more strategic HR function.  CommsCo was hired in June 2021 and worked with StaffCircle’s CEO and marketing team to build brand awareness and create a drumbeat of momentum on the importance of creating positive workplace cultures. A positive company culture reaches positive PR results   The CommsCo team conducted an ongoing PR campaign to raise StaffCircle’s profile in the UK media. This included developing ongoing press releases, customer stories and thought leadership.  In a five month project for StaffCircle, we generated 60 pieces of tier one coverage. Results included:

• A customer story released on ‘The Great Retention’ leading to 10 pieces of coverage including Enterprise Times, HR Tech Series and UK Tech News
• Thought leadership live in leading publications UNLEASH, HR Zone and  IT Pro Portal
• CEO commentary from Mark in Management Today 
• Coverage generated from survey results that uncovered the deterioration of workplace culture in Digitalisation World, Workplace Insight, TechHR Series and more 
• Successful award entry resulting in a nomination for the HR Excellence Awards (by HR Magazine) in the ‘Best Employee Engagement Strategy’ category 

‘Appraisals Go AWOL’ campaign  The market is moving quicker than the feedback cycle, leaving long gaps between appraisals and delayed communication which arrives too late to create the necessary changes in business culture. In turn, having annual appraisals are a step back, negating the rapid digitisation of businesses over the past 18-months.  The ‘Appraisals Go AWOL’ campaign focused on the importance of continuous feedback by conducting a Pollfish survey to identify the disparity between organisations adopting new technology (but still using paper-based) and manual processes to conduct performance appraisals. These results were compiled into a report that was released at the CIPD event held in Manchester. Other outcomes included:

• 13 pieces of tier-one coverage from the ‘Appraisals Go Awol’ survey news including HR Director, Employer News and HR News
• Thought leadership article placed in HRZone on the ‘three performance review mistakes to avoid in a hybrid workplace’
• Thought leadership in Elite Business on the survey results 
• #AppraisalGoAwol social campaign to optimise results 
• Successful promotion of a virtual roundtable event