Alan Hill, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications and Government Relations, Serco
A defining challenge for Serco in 2019 was the acquisition of the Naval Systems Business Unit from Alion, which closed in August 2019. This was a very sizable deal that dramatically expanded the scope of solutions Serco could provide to the Navy and other customers. Serco’s stated goal was to retain all 1,000 of the acquisition employees, as their exceptional expertise and customer relationships were at the core of value being acquired.
Alan Hill worked with Serco’s CEO and senior leadership to develop a comprehensive communications plan that included:
- Carefully sequenced employee communications that educated existing and newly joining Serco colleagues about the strategy behind the deal, provided a smooth integration path for acquisition employees and created marketing materials to educate all employees on the new services and capabilities
- Revised all outward-facing communications and marketing materials so that from day one executives had the tools to communicate the full value proposition Serco was able to now deliver to customers
- Executed a comprehensive education program to foster collaboration across business units and geographic regions so all customer-facing Serco team members were knowledgeable and could identify new opportunities
In executing this strategy, Hill and his MarCom team used an integrated approach that combined email communications, newsletters, presentations, videos, collateral materials, social media, live video collaboration platform and the website.
The success of this approach was measured by successfully completing the integration of the Alion business, a significant number of new joint bids submitted that leveraged new and legacy capabilities, and an increase in employee engagement scores that ranked Serco as a highly engaged company when compared to industry peers.
Why Watch
For the next 12 months, Hill and his team’s focus will be on continuing to build a position of thought leadership for Serco in its focus market sectors and sustain high levels of employee engagement and service excellence during the current pandemic.