After acquiring Ladbrokes Coral in 2018, GVC became one of the world’s largest sports betting and gaming groups, and the UK’s largest high street bookmaker. The company is committed to giving its people a voice and being a great place to work, and ran its first global people survey – ‘Your Voice’ – in a bid to get as many colleagues involved as possible.

Harkness Kennett had worked with the retail side of the business before, conducting a channel audit and communicating a previous people survey. Our experience told us that a strong campaign was needed to reach colleagues. In particular, plenty of guidance was needed to help managers involve their teams, particularly those on the shop floor. To achieve this, we developed a creative multi-channel approach, clearly showing how taking part in the survey would make a real, positive difference to the business.

This was also the first campaign to harness GVC’s new employer brand and tone of voice; an upbeat, more informal conversation style that we used to full effect. Thanks to our impactful intranet banners, countdown widget, manager briefings and posters, the survey response was strong: 70% of colleagues completed it, providing plenty of meaningful data.

The next step was to help GVC’s people celebrate their strengths and tackle the issues surfaced by the survey. Building on our previous work, action-planning materials clearly signposted each step, building confidence and expertise among managers running the conversations.

“HarknessKennett bring a deep knowledge of both people surveys and communication. They added insight, ideas and enormous value throughout Your Voice and helped us to reach our goal of the majority of our people taking part. The creative really cut through; we were delighted that so many people around the globe were talking about Your Voice and what needs to happen next to support our ambitions.”
Head of Internal Communications, GVC Holdings