Annual report for employees celebrates contributions to reorganization

Gannett Fleming had undergone a yearlong corporate restructuring designed to break down silos and improve collaboration across the engineering firm’s business lines. The reorg took place under the leadership of a brand-new CEO on the heels of the organization’s 100th anniversary. Addressing these challenges with an annual report for employees that the workforce would actually want to read has earned Gannett Fleming first place in the “Annual Report” category of Ragan’s 2017 Employee Communications Awards.

To develop the meat of the report, the team reached out to leadership across the organization to learn how its divisions contributed to accomplishing its goals, “cross‐referencing information to paint a fitting picture of how the various practices were evolving in different disciplines but contributing to the culture and success of one unified company.” 

The report also dove into the six “pillars” of the organization’s strategic action plan while recognizing individual and team accomplishments. With six regions, 12 business lines, and 17 supporting departments, the report overcame the challenge of weaving the stories and themes together, unifying them under the “Join Our Journey” theme. 

Except for 150 printed copies (mainly for retiree stockholders who no longer had access to the intranet), the report was 100 percent digital, a PDF offered in flipbook format. 

The team didn’t stop with publication, though. A comprehensive communication campaign drove traffic to the report, which ultimately was opened more than 1,400 times, representing about 70 percent of the employee population. 

The report “helped the business lines and employees to identify how they helped the company achieve its goals, it set the tone and vision for the new CEO’s tenure and it presented the company’s story in a compelling and inspiring way.” 

Congratulations to Judy Hricak, Crystal O’Neill, Joelle Shea and Page Christman.