The Dutch organization Waterschap Hollandse Delta (WSHD) was facing a big communications challenge: With the implementation of the new Environment and Planning Act coming up in January 2022, they needed to communicate the effects of the law clearly towards its employees. As it was crucial to reach the employees with the message, WSHD contacted us to help them to set up and roll out an internal communication campaign.

As of January 2022, the new Environment and Planning Act will be implemented in the Netherlands. This new law is a summary simplifying all existing 26 laws concerning the physical living environment. However, the act is pretty complex and requires some changes in the daily business of several governmental organisations concerned by this law. WSHD is one of them.

Therefore, it's essential that all employees of WSHD know what the new legislation is all about and eventually adapt their way of working accordingly.

Wanting to ensure a stable quality of work, the attitude and behaviour of employees at WSHD needed to change. Instead of working with checklists, employees will need to collaborate more proactively on the cases in the future. Not only internally, but also externally with citizens and other governmental organisations.

But it wasn't that easy: Many WSHD employees were rather sceptical regarding the new Environmental and Planning Act, as its implementation had been delayed for years by the Dutch government. Also, most employees thought that it didn't have too many consequences for their daily tasks. Additionally, the high work load on a daily basis kept them from investing time to get to know the law.

How can we ensure that employees change their attitude and behaviour to get ready for the implementation of the new Environment and Planning Act?

In close collaboration with the project team at WSHD, we defined a clear target: By the end of Q3 2021, 90 percent of the employees knows what the new act includes, which knowledge instruments there are and what this means for their daily business. WSHD created their own study- and trainings programs. Our task was to ensure that employees got motivated to sign up on their own initiative and without pressure.

Before we worked out a communications plan, we needed to understand the target audience better. After all, the purpose of the campaign was for them to change their behaviour and attitude. To find out more about them, we started an investigation including workshops with experts, interviews and questionnaires. Based on the outcomes, we created different personas.

Each persona represents one of the segments of the total target audience. By getting to know them first, we now knew their motivations, potential pain points, the best channels to reach them and more. Now, we were able to set up the internal communication plan!

To reach every single target audience, we put together an internal communication plan consisting of several elements. Using an e-mail automation tool, we set up an e-mail campaign, always taking into account the different target audiences with different needs and different messages. 

We also created a landing page where we could store all information. That way, every target audience could refer to one central and clearly structured page when looking for input. Obviously, we didn't leave the page empty: We also developed different media such as animations and infographics to get the message across.

To make the campaign measurable, we installed analytical tools. This way, we were able to measure not only the opening-rate of the e-mail campaign, but also the activity on the landing page. And we were able to draw conclusions if we were able to reach our communication goal.

Before starting to roll out the campaign, we also did a 0-measurement to set a benchmark. By measuring the knowledge level before starting the campaign, we were able to define its effectiveness. 

We started the internal communication campaign in February 2021. During this period, we got together once a week with the WSHD-project team. As WSHD had taken care of their own training program, Funk-e was responsible for the e-mail campaign and the landing page. During the update-calls, we kept WSHD informed about the success of the campaign, but also flagged potential risks and chances. Of course, we also made suggestions to minimize the risks or to make use of the occuring chances.

The internal communication campaign for WSHD turned out as a big success! A total of 87.5 percent of the target audience visited the landing page when the campaign was launched. But while knowing if they visited the page is one thing, we were also able to measure if they actually read the content on the page by measuring the length of their stays. On average, the employees took 4.5 minutes to study the content during the first week. A huge success, especially considering the busy schedules of the WSHD-employees!

But all these figures were way less important than the real result of the campaign: Did the employees take the next step in the employee journey and did they sign up for a training or workshop to learn more about the Environment and Planning Act? They did! The results showed that the knowledge level of the target audience was increased by 35 percent, with a signing-up rate of 75 percent.