National Highways is responsible for maintaining and improving England’s motorways and major A roads. Its 6,000 employees are based across the country, often operating in shifts and with differing levels of connectivity. AB was invited to transform National Highways’ print magazine, Highway, in 2021. Research showed the publication had lost its relevancy and impact with its readership. It was time to reimagine the magazine in a new digital format that would re-engage and re-connect with even the hardest-to-reach employees.

We began with research. Our first insight was that people at National Highways are time-poor and highly dispersed. However, we also found an abundance of fascinating – and often unexpected – stories across the organisation.

We knew this new channel would win engagement if it focused on authentic storytelling. The tone needed to be ‘normal, not formal’, avoiding acronyms and jargon, and using infographics and animations to demystify some of the organisation’s more complex plans and processes.

The needs of National Highways’ deskless employees were key. The magazine needed to be accessible on any device connected to the web, whilst being highly secure, stable and scalable.

We designed an intuitive user experience with easy navigation. Accessibility capabilities to ensure those with visual, hearing or mobility impairments could engage easily with the platform were a critical consideration.

Creatively, we focused on imaginative, bold storytelling, coupled with stunning photography and videography. Content is clearly signposted with each story connecting to one of the organisation’s five business values.

All stories are tagged to act as filters, allowing employees to easily find what they are most interested in from current and previous issues.

A ‘read time’ and ‘story in 60 seconds’ box-out at the beginning of each story help time-poor readers make the most of their interactions with Highway.

Success relies on a truly cross-channel approach. For each issue, we create teasers and promotional assets for Yammer, plus assets for newsletters and the intranet. These drive traffic to the magazine and boost engagement.

Quantitative and qualitative evidence shows Highway is performing well against an agreed set of benchmarks.

We provide a key performance indicator tracker one and three weeks after the launch of each issue. We also create a detailed quarterly report, outlining the key metrics and comparisons with previous issues. We interrogate these metrics to continuously assess how we can improve the magazine with fresh ideas and functionality.

Since the launch of Highway, average engagement time has been six minutes 15 seconds, well above the industry standard of two to three minutes.

The launch issue achieved 13,671 views across a workforce of 6,000. The metrics continue to show high reader engagement, as well as employees viewing multiple articles per visit.

We learn lessons from these metrics too. The videos we created for the first issue were several minutes long and had relatively low finish rates. We experimented with the length of videos and found a maximum of one minute was optimum. As a result, consumption rates of video have improved dramatically, from 59% to 77%.

Employees have been in touch to show their appreciation of Highway. This comment sums it up: “I just wanted to say what a tremendous job you’ve done on this. It looks great, it’s easy to navigate and really eye-catching and engaging. You’ve finally dragged us into the 21st century…and saved a lot of trees in the process!”

Speak to us about your employee magazine or anything else internal comms related, email info@abcomm.co.uk