Ericsson is the driving force behind the Networked Society and has a long-term relationship with every major telecom operator in the world. With more than 110,000 professionals and customers in 180 countries, Ericsson combines global scale with technology and services leadership.

Ericsson’s business unit support solutions (BUSS), was suffering from a lack of awareness and engagement in its internal transformation strategy. Employees understood that change was needed, but didn’t see their part in achieving that change.

We needed to make them understand that the strategy was designed for them, and needed their participation in order to work. Change wasn’t going to happen on its own.

So, we created the communication campaign Count Me In.

Count Me In is a series of corporate communications efforts stating the principles, Speed, Simplicity and Execution. We simplified, condensed and personalized the strategy into booklets, produced tv-segments for the internal broadcast, and arranged workshops repeating the same message.

We held an interactive employee competition, using gamification tactics, where participants were asked to visualize key elements from the campaign theme. All in all we applied the campaign principles of marketing to an internal audience.

The results were mind-blowing.

Before the count me in campaign, strategy awareness was at 65%.

A year into the process, that number had passed 90%.

After a period of financial losses, Ericsson’s software business is now generating profit – showing that an engaged and empowered workforce is a workforce that achieves results.

But most importantly: Change is now happening.

The ‘Count me in!’ campaign execution was divided into Awareness and Engagement activities.

Awareness activities consisted of:

• All employee broadcasts

• Emails: Head of Business Units and Internal Communications

• Strategy webpage: strategy information and material on the Intranet

• Leaders forum: info and supporting material for line managers

• Article series in the Intranet

• Plasma TV for promotion

• Branded ‘Count Me In’ promotional items including caps, tumblers, roll-ups, lanyards and booklets.

Engagement activities consisted of:

• Strategy Workshop web-tool: an online tool to support line managers to conduct the strategy workshop with their team.

• Strategy Photo Contest: a fun strategy photo contest for all employees using the internal social media Ericsson MyNET.

Output/awareness:

• Employee awareness of the BUSS-strategy surpassed the goal of 75% and ultimately reached 90.5%.

• In terms of strategy understanding, we saw a 10% overall increase.

• Employee understanding of how their own deliverables and personal goals contributed to the unit’s strategy rose from 83.4% in 2013 to 91.8% in 2014.

Knowledge/consideration:

• The number of employees who had participated in a workshop or discussion about the strategy increased by 5%.

• The number of employees who said that ’my manager actively seeks my input in developing my unit’s strategy’ also rose by 8%.

Action/business impacts:

• The BUSS Strategy Photo Contest featured over 100 employee-submitted photos, attracted over 4,600 visitors between November 4 and December 8, and generated more than 4,800 Likes.

• Employee engagement increased by 7%.

• After a period of financial losses, Ericsson’s software business is now generating profit.