Episode 3: Case Study - Engaging Employees Through Internal Podcasting

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Symyx Case Study: Engaging Employees Through Internal Podcasting

In this program, you will learn how Symyx Technologies is using podcasting to improve internal communication and employee productivity.

- The importance of internal communications in a down economy
- Why podcasting is ideal for internal communications
- Outline of the production process for creating an internal podcast
- Why Symyx choose MobileCast Media

Program Transcript

Caroline Tsou: I am the marketing manager at Symyx technologies.  We serve midsize companies in the life sciences, chemicals and energy industries.  We have 6 major locations throughout the world in Europe, Asia and in the US.

Symyx moves very quickly.  We have made multiple acquisitions in the past couple of years and have multiple business units.  In order to keep all of our employees aware of the activities that are going on and the projects that are going on, we were painfully aware that we needed to implement better internal communications quickly.

Internal communications should always be important to a company, but especially as we enter a down economy, morale goes down, a lot of restructuring happens and employees become unfocused.  Internal communications should be used to help focus employees and to help them understand what the strategic direction of the company is going forward so that they can align themselves and their work according to that.

We realize that email is easy and quick, but it's not always the optimal method for engaging employees.  Our internal podcasts have helped align our employees with the strategic direction of the company.  It's allowed them to do this in a way that is more engaging by hearing in the voice of our senior management team instead of just in an email format.

We chose to do podcasts because it's a very popular form of communication now and we're a technology company.  Of course we want to be up with the latest technologies.  It's easy for employees to download this and listen at any point.  They can download it to their ipod, listen to it in the car, on the plane, at home, as their working out, on their laptop - many options to do that.  So it's one of the best ways to get our message out there.

We try to keep our production process simple.  We create either talking points or a script based on the person giving the podcast and then we go into the recording and adjust as needed.  MobileCast Media has been great about being there to give us advice as we do the recording on adjustments that we need to make.

Afterwards, again a very simple process, MobileCast Media does the editing for us, we approve it and they post it on the website and we create a link to the website.  We wanted a vendor that was local, easily accessible and had multiple capabilities.  So in this case, podcasting was something we wanted to start with, but we knew ahead of time that it wasn't the only thing we wanted to do, so to have video capability was an added bonus and somewhere we knew we wanted to go.

I think many of us have had the experience of having to give vendors every step of the way and that is not the case with MobileCast Media.  They have been able to come in and give me direction, which is exactly what I need from a vendor and help me every step of the way.

We chose MobileCast Media because from the very first conversation it was obvious that they knew what they were talking about.  They asked me the right questions, they laid out a good project plan according to the way I answered those questions and had the capability to deliver on that in-house.

We were very happy with MobileCast Media because there has not been a podcast or a video podcast request that we've made that they have not been able to deliver.  They have been very easy to work with, they have been flexible and efficient and we can't ask for more from a vendor.

We serve the Silicon Valley San Francisco Bay Area including, San Jose, San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Fremont, Palo Alto and the 408, 650 and 415 area codes.