Engaging a workforce for Sport Wales

By Tom,

February 2016

Design
Every good company claims to care about their staff. We’re lucky enough to work with Sport Wales, an organisation who work hard to back up this claim time and time again. Each year they ask every single member of staff to complete a survey—from the people working from the Cardiff headquarters to the sailing team in North Wales. They listen carefully to people’s opinions and take action to help shape a better future for the organisation.
Our Future logo for Sport Wales

In previous years the percentage of staff who completed the survey has been impressive, peaking at over 80%. This year the aim was to engage everyone, trying to better previous results. We were asked to give the survey campaign a memorable and inspiring identity that would encourage people to get involved. After going through the naming process, the name we agreed on was Our Future.

Creating the Our Future logo

Piecing together the identity

This project was 100% internal, so there was scope to deviate away from the Sport Wales brand guidelines. We had licence to create something completely new, fresh and engaging. We wanted the style to be bright and a visual representation of the people of Sport Wales. With the idea that every employee and their opinions are unique, we created a range of hand-drawn shapes to form the typography of the logo. We introduced a palette of vibrant colours to help represent those unique characters and personalities.

Our Future logo in Welsh

A survey takes a wide range of opinions which initially creates a chaotic amount of information—this data is organised and analysed, and based on the results a plan is put together to build a better future. This was part of our concept for the identity—making meaningful actions from chaotic data.

Creating the Our Future logo

Vibrant typography

With the identity approved and a recognisable design style starting to take shape, we wanted to continue this look and feel onto other deliverables for the project. Knowing that this style would be lead by typography and illustration, we created a custom typeface—allowing us to quickly and easily design bold printed items that would be recognised as part of the Our Future campaign.

Custom Typeface for Our Future campaign

Inclusive illustration

A significant requirement of the project was to make everyone feel valued and engaged. In previous years the catering and housekeeping departments failed to take part in the survey. To help increase participation across the organisation we created a series of illustrations targeting each individual department.

Illustrations for Our Future campaign
Posters to raise awareness of the campaign

Making a difference

Sometimes, internal surveys are seen as having little impact by staff. With this in mind we encouraged Sport Wales to share results from last year and the consequential improvements that have been made. The idea was that this would help staff see the value in taking part. To share these results we created a fun and very visual pocket sized booklet.

Our Future campaign booklet

Email reminders

The Our Future survey is an online survey that can be completed easily on any device. To help remind and prompt staff to take part we designed an email with a direct link to the survey, making things as convenient as possible.

Our Future email reminders
Over 90%! Woohoo... amazing result, we are so pleased. The work you did was fantastic!
Zoe Grainger

Results

We were delighted to discover that the reaction to the campaign has been extremely positive. 90.5% of staff completed the survey, up from 80% the previous year. This was the highest response rate in Sport Wales' history.

Working with clients who like to push the creative boundaries and are so dedicated to engaging staff is a joy. We're looking forward to getting one step closer to 100% next year!