Best known for its 140-year history as a publisher of science and health journals including Gray’s Anatomy, Elsevier has become increasingly digital over the years, evolving from provision of printed material to online accessibility and data analytics, yet the company culture had not moved with the times.

“In 2015 we had 500 technologists; today we have 2,000,” said Jill. “In 2021, we published more than 600,000 peer-reviewed articles, 89% more than a decade ago, and every month more than 18 million users visit ScienceDirect® – the world’s largest peer-reviewed database of scientific and medical research. In 2020 more than 1.6 billion articles were downloaded from one of our sites.”

When she joined Elsevier in 2021, Jill recognised that the organisation had quickly gone from adolescence to maturity but culturally there was a lack of understanding about the value the technology team now brought to the business.

“Content is great and that’s our brand, but we are now all about data and analytics – we look through content with customers and point out insights. We shorten the lifecycle of what researchers do with our products.

“Technology is enabling that solution and also growth. We needed our teams, and the business, to understand why we are there.”

Listen, don’t tell

Jill sought internal alignment from the tech team before developing and communicating the tech team’s strategic narrative.

“We needed to make sure we were all singing from the same book before growing the message beyond technology. You’re not going to get very far without that.”

First was a listening tour to understand what the tech team members thought was working or not working.

“I spoke to 200 engineers in small sessions of five at a time. It was a safe space where they could tell me what we could do better. There were lots of ideas but the consistent theme was lack of vision and focus around how they contributed to the bigger picture – their purpose.

“By workshop 10 there was one clear theme – a people-centred approach was crucial.”

Involve leaders

As well as on the ground research, Jill worked with HR, talent management, internal comms, IT and the senior leadership team to cement the technology narrative and make sure it aligned with the firm’s employer value proposition and had synergies with the non-technical side of the business before communicating it more widely.

“It needed to bring together all these different cultures so they were aligned and all moving in same direction.”

Tell a story people want to hear

Jill worked with the comms team to communicate the narrative with a strong storytelling foundation.

“We held a townhall reiterating that we had heard what people were saying and were working on a strategy that included how we recruit the best talent, how we keep our really great people in a competitive market and how we were going to make sure new people felt part of global technology from day one.

“The next townhall was what we were going to do. Then ‘how’ – what we want to do, how we are going to get there together – a rallying call that everyone is behind so they know how they contribute to organisational goals. To drive belief, you need to involve people and we were pushing on an open door, since people wanted the business to understand the value they bring.”

Part of the ‘how’ involves Jill and Lisa gathering case studies from the business to show where technology is working well. A short video has also been created to show the value the team brings to the rest of the business through Technology with Purpose.

“We’re weaving these messages into all our communications,” says Lisa. “We have a set of behaviours which we reinforce at every opportunity and search out the miracles so we can tell stories that resonate throughout the organisation and beyond.

“Already we’re seeing an increase in trust and understanding our strategy which was really low. We now have 92% trust in leadership and similar in understanding of our technology strategy and how it fits with our global strategy.”

Keep beating the drum

Both Lisa and Jill are driving ongoing internal education and message reinforcement and are holding their first ever tech showcase through a weeklong ‘follow the sun’ event involving employees and their stories.

Then there will be people manager training, updating recruitment material and revising the onboarding programme so people feel part of the global team from day one.

And of course there’ll be measurement. “Comms should be data first too. We need to measure everything to understand how we’re doing,” says Jill.

Watch the full video below.