PRNEWS Platinum Awards: ECMC Group COVID-19 Response

The following article is from PRNEWS

As the COVID-19 global public health crisis began to emerge in the United States, ECMC Group anticipated the need for a coordinated effort to keep employees informed and operational. ECMC Group maintained business continuity across its affiliate organizations by implementing a robust communications plan to support employees, borrowers, students, grantees, clients, customers and communities the enterprise serves.

ECMC Group required a multichannel communications strategy that took into account a diverse workforce and multiple lines of business. The strategy involved closely monitoring employee sentiment, establishing a regular cadence of employee communications, developing the IT and website infrastructure to support a range of communications touch points, identifying aspects of ECMC Group's culture that employees value, pivoting to virtual wellbeing programs, cultivating opportunities to insert ECMC Group as a thought leader and proactively opening lines of communications with government and health authorities to stay informed about local requirements.

Tactics used to execute the strategy included regular updates from the CEO via email and blogs, virtual all-employee town hall meetings, IT resource guides to help employees troubleshoot, a private Facebook Group for active and furloughed employees to stay connected, virtual "volunteer from home" community outreach programs and virtual panel discussions.

An employee survey in April received a 67 percent response rate, with approximately 90 percent of respondents answering favorably to all six questions.