Launching a ‘community of communicators’ with an ambassador program

During Ragan’s Employee Experience Conference this past summer, Ragan CCO Matt Kinsman spoke with Southwire Director of Communications and Giving Back Ashley Bush about how she drove the creation of the cable and wire manufacturer’s ambassador program, Southwire Circuit, in fall ’22.

This effort empowered corporate comms to activate local ambassadors across reasons, translating and championing overarching org-wide messages to smaller teams and improving manager comms with frontline employees in the process.

Here’s what we learned.

Central to standing up this effort was an evolution of Southwire’s employee experience platform. Bush’s team wanted its intranet to be accessible via mobile or desktop, and function so similarly to the social media platforms employees always use that it felt like a natural extension of their days.

This meant ensuring that the feed they accessed was customized to who they are as a team member.

“It connects with our existing technologies, it understands who you are as a team member,” explained Bush. “Your feed is customized to your location, your role in the organization, maybe specific topics or pieces in the organization that you really want to make sure you’re getting news and information about.”