Turning rocket scientists into culture builders

Employee communications doesn’t have to be rocket science. Unless you work at The Aerospace Corporation, where it kind of does. But no matter what your organization does, there’s always room to make your employees culture ambassadors.

At Ragan’s Employee Experience Conference earlier this month, Sabrina Steele, executive director of corporate affairs and the communications division at The Aerospace Corporation, told the audience that there’s power in the unity an employee ambassador program brings.

“If you want to go fast, go alone,” she said. “If you want to go far, go together. That is the essence of an ambassador program. We can go fast every day in communications, but we need employees to enable us to scale and bring authenticity.”

Steele said that when she began her role at The Aerospace Corporation, her team had its work cut out for them to turn employees into ambassadors of culture.

“When I showed up at Aerospace, we were a valuable brand but no one had spent any time on the brand,” she said. “We didn’t actually have a real logo. We didn’t have anything about stakeholder analysis or engagement.”

She added that a big part of the challenge was getting people with major differences in experience under a united cultural umbrella.