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American Express - Communications Team of the Year

Gold Stevie Award Winner 2021, Click to Enter The 2022 American Business Awards

Company: American Express, New York, NY
Company Description: American Express Travel is one of the largest multi-channel consumer travel agencies in the world, serving American Express Card Members with a full range of travel services -- from trip planning and booking, to enhancing the broader travel experience.
Nomination Category: Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, & Public Relations Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Communications Team of the Year

Nomination Title: Driving an Internal Culture of Communications

Over the past three years, American Express Travel has been on a journey to become more global, improve the employee experience, and bring membership to life for American Express Card Members. The Internal Communications Team has been at the forefront of this change, finding new ways to inform and engage more than 6,000 employees in over 20 countries.

In 2019, the team set out to redesign the department’s intranet after gathering extensive feedback from employees, most of whom spendtheir days on the phone talking to customers, with every minute of their day scheduled and very little time to read emails.

The redesigned intranet – which included targeted communications, more user-friendly navigation, and new features to foster more dialogue – rolled out from late 2019 into 2020. This timing proved to be invaluable when, in March 2020, COVID-19 brought the world to a standstill and internal communications became more important than ever.

Not only was there an urgent need to connect all employees in a completely virtual environment, but the heavy impacts to the travel industry required an online space for all employees to access critical, ever-changing information. The Internal Communications Team stepped up to these challenges and delivered.

Beginning in 2019, the team redesigned the American Express Travelintranet, known as the TLS Link (TLS for Travel & Lifestyle Services). The TLS Link consists of one global site and 19 local sub-sites in various languages.

As the team worked on the redesign, they built upmomentum with numerous communications wins throughout 2019, including:
-Creating and producing live blogs for two large-scale internal events that generated 35,431 views; 2,139 likes; and 603 comments
-Rolling out a communications and activation plan for the department’s transformation strategy
-Expanding the team’s weekly newsletters to six versions in various local languages
-Launching monthly metrics dashboards for senior leaders

In 2020, the team leveraged the redesigned intranet to launch a COVID-19-driven strategy focused on informing, engaging, recognizing and supporting all employees. The 2020 communications wins included:

Creating an internal COVID-19 information hub for all American Express Travel employees, with key resources such as air and hotel cancellation policies, travel restrictions, and more. This hub later became an internal COVID-19 travelplanning site to help our employees find critical information when assisting Card Members with their travel plans.

Transforming an annual, in-person employee recognition event into a week-long virtual celebration that resulted in a 513% increase in online participation.

Rolling out an Appreciation Hub for all employees to publicly express their gratitude to one another and highlight great work.

Driving employee engagement and belonging with more leader messages, blog posts, and the creation of a dedicated inclusion and diversity space.

The American Express Travel Internal Communications Team has become known throughout American Express as pioneers of internal communications. During a 2019 American Express leadership meeting, the team was highlighted for the innovative way they have created an inclusive and engaging online community. The President of American Express Travel, Audrey Hendley, also declared the department’s intranet to bethe organization’s “family kitchen table.”

COVID-19 brought numerous challenges to American Express Travel. Like many other companies, all 6,000+ employees around the world had to now work from home -- some in more challenging environments than others. In addition to that, for several weeks, American Express Travel was inundated with Card Members calling to cancel or change their travel plans. The Internal Communications Team played a critical role in addressing these challenges with the launch of its COVID-19 information hub and the rollout of its virtual employee engagement strategy.

Ongoing data and feedback continue to show the importance of the team’s work:

-The TLS Link spaces generated approximately 5 million total views in 2020
-Average global participation grew more than 50% YOY with some local sub-sites seeing up to 500% YOY growth.

Verbatim feedback:
“Thank you so much for listening to our feedback and for tailor making this to our needs.”
“This is so helpful. Now it will be easy to keep up to date on the latest information. Thanks for putting this together.”
“You are KEY for American Express Travel and we love you!”

Transforming the TLS Intranet PDF – This deck details the journey that the Internal Communications Team embarked on to redesign the department intranet -- starting with a data-driven, colleague-first approach that leveraged both quantitative and qualitative insights, and ending with a holistic global marketing campaign to drive awareness of the redesign. The deck also includes early metrics and verbatim feedback from American Express Travel employees.

TLS Link Redesign Campaign Video – The TLS Link video that accompanied other marketing materials during the rollout of the intranet redesign.

Revised 2020 Comms Year-End Report PDF – A revised version of the team’s 2020 Internal Communications Year-End Report, with certain internal information redacted. This annual report was launched in 2019 to highlight key communications wins and activities to the American Express Travel leadership team and key stakeholders.

Revised 2019 Comms Year-End Report PDF – A revised version of the 2019 Internal Communications Year-End Report, with certain internal information redacted.

2019 Pacesetters Recap Video –A video produced by the Internal Communications Team highlighting a recap of the 2019 recognition event that celebrates the top performing servicing employees in American Express Travel. In 2020, the Internal Communications team created a week-long virtual celebration event in lieu of the in-person event.