Employee Communication: How Tata Realty Achieved a Successful Merger Thanks to Unified Internal Comms

Can it be challenging to merge drastically different companies? Of course. But can the right employee comms strategy ease the transition? Of course! Discover how has merged three geographically and culturally separate corporations into a single, cohesive force via a centralized employee communication strategy and a mobile-friendly platform.

In fact, the platform originally designed to support the transition has become the central backbone of the organization’s entire internal comms strategy—a success any way you look at it.

Discover Their Employee Communication & Merger Journey

Tata Realty is one of the fastest growing real estate companies in India today, specializing in the development of residential, commercial, and retail properties. In fact, they have close to 500 employees working together as a seamless unit.

But this wasn’t always quite the case—their current workforce was created from the merger of three separate companies, which brought employees from different geographic locations and cultures together, and in a position where they needed to forge a common identity and communication channel quickly in order to integrate and succeed.

Their Challenge: How to merge and unify three companies that are geographically dispersed and dependent on mobile?

Tata Realty was thrilled to be merging three separate companies located in different countries and composed of different cultures.

The move represented a huge step for their company. But they knew they needed to create a common sense of identity from these different units, while also getting everybody on board some form of common communication stream.

Up until that point, the various workforces that made up the companies had been largely mobile reliant—up to 40% of employees, in fact, only used their phones—and communication was more ad hoc than formal, relying on a jumble of WhatsApp groups and intranets.

Tata Realty needed to find a way to get them all together into a cohesive communication system, with immediate access to company resources and breaking company news.

The employees involved were generally young and tech savvy—68% millennial in fact—but they had never been given a common digital space for communication, engagement, and knowledge sharing.

But there was more to it than just enhancing communication. Tata employees care about making a difference in the world as well. CSR has always been an important objective, as a desire to help society at large is shared by employees and management alike. And the new strategy needed to reflect that fact.

Sociabble creates a strong sense of happiness and positivity when you log in.Reena WAHI – Senior Vice President HR, CSR and Business Excellence

Our Solution: A mobile-friendly, centralized, Single Sign On employee communication platform that brought everyone closer together.

In partnership with Sociabble, Tata Realty developed and introduced a new centralized communication strategy that utilized the Sociabble platform as the hub for all information streams.

Features include: 

Simple and Intuitive User Experience

Tata Realty didn’t want a complicated platform that would discourage users or require too much training.

The solution proved to be a straightforward platform with an intuitive UX and simple search and menu bars that employees can readily get the hang of with a minimal amount of instruction. A

nd when it comes to employee training or answering questions, Sociabble’s local Mumbai office means that assistance is never far away.

We wanted a tool where the adoption would be very high, and where people won’t have to struggle with technological barriers.Reena WAHI – Senior Vice President HR, CSR and Business Excellence

Single Sign On

Tata Realty knew that the solution had to be centralized, with the ability to offer access to the other tools and platforms of the company. It had to be comprehensive, a central hub. Which is why their Sociabble platform relies on Single Sign On technology, which makes access simple.

But security was also a consideration, which means that the platform’s GDPR compliance and strict data privacy protections are crucial factors. And thanks to the mobile app, their employee base, which is often on the go, has immediate access to all of it from their phones, no matter where they are.

Targeting and Engagement Features

Tata Realty wanted to be smart about ensuring that the right messages reached the right people at the right time. They saw the advantage of the Sociabble platform’s targeting and audience engagement features.

In fact, the targeting feature permits them to create specific channels and to regroup dispersed employees who now work in the same department because of the merger, creating a unity amid the physical distance, and increasing group identity and cohesion. 

This became especially important in light of the Covid-19 health crisis. With so many employees working from home, creating a sense of belonging and community at the company was absolutely essential. 

As a people and planet-centric organization, being rewarded with trees for actions on our communication platform has improved the adoption.Reena WAHI – Senior Vice President HR, CSR and Business Excellence

Simply put, strong communication keeps employees connected and aligned. And when it comes to engagement, one feature that stood out was Sociabble Trees, a CSR module that rewards engaged employees with actual trees planted in their name, in forests around the world. 

Augmenting that, in terms of general engagement analysis, a full analytics package helps to monitor UGC content, and to determine which pieces are most effective for driving engagement and communication.