HR Branding for 18,000 Employees (Part 1)

Consolidating Pay, Benefits, Retirement, and Career Under One Brand

Problem Statement

Goals & Objectives

KeyBank sought to understand the most effective ways to structure HR content and communications to better resonate with employees. To gather valuable insights, the HR team organized a series of Design Thinking sessions across the company, which provided essential input to shape the strategy and design approach.

The key findings from these sessions were handed to me as the Design Lead for the project. I worked closely with the HR team to extract actionable insights from the data. Below are some of the key takeaways we uncovered:

Audience

The initiative targeted KeyBank's 18,000 active employees, representing a broad spectrum of demographics and roles:

Insights

INSIGHT #1

Brand Confusion:

KeyBank’s wellness and benefits information was primarily shared through a monthly newsletter branded as Thrive with Key. While employees trusted the content, the Thrive brand was closely associated with wellness and limited benefits information.

This led to confusion about the broader scope of HR offerings, with employees unclear about what other HR services and resources were included under the same brand.

INSIGHT #2

HR Jargon

HR lingo does not resonate with employees

INSIGHT #3

Pillars

65% of respondents want to see HR broken down into categories or pillars.

With 78% of respondents preferring to have a 4 pillar approach over a 3 pillar approach.

IDEATE

Simple langage to define HR into 4 Pillars

HR will be defined by 4 Pillars: Pay, Benefits, Wellness and Career. Design and naming was to kept simple to resonate with wider range of employees.

Establish Thrive with Key as an umbrella HR brand

Define Thrive with Key as an umbrella brand for ALL HR Communications

A Visual representation of Pillars

Create branding which does not require a lot of real estate but is visual enough to form a strong brand

Flexibility

Branding is easily adaptable for digital platforms/products and printed collateral.