On this episode of Culture, Comms & Cocktails, Chuck Gose is joined by Jeremy Ball, who has earned the title of VP of Internal Comms, Philanthropy and Events at Big Lots. They talk about how the communications team rose to the challenge of keeping Big Lots employees in the loop through the pandemic; how they are encouraging good mental health and how they connect their people to their strategy.

“Our entire work comes down to sharing the strategy of the company and helping people see themselves in that strategy.”

Jeremy Ball

Jeremy shares his experience of moving to two-way, digital communications. He credits his leaders for embracing their role as content creators and he highlights how employee ‘super users’ can shape the conversation about topics like diversity, equality and inclusion.

“The old way of communicating was just to put up a poster, share a flyer, send a message, post something on the internet and just share it. And we know that that's not how people consume information these days, right? It's now done in shorter clips of time. It's done in smaller bites of information. People want to like, and comment and love and forward and tag someone to say, Hey, did you see this? And so the value of that human nature is really what we've harnessed”

Jeremy Ball

Featured in this episode:

Find out what makes the communications team at Big Lots so effective.

Get some insight into how employees across multiple Big Lots locations and roles are kept informed, inspired and involved.

Learn from Jeremy’s description of how content, comments and interaction from leaders and employees is encouraged on their new digital employee experience platform.

Pick up some tips on how your employees can help your organization with their recruitment needs.

Be inspired by the impressive philanthropic achievements the Big Lots team have made for children’s charities.