Kansas City University HR Reimagines Communications With MyKCU Video Newsletter

2021 Higher Education HR Awards

Kansas City University’s HR team is the recipient of
CUPA-HR’s 2021 HR Innovation Award.

 

In an effort to make HR communications more engaging, the Kansas City University (KCU) HR team introduced a new and innovative platform for employee communications — a bi-monthly video newsletter called “MyKCU Video News.”

The video newsletter is sent twice a month with the first monthly edition focusing on upcoming events, trainings, benefits and wellness offerings, important new resources, and policies changes. The second monthly edition is focused on the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts (DEI), ranging from the most recent DEI actions in the works to diversity numbers and trends, monthly observances, and spotlights to upcoming DEI campus events and presentations.

The KCU video newsletter was introduced in September 2019. The HR team used the subscription-based video platform, Wideo, to create the video newsletter. The platform comes with modifiable templates, stock images and video content that can be used in a variety of ways to build videos. The HR team at KCU started by creating a script, recording the voiceover and building the visual elements to bring their videos to life. Once the video is created, it is hosted on a dedicated page on KCU’s intranet where engagement can be measured.

“The bottom line is that video is more engaging, more memorable, and more popular than any other type of content out there, so naturally we wanted to leverage the power of rich media to deliver something new and exciting to our KCU employees,” says Dessi Tomova, internal communications and engagement manager at KCU.

The HR team relies on data and analytics, as well as employee feedback, to determine the success of the video format. The HR team has received numerous emails from administration, faculty and staff sharing how much they enjoy the newsletter. The team also looks at data on newsletter interactions. Between 2018 (no video newsletter) and 2019 (the year the video newsletter was introduced), employee engagement with the HR intranet page that is linked from the video newsletter increased by 112 percent. And from 2019 to 2020, the team saw a 63 percent increase of visits to the HR intranet page.

The video newsletter supports overall increased engagement for individual programs, such as rewards and recognitions, learning and development, open enrollment for benefits and more. The HR team continues to measure steady, improved engagement and viewership of the video newsletter and garner positive feedback from university employees.

About the HR Innovation Award:
CUPA-HR’s HR Innovation Award recognizes innovate thinking in higher education human resources. Two awards are presented each year. CUPA-HR will make a $5,000 contribution to each recipient’s institution. Learn more.