Continental: Amplifying the company values with Slido

A leading technology company for sustainable, safer and connected mobility, Continental group boasts a proud legacy spanning 150 years. Since its inception in 1871, this manufacturing giant has undergone countless transformations, adapting to every challenge the industry has thrown at it.

So how do you build a business that transcends the test of time? If you ask approximately 200,000 employees at Continental, the answer would be unanimous: by nurturing a strong set of values.

In this story, we look at how Continental is using Slido to increase employee engagement and strengthen its company values.

A global pulse check in a hybrid world

Hybrid work, combined with the challenges of the pandemic, opened up a new set of challenges for Continental. The company’s Group Communications team wanted to ensure that its global communications strategy remains relevant and engaging.

During the pandemic, the volume of global strategic communications, such as the Executive Board Webcast that addresses thousands of live participants, hit an all-time high. We wanted to create a dialogue with employees at this point, rather than have them passively watch a recording. Without interaction, it becomes just like watching TV, shares Nigel Treblin who is a part of the Group Communications team.

Having tried some of the other live engagement platforms, Nigel’s team found it challenging to integrate most of the tools into their existing structure, especially from a technical perspective.

Our team was looking for an easier way to check the pulse of our employees globally on matters that are strategically important to Continental, he adds. Despite being a key tool in Continental’s town halls since 2018, Slido wasn’t yet introduced to its global hybrid communications at the time.

When the opportunity finally came in 2020, Nigel’s team implemented Slido Q&A in their webcasts.

Building a dynamic meeting culture

A critical piece among Continental’s meeting tools, Slido’s popularity at the organization primarily comes from its ability to transform meetings, or even webcasts, from one-way to two-way communications.

One of the key areas where Slido contributes heavily for us is while collecting questions. With the Internal Communications team, we select popular questions from webcasts based on upvotes, Nigel explains.

On average, Nigel’s team receives up to 200-500 questions on their global webcasts. Moreover, for the Internal Communications team, the exported version of Slido questions also serves as a guide while preparing follow-up communications after web events such as the Executive Board Webcast.

Apart from the bottom-up, employee-to-leadership communication, Slido Q&A also helps different teams at Continental to find alignment on a global level, If we have open questions, we delegate it to the right department so they can create follow-up communications for it, he clarifies.

From value-driven engagement to empowerment

Companies often find it overwhelming to translate these poll responses and questions into something tangible. This is where Continental successfully integrated its values with Slido.

With Slido, everyone has a chance to ask their question and it gives us a chance to clear up some of those questions and concerns, Nigel points out.

For Continental’s Collaboration Solutions team, which is responsible for the strategy and development of the collaboration portfolio, Slido amplifies the company values on a much wider level. Here’s how Slido fits Continental’s values:

We found that participants are more open in an anonymous setting like Slido compared to their previous, in-person all-hands meetings, and the number of questions seems to be much higher. Our team has also noticed a higher engagement rate within virtual workshops, says the Collaboration Solutions team.

In 2021, at the height of the hybrid transition, Slido captured over 503,304 interactions across Continental. The impact? About 200,000 employees had a chance to speak up and contribute to where Continental is headed as an organization.

Raising the bar for hybrid communications

Spanning 10-member meetings to town halls, the current Slido user base at Continental encompasses all roles, ranging from executive assistants to team leaders. As they navigate the return to the office, Slido continues to be an integral part of the hybrid conversation at Continental. Here’s how Nigel sees it:

In a hybrid setup, we look at the number of people who watch our webcasts to measure the effectiveness. More importantly, when we receive a high number of questions, it’s proof that people are really listening. That is good feedback for us.

Nigel also stresses Slido’s ease of use (on the admin as well as participant end) as a key feature that makes the tool all the more desirable. And the story is not so different across the wider teams at Continental who use Slido.

We would recommend this tool to everyone who’s organizing meetings or events. It doesn’t matter where you come from. If you want to interact with your audience, we recommend using Slido, concludes the Collaboration Solutions team.