Excellence in Corporate Communications – Internal Stakeholders

Summary of work

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, AstraZeneca immediately made a decision to introduce an internal COVID-19 testing programme across operations sites to protect employees and ensure uninterrupted delivery of medicines; this quickly extended to R&D and commercial sites as the programme grew to over 28 locations. Communication was recognised as essential to achieving the programme aims and global-local and cross-functional alignment was critical. The communication aim was to drive rapid understanding and uptake of tests, using educational resources to explain the rationale and science behind them, and reinforce locally. It was essential to convey the fact that COVID-19 can be asymptomatic and tests should be taken irrespective of symptoms. Agility was key from the outset, and a range of online and offline resources and assets were required for global and local campaigns across multiple platforms. Onsite employee uptake of PCR tests grew from an average of 30% in May to around 70% in December, with positive user experience ratings of 99%. By December 2020, 80,000 PCR tests had been taken by critical workers on manufacturing lines, in operations, labs and via home testing, and infection rates on sites were on average 10 times lower than external rates.

Judges' comments

This entry from AstraZeneca and The Difference Collective was outstanding. It had really clear objectives and measurements and spectacular results! It is brilliant what they have managed to achieve in such a short space of time and it made the judges feel proud to work in communications. Testing Times was a genuine response to a huge need, it was flexible with lots of layers of messages. It really is a living, breathing communication campaign and saved lives.