The tool Benco Dental uses to rebuild “water cooler culture” for hybrid workers

How a 1,600-person org uses Axios HQ to keep corporate and frontline staff connected.

Where are they now — Benco's 2024 update

Jump to read Benco's original case study further down this page. Recently, we caught up with Managing Director Chuck Cohen to hear how things have been going since that original story. A few of his thoughts are below. 

“Axios HQ is the replacement for the water cooler culture we had before COVID. Period!” Chuck says. “I've not found anything better. Every CEO I know is struggling with employee engagement. Axios HQ — and a regular, ongoing newsletter cadence where you're pushing at employees, communicating in a different way than before, that's managed by the CEO — is the only and best answer to, ‘How do you develop a culture that promotes associate engagement in a post-COVID world?’”

The results he’s seeing at Benco:

• “We've really reduced a lot of noise — probably three ad hoc communications per week — in favor of a weekly newsletter. And I am a firm believer that weekly is the right cadence.”
• “Employee satisfaction scores continue to be super high — 78 on associate satisfaction, using a Net Promoter scoring system, and over 50% open rates on newsletters — even though most of our people are remote and more than 10% work in our distribution centers. I would attribute that engagement, in a big way, to our communication strategy.”
• “Engagement leads directly to more efficient employees. We have better employees doing more work, getting more done. We're more efficient and more profitable.”
  

• “We have an easier time hiring and retaining great people.”

Chuck is about halfway through Benco’s rollout of strategic, Smart Brevity newsletters. So far, his playbook includes “a weekly newsletter to our entire population that goes out on Sundays. We have a weekly newsletter for our sales and service team that goes out every Friday morning. We have a weekly newsletter that goes to about 100 associates involved in an ERP conversion project. And then we have monthly newsletters to key departments, and we are going to start a biweekly send to managers.”

Benco's story, as of 2023

The challenge: At the start of the pandemic, Benco Dental furloughed one-third of its staff. Leaders needed a way to keep folks connected to culture and engaged with the company until they could come back. It had to be:

• Engaging: With staff across the country, and a 50-50 spread between high paid corporate employees and blue collar workers, the answer had to be simple and accessible to async readers with very different needs.
• Collaborative: Their senior leadership team wanted staff to hear directly from them and others throughout the organization. It was important that contributors could work together to prepare each all-staff update.

The solution: Benco Dental uses Axios HQ to compile and send an update to 1,500 employees every Sunday morning — with 50% of readers opening within two hours. From monthly sales targets to updates on its $15 million IT infrastructure overhaul, it’s the core communication that keeps everyone on the same page.

💭  Chuck Cohen, Managing Partner: 

• “The thing that I like about this methodology is everybody at the organization gets the same message with the same words, at the same time. We have no time zone issues. They can interact with it in less than 10 minutes, and we can answer questions. Most importantly, the Axios system reminds you to be crystal clear about what is going on and why it is important. People like that a lot.”
• “When we ask associates ‘Do you feel like you know what Benco strategy is and where we’re going,’ we’re getting higher scores than before. I take that data, combined with our Axios HQ open rate, and I've gotta believe this specific piece of our communication strategy is integral to driving that engagement.”

How it works: Every week on Sunday morning, Chuck starts to compile the organization’s most pressing or important updates. Other members of the team have their own Axios HQ logins, and join in to add their updates, too. By 8:00am it hits inboxes everywhere, and their open rate starts to tick up within minutes.

🧠  Chuck’s words of encouragement: 

• “For three or four months — being the cheapskate I am — I tried to copy Axios without HQ. The true story is, we failed. I needed a system that could teach us your style and help other people on my team learn it, too. I’ve become a big fan since we signed on, and I'm rolling it out in more areas of the organization.”