Special newsletter welcomes new employees after their organization is acquired

Most newsletters deliver routine messages to make sure employees are up to date. But Ball Corporation’s special edition of its newsletter, Ball Line, was created to welcome some 4,000 new employees to the organization after Ball acquired its competitor, Rexam PLC. The special edition was so effective that it’s won first place in the “Newsletter (Print)” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards. 

The newsletter was part of an effort to ensure Rexam employees felt welcome as they became part of the Ball family while articulating the organization’s narrative—who they are, where they’re going (especially now that Rexam had joined the fold), and what was expected of them. 

The special edition introduced the incoming employees to Ball’s culture and outlined the organization’s key initiatives. To ensure the newsletter was relevant to every Rexam employee, it was delivered in print as a “keeper” publication that would reach the majority of employees who worked in manufacturing jobs and didn’t have access to a work computer. It was produced in each of the 23 languages Rexam’s global population of workers spoke. 

The special edition was both readable and comprehensive in its approach to indoctrinating the new employee population into Ball.

Congratulations to Barb Farson, who did yeoman’s work producing the newsletter.