Lek's Internal Newspaper is the most Enterprising in Slovenia

KoLEktiv, in circulation since 1957, is a collaborative effort involving Lek people, from all across Slovenia, as well as Lek Group subsidiaries in twenty countries. All the emplyoees, under the leadership of the 21 member editorial board, actively contributes in the publication of KoLEKtiv, which reports and presents the work of the entire Lek business organization.

KoLEKtiv is one of the many tools- along with others such as the weekly Bulletin, the Intranet, press releases, bulletin boards, workers councils, the Employee Manual, the Manual for Electronic Communication and so on – that is part of our constant effort to improve communication among employees within the company. This in turn, improves dialogue, cooperation, communication skills, internal relations as well as employee satisfaction. All of these are among the crucial factors so necessary to motivate employees to achieve the goals of the company.

It is also interesting to note KoLEKtiv’s name and design. Lek employees, from submissions publicly solicited from several ad agencies, selected both because they could easily identify with them.

The editorial policy regulates the structure of KoLEKtiv’s content and contributions as well as the style of writing. We regularly measure employee satisfaction with the newspaper and make improvements based on their evaluations

By the end of this year, the monthly KoLEKtiv will appear in English for the first time. (Until now, regular issues only included a short synopsis in English.) The newspaper will also be available on the Intranet, where readers have already found Lek’s weekly Bulletin. Next year, we also plan to start publishing special editions of internal newspapers by subsidiary companies in the local language in some of Lek’s key markets.

The jury board for the Splet’s competition included: Marjeta Meta Verbič, president of reporters working in businesses and institutes, at the Slovenian Association of Journalists; Brane Gruban, Accredited Business Communicator, president of Dialogos; Andrej Žorž, Assistant to the Director of Advertising at Delo, and a representative of the Media Association of the Slovenian Chamber of Advertising; Bojan Dobravc, head of Design for Gospodarski Vestnik Publishing House and Goran Novkovič, editor in chief of Splet.

The jury reached their decision based on numerous criteria, beginning with the originality of the name of the newspaper, the suitability of its intent and purpose, and the quality of organization and contributions. They also considered how well the publication matched its intended communication and business goals, how well the depth of coverage matched its objectives, how well the content reflected the goals, as well as, how effectively the layout harmonized with the content and intentions. The final factors evaluated considered alternatives the publication used to reach its key publics, and how professionally reader satisfaction was measured, as well as, the actual results of reader satisfaction surveys.

The key to excellence in an internal newspaper is dialogue, an open two-way communication with management. This is the only way to create a newspaper that truly reflects a company’s operations. As Metod Dragonja, the President of the Board of Management said of the award: “Communication is one of the key elements in the business operations of outstanding companies. At Lek, we have sought for years to provide, along with good external, also effective internal communication. We know that our goals, vision, mission, and business strategy are impossible to achieve without excellent internal communication, without effective communication with, and among our employees.”