PARR Lumber

The PARR Lumber Company was founded in 1930 when Dwight Parr Sr. purchased a small lumber yard in Vancouver, Washington. With personal effort and unwavering dedication to serving his customers and local community, Dwight built PARR Lumber into the brand it is today. PARR is family owned and operated and supports multiple non-profit organizations that help with family and housing.

Improved internal communications was identified as a key priority for The PARR Lumber Company. To demonstrate traction against this goal, A.wordsmith conducted a series of manager interviews and employee focus groups and created a companywide pulse survey. These efforts were intended to foster an open and honest dialogue, garner transparent input on PARR’s current internal communications vehicles and company culture, and ultimately determined what opportunities exist to expand and improve processes for greater impact in the year ahead. Based on insights gleaned from these conversations, A.wordsmith identified several opportunities to strengthen the employee experience, eliminate silos and instill excitement in the future direction of the company.

Key Results

• Defined and delivered a robust internal communications strategy that uncovered key findings and six core themes gleaned from interviews, focus groups and surveys, go-forward recommendations, keys for internal communication success (insight on where to start), immediate operational actions and ongoing strategies. The latter included weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly recommendations, in alignment with the core themes – accessibility, consistency, training, personalization, insights-driven decision making and inclusivity.
• Created a supplemental communications roadmap, which included color coded paths and thematic icons to help PARR determine the best time to take action on recommended communication strategies.
• Crafted a comprehensive internal communications guide to enable PARR’s leadership, marketing, HR and culture teams to provide highly personalized, intentional, educational, accessible and timely communications that bolstered employee engagement. This fully designed document included insight on how to use the guide, the definition of internal communications, tone and brand voice, communications channels and usage, spokesperson roles and responsibilities, cascade of communications, tips for improved engagement and DEI best practices.