When your programme goes dark

When an extended workforce programme loses visibility, it doesn’t usually collapse overnight. It drifts.

Managers get busy. Approved suppliers don’t come up in conversation. Someone works out a workaround and shares it with a colleague. Six months later, the programme exists in documentation but not in practice. The governance is intact on paper. The behaviour on the ground is something else entirely.

This is a story about how that happens — and what it takes to bring a programme back.

How this one drifted

The business was a mid-market consumer company with an established extended workforce programme. Before remote working became the norm, the programme ran reasonably well. Visibility was maintained partly through proximity — supplier teams on site, programme materials in physical spaces, managers who could ask questions in person.

When that physical infrastructure disappeared, so did much of the informal communication that had kept the programme visible. Managers working remotely didn’t have the same touchpoints. Suppliers who had previously been on site weren’t there to reinforce how things worked. The programme quietly faded from day-to-day consciousness.

By the time we were brought in, managers were using the programme inconsistently. Some were going direct to suppliers they knew personally, bypassing the approved list. Others simply didn’t know who to call or where to find the right information. Hiring decisions that should have been straightforward were taking longer because the right guidance wasn’t accessible.

The governance hadn’t changed. The compliance requirements hadn’t changed. The programme itself was fine. The problem was that nobody could find it.

What we did about it

The work split into two phases.

The first was immediate: a structured communication and engagement initiative to get the programme back in front of managers. We ran a series of face-to-face events and online webinars — accessible to teams wherever they were based — walking managers through how the programme worked, what the approved routes were, and where to go with questions.

The response told us something important. Managers weren’t resistant to the programme. They just hadn’t been given a reason to engage with it recently. When we put the information in front of them in a format that made sense, engagement came back quickly. The issue was never the programme. It was the visibility of the programme.

The second phase addressed the underlying infrastructure. We built a SharePoint-based communication hub — a single place where managers could find current information about the programme, supplier news, policy updates, and practical guidance. It replaced a print newsletter that had become invisible long before remote working accelerated its irrelevance.

This wasn’t a technology project. SharePoint is not the interesting part. The interesting part was the content strategy that made the hub worth visiting.

Working with the top five suppliers, we established a regular content cycle. The instinct — understandably, given how recruitment businesses are structured — was to use the platform to position their services. We redirected that. What managers need is practical guidance: how to write a good brief, what to do when a project shifts scope, how to manage a blended team effectively. Content that helps them do their job, not content that reminds them a supplier exists.

The rule we applied: if it needs footnotes to be useful, it doesn’t belong in the hub. Everything published had to work for a manager who’d come to find a quick answer, not read a white paper.

We still invite suppliers to contribute ideas and knowledge. But RedWizard writes the content. We take their expertise and translate it into something genuinely useful for the people reading it. That distinction — between what suppliers want to say and what managers need to hear — turned out to be one of the most valuable things we contributed.

The hub now runs as a managed service. The programme has visibility again.

What this means if you’re an MSP

This engagement was a mid-market business with a relatively small international footprint. But the pattern — a programme that loses visibility over time, managers who drift, governance that holds on paper but not in practice — shows up consistently across managed programmes of all sizes.

For MSPs running large enterprise programmes across multiple geographies, the stakes are higher and the challenge is harder. Hundreds of hiring managers. Multiple supplier relationships to coordinate. Client stakeholders who expect consistent programme adoption without necessarily investing in the infrastructure to support it.

The gap that most often goes unaddressed isn’t the governance framework itself. It’s the communication and engagement layer that makes the framework visible and usable. Most MSPs build strong operational processes. Far fewer invest in the ongoing work of making those processes easy to find, easy to understand, and actively reinforced for the managers who need to use them.

That’s not a criticism — it’s a capacity reality. MSPs are built to run programmes, not to run communications functions alongside them. But when client NPS scores start reflecting manager frustration, and when audit findings point to inconsistent programme adoption, the root cause is often here.

There are three things that make a meaningful difference.

Clear, accessible guidance for managers at the point they need it — not buried in a supplier handbook but surfaced in the places and formats managers actually use. The technology barely matters. A SharePoint site, a simple intranet page, a well-organised shared drive — what matters is that someone is actively maintaining it and that managers know it exists.

A content cycle that works for managers, not for the MSP or the suppliers. This is harder than it sounds, because the natural incentive is to communicate about what’s changing rather than what’s useful. The best programme communications help managers do their job better. They’re written from the manager’s perspective, not the programme’s.

Regular engagement that keeps the programme visible without demanding time managers don’t have. Short webinars, quick reference updates, practical guidance on the scenarios managers actually face. The goal isn’t heavy investment — it’s consistent, light-touch presence.

This is work that some MSPs build internally. Many find it easier to bring in a specialist who understands both the programme governance side and the communication and engagement side — and who can act as an extension of the MSP’s capability for the client.

The closing question

If you asked your top ten client hiring managers right now where to go to find programme guidance, what would they say?

If the answer is confident and consistent, the programme is visible. If the answer is varied, hesitant, or involves asking someone else — the drift has probably already started.

Visibility isn’t a one-off fix. It’s an ongoing function. The programmes that maintain it best are the ones where someone owns it, actively, and has the tools and the mandate to keep the programme present.

Book a conversation about what this could look like for your programme →

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