3 Ways Handwritten Notes Impact The Workplace

Handwritten notes are "m'm m'm good." (Had to do this pun, had to.)

Douglas Conant knows that the pen is mightier than clicking “send.”

In the 10 years that Conant served as CEO of the Campbell Soup Company (or Campbell’s), he turned the suffering business around putting the focus back on the people who worked there. During an interview with the weekly Harvard Business Review’s podcast HBR IdeaCast, Conant said that first up on deck was creating a high-level of engagement in the Campbell workforce which would then quickly lead to forming a plan and strategy on the issues facing the company. “Staying close to home will take you a long way. Then you take care of your business and smartly go to where consumers of the future are or will be.”

The future was expanding to global markets in Russia and China, but the present took an old-fashioned approach. Or old-fashioned for the millennial generation. Over the course of his time at Campbell, Conant would write out 30,000 handwritten “thank-you” notes to his employees.

The company only had 20,000 employed. “I made it personal at Campbell.” Conant said during the interview, noting that a near-death car accident three years ago made him the recipient of thousands of notes from his fellow colleagues. Notes expressing how much the team was there for Conant, just as much as he had been there for them.

With the U.S. Postal Service slowly losing its “snail mail” clientele in favor of email and online bill payments and many workplaces placing more of an emphasis on being paper-free, hearing a story of any CEO today writing that many handwritten notes is a refreshing rarity. Particularly in Conant’s case as he sent his notes out to celebrate his staff and their personal contributions to Campbell. These weren’t just notes for the sake of notes (though I’m sure some were just for fun) but they demanded the need to pay attention to each individual member of the company. A pat on the back does more than make the body feel good- it builds trust. Trust in the form of what is known as the Campbell Promise, “Campbell valuing people; people valuing Campbell.”

I don’t know about you but just writing this is filling me with the warm fuzzies and also the need to grab a pen and some stationary and spend the rest of my afternoon writing to my own staff. I may not have 20,000 on my team (try under 50), but the handwritten note impacts all workplaces big or small bringing with it it’s own set of unique and necessary qualities that as best-selling author Chester Elton says isn’t “nice to have” as much as it is a “must have.”


“When the culture works, everything else works a lot better.” Elton says. So how does a handwritten note help mold and sculpt the company culture?

1) It’s Time Consuming

This is seen as a bad thing by many a workforce. Time spent writing up a little “thanks for all you do!” note is better spent with the nose to the grindstone. Will just liking a Facebook status suffice instead? That takes all of three seconds to do- definitely a no across the board.


Conant wrote his infamous 30,000 notes on a daily basis throughout his 10 years at Campbell, lest you were thinking this was a project he accomplished in a month. And to my knowledge, he did it alone. No team of interns to help ghostwrite, no freelancers or even the kids at home sealing up envelopes.

Alongside being time consuming, writing these notes required focus. Focus on each particular person and the strengths that they brought along to the team. Writing a note requires you to really hone in on the person that you’re penning it to and shut out external distractions with a real, sincere message being the end result.

2) “Do I Have To?”

Nobody told Conant when he first started working at Campbell, “Oh by the way, you need to send out a bunch of thank you notes to everyone. Part of the job description. I think the guy last year did something like 10,000 of ‘em.”

He didn’t have to do it. Engaging the employees could have been accomplished in an alternate ink-free way. And to some extent it was, with 20 employees from each level of the company invited to lunch with the CEO every four to six weeks and popping up all around the Campbell campus in a pair of sneakers to easily trek around with. He asked “How can I help?” He didn’t have to have to do any of this either.

But ultimately Conant did it because it wasn’t about him. Despite the “I” in the question, he wasn’t a part of the answer. “Leadership isn’t about you,” he says. “It’s about them.”

3) The Weight of It All

Think back to when you were in summer camp during mail call. There was nothing so anticipated as Mom mailing in a small care package or a fat envelope filled with you didn’t even know what. Mystery surrounds these items because they’re from the people we know best. And when we don’t know them the best, when they arrive from bosses or coworkers, they’re unexpected surprises.

It’s a lot like being a kid on Christmas morning. You rip it open, not knowing what to find inside, and may even read the message aloud to your yourself or those close by. These personal touches wind up holding a deeper meaning than any of us may know. You’ll hang onto it for well past your last day on the job, tuck it into your wallet to read on a more difficult day, pass it around to family members and friends, and even just privately pull it out from time to time at work. Pen leaves indentations you can feel.

Try as hard as you like, but I doubt you can feel your email being sent or that you go back to a Facebook status that was “liked” a lot and reread it to yourself. There’s a real relationship being built within the pages and in between the lines of a handwritten note.

Now it’s just up to you to go and start building it.