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Communications professionals regularly need to focus employees’ attention on critical information and important tasks for the business. Due to email fatigue and information overload, this is harder and hard to do. Most struggle to get employees to notice – let alone read – critical announcements.
Good content is not enough anymore. Here are four aspects of employee communications – besides good copy – that communicators must master to ensure key employee communications actually reach their intended audience and have an impact.
MEASURE
If employees complain that they were never told about an important initiative, are you able to track the communications you sent and find out where they derailed? Are you able to gauge immediately whether a communications campaign is working or not? Set up some regular benchmarks and establish a system that regularly measures them.
Begin to answer questions like these:
- What percentage of employees are reading your employee messages now?
- What constitutes a good or poor response rate?
- What kind of click-through rates are we getting and what do we want them to be?
- How long does it take (and should it take) for all employees to get a mission-critical announcement: a day, a week, a month?
Make sure you are regularly measuring and benchmarking activity resulting from your broadcast communications such as readership, click-throughs, surveys responses, etc. Then you will be able to determine which methods work best for a particular type of message and also adjust quickly if your communications are not hitting their mark.
CONTEXT
Be aware and accommodate the wider environment and context that your messages enter. Rather than scheduling employee communications for a time convenient for you, find out what time and place are most convenient for your audience and schedule accordingly. You will need to consider:
- Your Competition. What other messages are scheduled to go out at the same time or on the same day as yours? Are there any events or major industry developments that could overshadow your important message? Evaluate your communications plan and adjust dates/delivery if necessary.
- Normal Workflow. What does an employee’s day look like, and when are they the most receptive? It may be better to send a message at 12:30pm when many will be taking a breather, instead of 9am, when they’ll be focused on planning their day and getting started with their daily tasks. Different groups may have different workflows – you may need to target your message differently to reach them.
- Cyclical Activity. Are there weekly/monthly/quarterly cycles that could impact employees’ attention? Salesforces with monthly targets are apt to be extremely busy on the last working days of the month, so this would be a terrible time to send them the employee survey or launch an initiative that requires their action.
- Preferences. Does your workforce live on their computers all day, or are they working in a factory environment? Do they prefer hearing news from their direct manager? Do they regularly visit the intranet homepage or congregate in the lunchroom? Profile your audience to find out which communications methods are easiest for them and which ones they prefer.
DELIVERY METHOD
While the majority of official employee communications are delivered by email, there are many alternatives available now. Consider using a combination of channels appropriate to the degree of urgency, importance and complexity of your message. Establish criteria for each to determine what type of message belongs where, both to maximize overall impact and to maintain consistency.
Suggested Channels:
- Desktop Alerts
- Intranet homepage news portals
- Voicemail broadcasts
- Emails
- Screensaver Billboards
- Daily/Weekly printed bulletins
- Daily/Weekly electronic newsletters
- Team Meetings
- Department Meetings
- Printed Posters
- Bulletin Boards
- Digital Signage
- Townhall Meetings
- Mailed Letters
INVITE INTERACTION
In today’s world, the opportunity to express yourself exists at every corner: we review products on amazon.com, comment on New York Times articles, Twitter about our interests, post videos to YouTube and photos to Flickr.
Do your employee communications reflect this development? Has your company caught up to this external interactive world and do you invite some sort of interaction from employees in response to corporate news and info? In my experience, many companies still have an old-school view: official communications are treated as one-way ‘inform-only’ messages.
Instead of viewing official employee communications as standalone exercises in knowledge transfer, view them as the first step in a longer communications process and consider taking the following actions:
- Include comment/feedback loops in your online resources
- Provide email or website feedback options in your print resources
- Establish immediate feedback loops (through surveys, Managers) after large meetings
- Create a process to review, highlight and act on employee feedback
This shift in approach will lead to better knowledge transfer, as employees go beyond simply reading information and interact with it. Other possible benefits are greater employee engagement and tangible business improvements, assuming your company develops a means of distilling out valuable ideas from the suggestions and feedback given by employees.
By applying the four recommendations above you can substantially improve the impact of your official employee communications and ultimately advance both employee engagement and business performance.
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Source by Paula Cassin
