Four reasons your employees are tuning out your internal communications and how to fix it

by Olecia Christie

Both companies and employees stand to benefit from effective internal communication. However, most corporations are still trying to figure out how to engage employees with little flex time in their busy schedules. Only a handful of companies have figured out the secret to communicating with their employees in meaningful ways to drive business objectives. In fact, only one in three internal communication departments (35%) has a long-term strategy in place for internal communications. (Poppulo Global Summary Report, 2016).

Effective employee communication is critical to business success. Companies with a highly engaged workforce are 22% more profitable. However, according to data collected across 155 countries by research firm Gallup, as much as 85% of working adults worldwide self-classify as not engaged or actively disengaged in their jobs. Our intent is to present you with four clear reasons why your internal communications may be failing and clear solutions on how to fix it.

• Reason 1: You are not at the top of your employees' lengthy to-do list

The company intranet is one of the most powerful communication tools. It's a central hub for providing employees with timely information and engaging them in discussions that help shape the business. However, according to CNN Business, full-time employees are already working an average of 47 hours per week. For employees to fit regular usage of the intranet in their busy schedules, it needs a steady flow of creative content that motivates them to visit, learn, and share knowledge with their peers. 

Today you are competing for your employees' attention with platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and the Netflix-type entertainment applications of the world. To rise to the top of your employees' to-do list and get more out of your internal communications, you will need to start by selecting powerful channels through which to communicate. Begin your journey by exploring whether you have the right platforms today and how to integrate your current platforms with new, dynamic ones. 

The idea is to create a safe, inspiring space for employees to receive information and share quality feedback. A critical part of getting to the top of their list, and staying there is trust. Your employees need to trust that you have their best interests at heart. To do this, you will need to open up the lines of communication. 

• Reason 2: You have tactics but no long-term strategy

"We will create a newsletter, host a town hall, and send an email from the President."

You will likely hear the above statement when discussing communication planning in most organizations. The problem here is that having tactics is not the same as having an effective communication strategy with long-term benefits. Your tactics are the creative expression of your long-term strategy. Your communication strategy is a reflection of your overarching business strategy with targets to mobilize and inform your workforce. Tactics not thoughtfully aligned to a strategy will only produce short-term benefits.

You want to keep your employees engaged for life. Engagement allows them to identify meaning in the work they do, which translates to higher levels of productivity and ownership. To get your communication strategy going, you will need to start with three critical steps: 

Assess how you currently communicate to employees 

Take a look at how you currently communicate with your employees. Make a list of all the channels and tactics in place at your organization. Make a note of every opportunity you have to communicate with your employees. Create a list of leaders and communicators who are responsible for the communication. This will lead to the next step — evaluating your audience.

Evaluate your audience

Knowing your audience is critical to effective communication. Having assessed how you are communicating to employees, you will need to take a more in-depth look at sentiment, behaviors, and personal preferences. Evaluate the following:

• What are their job-related wants and needs?

• How do they use technology?

• What are their preferred learning styles?

• What are their preferred channels and tactics?

• What, if anything, do they admire about the company?

• Do they find their leaders to be inspiring?

• What is their ideal leadership style?

• How often do they want to receive information?

• For multi-national companies, what is their preferred language to receive communications?

At the end of this exercise, do some audience segmentation. Start by creating targeted groups and sub-groups depending on the structure of your organization and business needs. This is an essential step for creating a tailored communication plan for your team. 

Develop a way to measure effectiveness

Having answered the questions above, align your goals to what you now know about your employees. Create a simple but effective way to measure your communications to determine your ROI. While ROI is a major benefit of measuring, it is not the only one. Useful analytics will also provide you with great insights into your employees and how they are interacting with your content.

Reason 3: You’re not embracing new channels and technologies

In a modernized business environment, your communication is a reflection of your channels and the content you share through those channels. You don't want to simply give information to your employees. You want them to enjoy receiving the information and be active participants in the information exchange process. Remember the days when we solved every communication challenge with an email? Outlook reigned supreme, and the idea of using diverse, social channels to communicate with employees was far-fetched and likely seen as a security breach. Thankfully those days are behind us.

Using mobile responsive social platforms for business communication is highly effective since most employees naturally use these platforms in their personal lives. Take a look at how your internal channels stack up against the technologies employees use outside of work. A robust communication strategy incorporates savvy tactics and technologies. For example, video and audio are much more effective and convenient for employees to consume. Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in copy form (Popvideo, 2018). Explore snackable audio formats like podcasts and audiobooks since employees can listen to them while working or commuting.

If you choose to share content through blogs and other written forms of storytelling, be sure to present it in clear, concise language, broken up with compelling graphics and images. Feel free to insert a bit of humor, pop culture references, and maybe even a reaction GIF. These are simple ways to humanize leaders, making them more relatable and, by extension, their messages more believable.

Reason 4: You're not actively inviting conversation and engagement

We often treat communication as a one-way street. The organization disseminates information as they see fit; employees consume it and go about their day. For example, leaders assume that two-way communication happens at town halls and employee meetings. When, in fact, they take up most of the time talking from a deck with very little time in the end for employees to give feedback. Depending on the leader, some employees may feel overwhelmed or intimidated by the content and will not speak up in this setting. Delivery and trust are critical factors to consider when crafting messages for our corporate leaders. Employees are more likely to act on a message when it comes from a leader they trust. As the corporate speaker, leaders must be willing to make connections with their employees. They can do this by sharing personal stories or beliefs and values that govern their lives outside of work.

Additionally, communication teams can ease the burden of creating content by leveraging employee-generated content. Adding a blog forum to your intranet where employees can share stories, photos, and anecdotes can be powerful. Feel free to pull additional content and insights from forums and discussions already in place. For example, one company, MHS Homes, utilized data from their employee bios to create a fun competition for employees to get familiar with the company intranet.

Employee feedback is a powerful tool. Bring employees into the creative process by coming up with engaging activities and programs that require their involvement. Invite them to participate in crowdsourcing to determine new focus areas for projects, the name of new tools and products, and other aspects of business initiatives. Remember, you can also take internal communication offline with sessions like lunch and learns with company and industry influencers to inspire even more conversation and digital content.

Key Takeaways

Your employees exist in a highly disruptive business marketplace, making it challenging to keep them fully engaged. They are more empowered than they have ever been and possess the technology to be true ambassadors. To get and keep their attention, you will need to use creative communication channels they already enjoy in their personal lives. Here are some reminders on how to approach that journey.

• Make your communication hub a fun place to be. Remember, communication happens both ways. You can gain valuable insights from opening up your channels for employee-generated content and feedback.

• Offer curated content in consumable chunks to share critical information quickly, rather than having them parse through lengthy, text-heavy content.

• Explore new channels, such as short videos and podcasts, as these are often more effective, more convenient, and easier to digest.

• Include an idea-sharing component to your content to encourage active discussions and employee contributions. Utilize crowdsourcing when necessary to pull them into the creative process. This will help them see how they fit in the organization and will help them establish meaning in the work they do.

At Optix, we help companies design intranet platforms and communication strategies to capture employee attention and keep them engaged for the long-term. Visit our website to get this whitepaper and all other publications.

Following major scandals like the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica ordeal in 2018, many consumers are increasingly concerned about how online companies handle their data. One report from SlickText found that over 75 percent of online consumers said they were "moderately or significantly concerned" regarding their data when interacting with online brands. 

Although small businesses aren't typically the ones causing this public distrust, they are still impacted by these scandals. It's clear that customers are becoming more aware of how -- and with whom -- they share their personal information. Optix Communications invites you to look at some strategies that can help keep your customers' data secure while also maintaining your profits. 

Encrypt the Data 

Encryption is one of the fundamentals of data security and protection. When it comes to managing your customers' sensitive and personal information, it's important to ensure would-be hackers -- both internal and external -- can't access data your business is in charge of protecting. Forcepoint notes that through encryption, you can successfully transform this information into an unreadable code that can only be unlocked with an encryption key. This means only intended parties would have access to customer data, limiting the chances of a breach and associated costs for your business.  

Limit Access

There's a direct correlation between the number of people with access to sensitive information and the likelihood that this data will be misused. As the owner of a small business, you're responsible for handling data for hundreds and maybe thousands of customers. You must be deliberate about who gets access to this data in your company. It's always better to err on the safe side and limit access except for a few trustworthy individuals. Whenever an employee leaves the company, be sure to change the passwords accordingly and lock or disengage access to any associated accounts. 

Comply with Industry Standards

One of the most effective ways to protect customer data and your profits is to comply with industry standards. More specifically, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of regulations put forth by credit card companies to ensure businesses keep customer data secure. Credit card companies are just as protective about sensitive information as customers themselves. While PCI compliance isn't required to run a business, customers will be more likely to trust a company with this seal of approval. Furthermore, your company will be better off in terms of protecting customer information. 

Protect Your Computers 

Since computers are the primary method your company uses for handling and organizing consumer information, it behooves you to take the necessary precautions to protect them from cyber-attacks. Antivirus software can work wonders to help keep your company protected against hackers. You don't have to spend a fortune on these programs as many are affordable or even free. It's important to speak with an IT specialist to see which program works best for your company.

Hire an Expert 

You don't have to be a tech expert to protect your customers' data from hackers or other potential issues. However, there may be times when professional help is required. If your company experiences a data loss due to a phishing attack or other email scams, you'll need to quickly hire professional tech support in order to recover your data. Since many small companies don't have an in-house IT team, it may be necessary to hire professionals. These experts can help get your company back up and running with minimal downtime, productivity and damage.

Of course, if you want to handle your business's cybersecurity on your own, you can always go back to school. Getting your BS in computer science may be something you've always considered, so why not do it to help safeguard your business from hackers and viruses? These days, you can take classes in your spare time to provide you with all the skills you need.

Online consumers care about what happens to their personal information during and after a transaction. Small businesses need to take preventative measures to ensure that this data is organized and protected. This effort helps to secure the profits for your business as well. 

Optix Communications uses communication and coaching to help position your workforce with an ownership mindset. Email us at info@optixcommunications.com to learn more.

JUNE 16, 2021