What are some new ways to experiment with internal communication?

O fator humano é primordial para uma boa comunica??o interna. N?o adianta se esconder atrás de um e-mail legalzinho se n?o há momentos de integra??o e espa?os de fala seguros. A comunica??o é dialógica.

I think it's great when internal communication is more than just e-mail newsletters and town halls. But beware: using too many channels can get messy and confusing, especially when it's a mix of push and pull communication. When employees have the feeling they can't keep up with all new pieces of information, communication becomes a burden and participation becomes a penalty. When I look at companies that just started doing internal communication professionally, I recommend starting slow and raising channel variety and awareness step by step.

There's lots of opportunity to blend external and internal communications, meaning you can do more with the content and messaging you are producing. For example, some organizations use private social media channels to engage employees. Others use social media gamification to engage with employees. Ask yourself a couple of questions before you act on this. Firstly, where are your employees when it comes to their online behavior? It's often easier to go to them than it is to create a new platform and site. Second, will your actions be seen as beneficial and not intrusive. I've seen companies set up WhatsApp channels, which doesn't always work out well (employees complain of too much push messaging). Experiment, engage, listen, and measure!

Might seem revolutionary in digital first world but ever tried offline events/activities? Coffee huddles? Interactive notice boards? Speaker announcements? Rather than flooding emails just announce the next Christmas party with a flash mob, or get creative with a jingle on work radio! Internal Comms a lot of time fails to hit the spot or grab attention simply because someone decided to make things absolutely boring and drop the long invite/memo in your mail box :)

Remember that the conversations that your employees have with each other make up your most important internal communication channel. It's also the channel that's the most autonomous and the hardest to control. To have it play a constructive role, focus on how to influence your informal network by finding out who the key influencers are and making sure they get sufficient information to share their opinions factually and responsibly. This takes work - but it can make a decisive difference.

In my experience, employee voice is key to developing successful internal communication campaigns. Employee input can lead to better-informed decisions l.When employees feel their voices are heard, they are more likely to be engaged and committed to their work. In addition,new ideas and innovations often arise from employees who feel free to share their ideas. Feeling valued and heard contributes to higher job satisfaction and morale.

Not only are the employees the primary source for understanding what communications are needed, but they are also a critical group to get involved in the roll out of the communication itself. Every company has key internal influencers and they can become your hidden asset for ensuring the message has a wider and more impactful reach. Those employees are usually a trusted voice as culture carriers and if you can earn their trust and confidence, they can become your strongest advocates and amplifiers of communications.

In my experience, listening to employees is key. Ask them how they want to receive information or what information they want to receive. A survey is not a bad way to start, but its most important to get out and about in your organization and talk to people. When employees feel that internal communications (and the organization in general) care about what they have to say, they are more inclined to give honest opinions. One of the great feedbacks I've heard in my role is to figure out how to deliver information to employees via text message. This is especially relevant for our frontline employees, who do not spend their days at computers. Listen clearly to what your employees have to say, its incredibly valuable!

Tap into your employees emotions by creating a strategy that comes from their own desires and needs. The way to do it? Use your employee engagement surveys to gather insights and ideas on what they are currently missing out on. Another example is, most likely, you already have organic moments happening in the company's ecosystem, so you should take advantage of that and invest in existing moments that contribute to your organization's unique culture.

This isn't just about surveys and traditional feedback mechanisms, which are valuable. I've found that communicators tend to forget to communicate ABOUT their efforts. Maybe it's the data nerd in me (and working at a tech company) but I share back the metrics of the formal channels to the audience itself. It's to help them see that YES other people are using these channels and YES it is supported and will be maintained. It's helped simplify the question of "where" to put information and speed up adoption even in the midst of pervasive change fatigue.

I often say- treat your employees as you would your customers because think about it... why wouldn’t we. We spend a lot of time and investments on flashy consumer ads but not so with internal comms. We sometimes forget that our employees are exposed to all the flashy ads externally and that's what we are competing with... we must arrest attention with clear concise comms that's creative as well. I'm trying something with dramatisation this year. Let's see if it comes through. The goal is to use behavioural trends or sentiments to a process update for example, to drive the attitudinal outcomes desired.

There's a reason people get sucked into Tik Tok and Instagram. The styles and formats are always changing, yet also familiar. Internal comms should be inspired by what attracts externally and explore ways to bring that internal.

Something for everyone! A unique approach while evaluating which new formats to test can be to try and share information or CTAs in ways that appeal to various cognitive learning and understanding styles. For example, try infographics or charts for visual learners vs podcasts or digicasts for auditory learners vs involving kinesthetic learners to join in focused group discussions or self help toolkits. You might not know initially what demographic type is predominant in your company but you can test various formats out gradually and measure against actual action taken thru understanding, awareness, adoption, and commmitment phases.

Consider an internal podcast for your organization as one of the tools to reach and engage your employees or stakeholders. For example, HR professionals could use an internal podcast to enhance on-boarding of new employees, to deliver training or other regular updates across an organization.

External trends, such as “TikTok-style” short videos, can be a major success if applied to internal communication - as long as they fit into the company culture and the company’s internal communication channels. In my experience, playing with different formats can help you understand your audience and shape your own internal communication culture. But a key aspect to consider when choosing the format are the distribution channels available in the company - do they enhance or worsen user experience? A bad interaction might reduce message acceptance by the audience.

This is especially important when you are communicating about change. Segmenting your audience by how a change will impact them and where they are on the change curve is critical to communicating change effectively and breaking through resistance.

Personalization is everything in internal comms. The "spray and pray" model has never worked. Intelligently and dynamically segmenting audiences enables targeting and personalization. Employees shouldn't have to filter through content to find the important stuff. The information that matters most should rise to the top for them.

In the world of employee engagement, meeting employees where they are is critical. If they're 'deskless' while you, as an internal communication professional, are comfortably 'desked,' bridging that physical gap becomes imperative. Go out and initiate focus groups or foster 1:1 conversations in their spaces. Ask them to guide you through their daily routines and behaviors, especially concerning their interactions with internal communication. This deep dive into their world serves a dual purpose. It gives you profound insight, while exhibiting a genuine commitment to understanding their unique vantage points. As a result, the likelihood of capturing their attention and engagement is substantially heightened.

Segmentar es la llave que nos permitirá abrir las puertas de una buena recepción, comprensión e interacción con la información que se comparte con las públicos internos. En mi experiencia he podido comprobar que hoy en día los intereses personales pueden ser tan cercanos como extremos en un mismo equipo de trabajo y eso no vuelve enriquecedor, pero también todo un reto para la comunicación interna.

Por peque?a que sea la organización, siempre debemos enfocarnos en segmentar primero antes de comunicar algo internamente. Porque trabajamos con personas y aunque sean grupos peque?os, siempre habrán intereses y realidades diferentes. Segmentar pensando en esos dos grandes aspectos nos acerca a que el mensaje llegue de forma eficaz y con la claridad necesaria para no generar suposiciones, especulaciones o incluso, una desinformación.

Para aprender hay que saber escuchar y ese es el primer paso en comunicación interna, aprender de los resultados, pero también de los que percibimos y escuchamos de los colaboradores. Muchas veces la información que verdaderamente nos retroalimenta no estará en una app, en un mail, o en una encuesta, sino en una conversación de pasillo o mientras compartimos con café y se conversa con un colaborador.

I love to see internal communicators implement measurable experiments. Get really exact and specific, like a scientific experiment. Create a hypothesis and test it out. For example, your hypothesis could be "I think employees would like short videos explaining our HR policies". Write down exactly how you're going to test out this hypothesis and when you're going to start and end the experiment. Measure and evaluate at the end and give it a score for (a) difficulty and (b) impact. If your hypothesis is proved incorrect, it doesn't mean your experiment has failed - quite the opposite. You have disproved a hypothesis and collected valuable data that you can now apply to your audience and to your communication system.

My suggestion is likely more applicable to comms processes - a tip I have is to pay closer attention to the new features that come -- almost monthly -- in the apps you already use everyday (like Slack, MS Teams, Zoom, etc). Plan to invest 10-15 mins after each new release to review the new features and consider how you might apply them to improve comms processes you might have. Sometimes it's easier to make a little, iterative tweaks with how your team uses the apps you already have. And if you do it when the features come out, you'll continue to iterate each time and not feel like you've fallen behind on what's new. These apps are in constant competition with each other and keep adding great, new features. Test and learn ;)

One quick suggestion for anyone managing internal communications or employee communications: find a process or timeline to challenge the "way things are done". For me, it's around Summer time and end of the year. As we are entering the Q4, I perform A/B testing on our company-wide newsletters: changing small details such as format, how we deliver content and time and date of sending - all of this will help to draft a consistent strategy for the upcoming year and will support any changes we might make moving forward.

Testing new tools and channels is an excellent way to develop your internal communications. The important thing is to be humble about it. If you test something new or try changes to something existing and results show that it doesn't work, don't be afraid to admit it.

One thing I found helpful is involving team in coming up with new trends and ideas. In the world of ever changing, understanding your audience and fulfilling their needs is critical in the success of the overall strategy. Moreover, enhancing existing channels and messages play a vital role in maintaining the highest standards of content, visuals and initiatives.

Embrace a growth mindset. Not every communication will be perfect and there will be times when nothing you do lands well. That's not failure. That's a learning opportunity. Beta-test. Collect data. Rinse and repeat. This is how you grow as a communicator and deepen your understanding of your audience.

After you use a new tool, follow up. Ask people if they received the information. Talk to managers and different departments to see if the new tool/vehicle delivered the message. If it did, great! Try it again. If it didn't, find out why. You have to do your own on-the-ground research if you really want to identify new methods to communicate.

This is the danger behind "best practices." With each tactic or strategy that's identified as a best practice there's a better one out there. Trust me. A best practice might be best for one organization but a communicator's role is to innovate and drive me continued growth.

Data can really help drive innovative and iterative decision-making. Say your organization's intranet is ready for a redesign. By tracking aggregate user behavior through heat mapping, scroll mapping, and click rates, you can understand features and content that your audience finds most relevant. Then, the next iteration can be better tailored to create the right user experience.

We all create amazing and engaging experiences for our customers, but why can't we do the same for our internal audience too! We flipped the everyday boring townhall upside down and made it a special one-of-a-kind experience for staff where they are in the drivers seat. Firstly, we take it offsite so we're in a new and cool space, secondly, we find a few inspiring speakers that'll inspire and motivate. Third, we ask staff ahead of time, what sort of problem do you want to solve together (what are some blockers in their job, what processes can we improve, etc.), and that becomes the activity to solve. Finally, we break bread together, having a meal in one room helps spark curiosity and allows for stronger bonds.

To paraphrase Maya Angelou, People will never forget how you made them feel. Start every comms initiative with a set of simple desired outcomes, including, How do we want staff to feel after this [meeting, email, blog, Town Hall, etc.]?

We are dealing with a smart generation that is consuming content at a rapid pace. "How do I speak more about what you should focus on in this tsunami of content and still do that in less words?" is the question we need to ask ourselves as champions of internal communication

Innovation in communication doesnt always mean creating something new. Sometimes it simply means adding something new to an existing channel or format. Those small changes can have a huge impact. All you have to do is keep your eyes open for gaps and opportunities.

Be educational across regions. Often companies with a mothership attitude perpetuate and enforce a groupthink way of doing things driving an opinion of hierarchy, this misses so many opportunities. If operating as a global company with equality as a value and trying to be inclusive then you MUST enable 2 way street communication.