3 employee communication mistakes to avoid

Ding. Ping. Beep. In most organizations, employees get inundated with emails and messages. The shift to remote work likely made that number rise. 

It’s not just the quantity of communication that can cause stress and anxiety, it’s knowing what to take action on and what needs our attention. 

Take, onboarding for example. It’s not uncommon for new hires to be bombarded with long messages from multiple sources, likely sent all at once.  

About 70% of HR communications are disregarded - a disheartening statistic for People Teams

Over the past year, we’ve worked with some of the world’s top companies including Shopify, Snyk, and Flexport to help enhance their employee communication during some of the most important moments in an employee journey - including onboarding.

On average these tips have helped increase our customer’s readership with Pyn by double digits in just a few months. 

As our Head of Content, here is the most frequent advice I've found myself giving to customers. You can implement it too! 

 1. Don't stuff the suitcase

This means avoid information overload. Many of us approach communication the same way we approach travel. We throw everything in the suitcase just in case we need it. With employee communication we think as long as we’re sending a message, it’s best to give them as much information as we can. 

Resist the urge to overpack your communication. 

Just like overpacking a suitcase makes it heavy, overpacking your message makes for a heavy cognitive load. Not to mention, this approach gets in the way of others absorbing our message. 

It’s not about what’s in the suitcase. It’s about where it allows us to go.

It’s not quantity we’re after, it’s quality. 

Ask yourself questions about the outcome, not the content:

1. Who is this communication for?
2. What do you want them to do differently?
3. Why would they read this?
4. What information do your employees need?
5. What is the key action step?

Starting with outcome questions can feel jarring and different at first. Conversations about information to include are often more comfortable. This is one reason why we overpack our messages. 

But, these answers lead us towards content curation and help us more efficiently determine what to include. 

2. Be action-oriented

Believe it or not, many of your employees want to be told what to do. This is especially true when they’re going through a new moment in their employee journey, like onboarding.

 It’s during employee journey transitions that employees are most likely to need our advice and seek our help.

While we may believe casual or fun language sends a good message and friendly tone, it can get in the way of it being read and make it harder to decipher what’s important. 

Be action-oriented not just informational.

Start with your subject lines. Try “5 things to do on your first day” instead of “what to consider when you join our company”. Action-oriented subject lines clarify the promise of what’s inside if people click. Less guesswork, more certainty. 

We regularly point customers to this Pyn guide to measure their own action orientation:

3. Match the message to the moment

Focus on the moment of need for your employees as much as the message you’re sending.

What’s happening for them right now? What are they trying to accomplish this week? What information is currently most applicable and relevant for them? 

Instead of sending your communications all at once, make it timely by matching the message to the moment.

Our ability to recall information is harder the further away from the moment of need it is. Communicating in the flow of work is easier for employees to remember and action. 

Instead of burying instructions for how to create a 90-day plan, guide the manager across key moments in their employee’s onboarding process at the moment it would likely take place and be most relevant. 

Key takeaways

Remember, it’s not just about quantity or the amount of information we share, but people’s ability to take action on it. 

To be employee-first, we need to gear all our communication towards what is relevant in their context and most helpful to them. We can also do so by focusing on the moment of need as much as the message.

These tips help us refocus from the information we want to share, to the people we are sharing it with. 

When we do that, we bring people not only closer to our message, but to us.

Lindsey Caplan helps HR Leaders and change champions enhance their communication impact so that change sticks. She is the Head of Content at Pyn where she advises customers on employee communication strategy. With The Gathering Effect, she provides strategic consulting to increase the effectiveness of organizational change efforts through the lens of Gathering. She believes work can be a place where you become your best self. Please don't dissuade her. Learn more at www.gatheringeffect.com and www.pynhq.com