Getting your Internal Communication "Future-Ready" - Insights from our London Event "Elevating Human Connection at Work" - Part 1/3

What would happen if you included the cost of attention in your internal comms budget?

What if a chatbot could help you develop communication strategies based on actual data, not just gut feelings?

Or how would a helicopter ride help create an internal movement about your company's purpose?

And how will Generative AI transform internal communications?

Last week, I co-hosted an exclusive "invitation-only" event in London.

The event focused on how internal communicators can use technology to elevate human connection at work.

Our Agenda was packed with 20-minute "lightning talks"—inspiring cases from practitioners—and workshops focusing on evolving our approach to internal comms.

In this first part, I share my take-aways from some of the lightning talks.

Opening Keynote: Why Has Internal Communication Changed So Little During Big Transformations in Society?

One of the reasons why internal comms hasn't evolved as much as I would have expected is due to what I call the "Radio on television" problem.

As you might know, when the television was invented, people started producing their radio content on television. They didn't think of the television as something that could totally transform the way we communicate with and entertain the audience.

It happened over time with people who were courageous enough to explore new ways of generating content.

I bring this up because I have seen many examples of people thinking that a channel like Viva Engage is just one more channel where we can push out our Intranet news.

We need to become better at exploring and experimenting, willing to fail and learn, and stopping chasing so-called "best practices," as they often don't work in your organisation. Instead, look for good practices backed up by research or data or explore and create your good practices.

One of the most important things is to make sure that you have a vision for where you want to take internal communications. If you don't have that, you might become the order-taker, delivering anything that keeps your stakeholders happy.

Also, a Gallagher survey found that 37 % of internal communicators believe that the biggest challenge for internal communication is a lack of knowledge about the value internal communication creates for the organisation.

This leads me to my last point: We need to define what kind of knowledge we can bring to the table that our stakeholders value. As Anne Katrine Lund and Liam FitzPatrick has both shared with me at peer-learning events in my community, we have to be able intelligence of what is going on in the business.

We need to be the ones who they would want to ask if they need to know what people think about certain issues and bring up insights and perspectives that they hadn't thought about themselves and that enrich their decision-making.

The Lightning Talks

How Arla Foods Are Creatively Engaging Employees with Viva Engage

Toni Jackson from Arla Foods UK has a clear vision for internal communications. She believes in the importance of connecting people in the organisation and shared an inspiring case from Arla about engaging leaders on Viva Engage.

Toni spoke about how she seized what she called 'moments of opportunity' to expand its use. One of these moments was Covid-19, where everyone was forced to use online communications. Here, she managed to set up some channels on Viva Engage and trained and coached leaders to use this as their communication platform.

The platform has proven so successful that she is no longer the "bottleneck" when someone wants to get a good story out on the Intranet. Now, anyone can share it on Viva Engage.

One of Toni's key messages in her presentation was that we should start asking, "How do you want people to feel?" rather than starting with"What do you want people to know"? This will help you understand how you want to tell the story/share the information. Viva Engage has helped bring people's stories to life and connect people across the organisation.

As a consequence, Toni has become a facilitator of conversations rather than a producer of content. Leaders and employees have become storytellers, and communication has become more authentic and emotional.

Creating a Big Internal Movement at National Grid

Anna Pass and Tasmeen Warr shared how they created an internal movement around National Grid strategy/purpose launch called "Big Work". I personally liked their focus on creating memorable moments

Their campaigns are truly multi-channel and a mix of digital and face-to-face, but the clever thing is how they use Viva Engage to spotlight all those memorable moments. One of the "memorable moments" was an opportunity to get on a helicopter trip (called "A big day out") to see the electrical grids from the top.

It was truly memorable and also an insightful way to learn more about the company's work. As with Tonis's case from Arla, it was about connecting people and telling stories through people.

It was nice to hear how they took a "thinking big" approach when developing the campaign. For instance, I liked how they thought, "Since we have helicopters in our company, why not see if we can use them?"

I also reflected that this was a great example of how communication can be about experiences. It doesn't just have to be plain and boring information.

Beyond the Message: Evaluating Communication Success Through Data-Driven Insights

One of our biggest challenges in internal communications is gathering data and converting the data points into insights. I haven't found anyone in the comms space who has nailed that one yet. This is why I find Swoop Analytics so interesting: it does just that: converting data into insights.

Cai Kjaer and Pete Johns from Swoop Analytics presented their latest invention - "Dr.Swoop". Dr Swoop is a chatbot with whom you can have insightful conversations about improving digital communication and collaboration in your organisation.

It's built on Swoop Analytics data insights from their comprehensive benchmark reports. This allows our customers to interact with the data in a much more human way. The example Cai gave was a list of 'Influential People' in a community. You can then ask, "What would my CEO need to do to get on this list?" Instantly, you get ideas and recommendations with examples you can act on.

Imagine if your adoption strategies for Teams and/or Viva Engage were rooted in data rather than gut feeling! I guess Dr. Swoop could be leading the way for this going forward.

Watch the video below to see Cai demonstrating Dr Swoop.

https://www.veed.io/view/41d971b7-90b3-47a5-a1bc-a473409c6a07

The Currency of Attention - Valuing and Leveraging Employee Focus in Internal Comms

We often need help setting up a way to measure our impact because we think it has to be 100 % accurate. By trying to do this, we fail miserably because it's simply impossible to show our work's exact impact.

Tom McIlroy from Sage showed a pretty simple but impactful calculation he has made about the cost of getting their employees' attention. For example, using an average salary rate of 0.87p per minute, he showed the 'cost' of sending out, for example, a 2-minute video for all staff to watch.

Now Tom can ask—and challenge—his stakeholders if the information/communication they would like to send out is "worth the cost of attention"! I found this really creative, very insightful, and a good way to start a conversation about the value of internal communication activities.

This was the first part of my blog with insights from our event.

In the next part, you will hear about:

• Howard Krais' insightful presentation "Is Internal Communication Relevant Today?"
• My presentation is about "Generative AI and its Impact on Workplace Communication. Here, you will learn how to set up a conversational podcast - or "botcast" where two bots have a conversation about the content you want them to talk about.
• Reflections from our two workshops
• ...and some final reflections about all the inspiration we received throughout the day!