Are internal communication teams focussed on what employees want?

In my final article looking at the internal communication trends and how they map to different areas of organisations, I’m exploring how they align to what employees want.

There have been a few research reports in recent years that involved speaking to employees about their perception of communication in their organisation so it’s worth looking at whether the trends for internal communication in 2024 are aligned to what employees want in the same year.

I’ve already written about alignment to HR and to the CEO, as well as an overview article on trends. You can find them all here:

What are the trends for internal communication in 2024?

How aligned are HR and Internal Communications?

Why a strategic narrative is needed to align to CEO priorities in 2024

As a reminder, the seven trends for internal communication are:

1. Connecting employees with each other in the human sense, not the tech sense
2. AI
3. Hyper-personalisation – tailoring content to employees
4. Creating content that actually engages the audience
5. Focussing on the employee experience and making it as good as the customer one
6. Building trust in the leaders and the organisation as a whole
7. Using data, analytics and insights to drive decisions and activities

What are the reports that have researched employees views on internal communication?

In 2023 there was an in-depth report from the Institute of Internal Communication (IoIC) and consultancy Karian and Box. Called The IC Index, it identified seven things about internal communication based on insight from employees.

1. People value internal communication teams - people are more likely to trust what the CEO says when an internal communication team is in place. They are more likely to feel engaged and stay in the organisation.
2. A large proportion think the internal communication in their organisation is excellent. This is 60%, so there is still a huge number of people seeing it as inadequate.
3. Strategic clarity is important for engagement. People want to know what is happening, why, and what it means financially for the organisation
4. Less is more. Employees don’t have time to read long articles and lots of content. Shorter is better.
5. Senior leader communication is important. People want to hear from them but authentically and on the right channels - like email or intranets where they can choose to engage.
6. Line managers need attention. This is two-fold because they are trusted by employees, but they lack the skills to communicate with confidence.
7. We need to listen. Employees don’t feel that their voices are heard or that they are listened to.

In 2023, I carried out my second piece of research focussed on communication with deskless or non-office based workers. This was a repeat of research in 2019. In 2023 and in 2019 we found that:

1. Deskless workers spend 90% of their time doing their job making it difficult to find time to engage with content from the organisation
2. Line managers are crucial to effective communication. If a line manager is a poor communicator, the perception is that all communication is poor
3. Relevance is incredibly important otherwise it’s just noise
4. The type of work they do has a correlation to the content they need
5. WhatsApp is filling the IT gap that exists for this group of employees
6. Word of mouth is their main channel

In 2021, I carried out research exploring the role of line managers which looked at how the individual works, internal communication, the purpose of their role, their relationships across the organisation, their capability and the support they have to do their job.

The report shares 12 findings, but I’ll share the five here that are most relevant:

1. Line managers aren’t listening to their teams
2. Not all line managers are the same – team size and where people are has an impact
3. Line managers have confusing levels of empowerment and autonomy which make it hard to lead effectively
4. Matrix management has an impact on line manager happiness
5. 42% of line managers say they have to rewrite internal communication that comes from the organisation

What does this all mean for alignment between employees and the internal communication function?

• Connecting employees is important for employees. There is a clear trend in the employee insights around line manager relationships and this is key across all trends for 2024.
• AI and technology isn’t really coming up for employees. Partly because it’s seen as a tool and might deliver some of the outcomes people are looking for, but this trend for internal communicators doesn’t seem to correlate to a core stakeholder need
• Hyper-personalisation links nicely into relevance and clarity around the strategy – what does the content mean for the individual employee?
• Content that actually engages employees has to be linked to the need to shift from only long-form written content. This is the same across all the research based on time, ability and interest.
• Focussing on the employee experience will never be something vocalised by employees because it’s unlikely to be language or phrasing they would use. But what we are seeing are themes that link to culture. Several points around listening, clarity and senior leaders link to the overall experience an employee has.
• Building trust in the leaders is coming through for employees as there is reference to the importance of authentic communication and using the right channels.
• Data to drive decisions won’t be a trend that will translate across but it should lead to more meaningful activity from internal communication functions resulting in a better experience for employees

With all of this in mind, what are the next steps for communication teams?

The trends for internal communication are a blend of things needed for the function and needed for the organisation. The points around AI and data are almost behind the scenes work to make the function more efficient, more strategic and more outcome focussed. There are also elements to this that are linked to personal development for the individuals in the team.

In terms of the actions and how we take this forward, these are the questions I would be working through as an individual or as a team:

• Are the channels we have in place the right ones to build trust in leaders?
• Do we have a clear listening strategy that involves genuine listening and action?
• How do we focus on content first before the channels and make sure we are doing things creatively and in an engaging way?
• What is our digital strategy and how is personalisation, tailored content and relevance part of it?
• Are we clear about why we are communicating?
• Can our content be shared easily, verbally?
• Do we know our line managers in detail? More than just ‘line managers’?
• Is there a plan to upskill line managers and their communication skills? What’s our role in that development?

As I’ve finished writing this I’m thinking I probably need to do a final article to bring all this together with an action list for 2024 so I’ll take some time to work through that and share a final post in the coming weeks.

If you’d like to hear more from me and the work we do at Redefining Communications , I’ve included the link for you to join my community below along with links to the research reports I’ve mentioned in this article.

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Resources

https://www.ioic.org.uk/resource/ic-index-report-2023.html

https://redefiningcomms.com/research/

https://redefiningcomms.com/join-our-community/

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