Transitioning from Internal Communications to an Employee Engagement Team

Engagement is not Mandatory

Internal communications have historically been top-down messaging, whether its the latest employer initiative or an annual survey focusing on feedback as a snapshot in time. The traditional approach of emails and paper forms has for too long had limited success. To see how the whole company is feeling at just one single moment doesn’t help anyone and can cause more problems than good. Often the employee will click any box to ‘get it done’ or the take up is perhaps so bad that it wasn’t worth the time anyway.

Internal communication has to change.

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We made a poster about that, have you seen it?

Putting pressure on employees to take responsibility for their engagement doesn’t work, just because you have a poster in the lunch area doesn’t mean that anyone has read it, or if they have it was probably the same one from 2 months ago.

Your employees are consumers of some of the best engagement apps in the world.

Does Facebook rely on posters in the staff room?

A recent survey showed 95% of respondents aged between 16 and 44 reported owning a smartphone and mobile apps account for 89% of mobile media time, with the other 11% spent on websites.

To put it simply, allowing users to access company-wide information securely on their mobile device creates ownership and engagement. Period.

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So you have an app, now what?

The truth is that a fancy app or new intranet alone won’t motivate an employee to engage. Too many organisations have failed digital transformation/communication projects.

You can put into place all the practices and circumstances that increase the likelihood that an employee will be engaged but engagement is a two-way deal.

Having a constant stream of information that is relevant to the employee based on their chosen interest areas with corporate information and news woven into the news stream is key.

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Who's updating this?

Engaged management stakeholders who understand engagement and its business benefits are great but chances are they aren’t the ones writing content.

Building a network of users (Influencers) that want to write blog and comment - chances are you know who they are already, they are the ones who are the office know it all, or the one everyone gets to ask the boss the questions they don’t want to.

These superstars will drive your engagement score through the roof. These are your influencers.

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Review, rewrite, republish, incentivise

Let’s face it, most corporate news articles are dull. You know it, we know it and most certainly your employees know it.

And with the modern day stream of notifications, emails and instant messages, your corporate news article can end up like that old poster in the lunch area and get lost.

When it comes to Employee Engagement, ‘Engagement’ is the key word. You need to ensure that your content is reaching your intended audience, just like an influencer would on Instagram or Facebook.

Look at the statistics, they don’t lie. If an article has only been read by a handful of colleagues then it wasn’t engaging enough.

When this happens, Review, Rewrite and Republish. And if all else fails, incentivise!