In a hyper-connected world your employees’ time and attention are at a premium and yet internal communicators can’t afford not to communicate enough. Keeping employees informed, engaged and aligned to the organization’s goals continue to be a priority. Your workforce is expected to deliver results in an agile and flexible manner – at the office, at home, while travelling or on-site. Sometimes, they may not have access to channels often used by your organization. Employees prefer to receive simple messages and in ways that are easy to relate and use.
Here are a few tips to keep your employees’ interest in mind while creating ‘snackable’ internal communication campaigns.
· Right-sized: Short, timely campaigns (capsules shared in a day or a week) can get more attention that long drawn out initiatives. For example, opportunities to do minute-long videos on topics that matter can engage employees better than overwhelming them with loads of information. Be it improving their personal or professional selves or showcasing the organization’s business critical work consider storytelling as an approach and content that is direct and focused on what matters to employees.
· On-the-go: Think of converting key sections of your employee newsletter into podcasts or leadership messages into content that can be consumed on-the-move. Most employees prefer to access such content while commuting or when they have some down-time. Having employees serve as part of these nuggets either by seeking ideas or inviting participation while co-creating these modules can improve content consumption.
· Interactive: When employees get to shape communication directed at themselves they are more likely to accept the messages. Invite employees to interact on online or offline conversations that result in say, a policy change, a new approach to working or how priorities can be realigned.
· Involved: Include elements where employees are responsible for owning content that is used in your communication. Be it a talk-show that is hosted by an employee or a product review which employees do before a launch or an experiential learning approach that gets employees off their seats and into spaces where your customers are.
· Take-away: Your communication is successful when employees are able to retain messages in the long term. Make your communication memorable and menu-card driven – creative, personalized and meaningful. For example, an interactive learning game which they can ‘play’ with others in their teams or a desktop calendar that they use for the rest of the year that reminds them of key behaviors and actions.
While you make your campaign and content more ‘snackable’ consider spacing the initiatives over the year, reinforcing messages that resonate and giving employees reasons to engage. What other ideas do you have to make your campaigns more appealing to employees?
