With the proliferation of social media channels, employees have become 24/7 brand ambassadors for their companies and the lines between internal and external communications are continuously blurring. Therefore, employers have as much of a responsibility to engage and inspire their internal staff as they do with external audiences.
The tactics discussed at Business Development Institute’s Internal Communications and Collaboration Leadership Forum closely mirrored the new school PR and marketing tactics that organizations are employing to drive action from their consumers. After all, employees are simultaneously consuming the information they produce and should therefore believe in the same brand promises they make to the public. The following tactics illustrate how you can improve your employee experience using similar tactics used to engage external audiences
Create useful content
Treat the initiatives happening around your company as important breaking news. Editorial content such as blog posts and articles help amplify positive growth around the company and keep teams across the organization informed about the overall mission and business strategy.
Senior leaders as chief communicators
According to a survey conducted by Brilliant Ink, 80% of employees feel more engaged when they receive inspiring communications from senior leaders. Quotes from executive leadership establish trust and humanizes the brand from both an employee and consumer standpoint.
Utilize multimedia
Video messages and teleconferencing are other ways to humanize the organization by bringing communications to a personal level and are far more engaging than a text only email. Below is a video used by AIG that motivated their employees to “bring on tomorrow.”
Use internal social media with purpose
The social channels used by consumers such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn meet different needs of their audiences, and enterprise social channels are no different. Your internal communication channels need a thoughtful strategy behind them to keep people engaged and understand the value of communicating on that space. Ultimately it is best to minimize the number of places that people have to go for communications.
Internal social media networks need not just a how, but also a why to get employees using them #BDI1 @Brilliantink—
Hunter (@HHSez) March 27, 2014
Communicate the value or benefit of an employee’s labor
PR and marketing professionals are ultimately trying to communicate why their product or service is important to consumers. Employees need to feel the same sense of importance when it comes to their work. Research by AIG reports that 70% or more of strategic and change programs fail without effective manager communications. Connecting the dots between daily work and the overall company strategy is vital to maintaining productivity and helping an employee understand where they fit in.
It is widely understood that there is a direct and positive relationship between employee engagement and overall company growth; organizations that invest in creating a more unified work environment experience more productivity and financial growth than those that do not. Plan your internal communications strategies with the same attention and care as you do externally in order to drive inspiration and action from employees.
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