By Kirsten Robinson

It’s no secret that the growth of digital publishing has required communications departments in all industries to rethink content delivery. And it’s not just for external audiences. Internal communications are also changing. Many companies are shifting from publishing a monthly magazine for employees to posting short blogs on an intranet. When channels change, your approach to the content itself must also adjust. Traditional print stories call for formal, fact-heavy text, while web writing should take a conversational tone.

Regardless of format, sources are what make a news story credible, and for most companies, valuable quotes from employees are essential for internal stories. But, transitioning print news to internal blog posts affects attribution—so, how do other companies incorporate employee voice without sounding too “newsy”? An executive in our Employee Communications Forum recently asked a similar question. Here are a few takeaways from that discussion:

• Avoid ghostwriting. CEC members who contributed to the discussion agree that attributing a blog post to an employee who didn’t write it will raise credibility issues. Ghostwriting also engenders homogeneity, as blogs lack the individual writing styles of each employee.
• Use a conversational tone. Blog posts are less formal and should have a free-flowing, personal voice. Try cutting back on jargon and corporate-speak. One member recommends removing quotation marks to make employee attribution more casual.
• Add videos. Putting employees on camera can be a great way to supplement posts or cover full stories. Short videos enable employees to add their own voice, and also make it clear who’s providing the information. Using a simple Flip camera works well here.
• Use quotes to tell the story. Instead of quoting an employee once, one member suggests using their quotes to write the post. Other members suggest using a simple Q & A structure.

How do you keep blog posts from sounding too “newsy”?

Related CEC Resources:

• Create content that will be easily shared. See how Intuit crafts “Tweetable” speeches.
• See how Aviva, Sprint, TD Bank, and Sabre source stories from employees and allow them to share their own with one another.
• Help executives tailor their voice for the web:Westpac’s Internal Discussion Forum

Click to watch the video from Best Buy

By Kirsten Robinson

Companies recognize that they live and die by the extent to which they understand their customers’ wants and needs. But are they tuned-in to what their own employees are thinking?

Think about it…most communicators have a general sense of what matters to employees based on the organization’s annual engagement survey or informal pulse surveys.  But, do you, as a communicator, know what’s on your employees’ minds right now?  Do you know how they are reacting to a company decision or change?

Best Buy’s internal communicators came to the humble realization that they weren’t experts on their own employees.  When they realized this, they decided to learn more and created a solution off the strategy the company used to gain knowledge about their customers.  They developed an employee listening system, which uses open communication to uncover the unmet needs of workers.  The end result is a deeper understanding of employees, which has allowed the company to correct (previously unknown) problems and make communication more effective.  It has also allowed them to improve their understanding of business partners, which in turn opened up possibilities for new opportunities with internal clients. Read More »

Managers are your most effective communications tools.  In fact, Comms teams that focus on improving their line managers’ ability to lead dialogue with employees can benefit from a 12% increase in employee mobilization.  (For those unfamiliar with CEC’s term, “mobilization,” it’s a combination of discretionary effort and active alignment…essentially, mobilization = employees working hard on the right things.  CEC members: you can learn more about mobilization here.)

So, if effective managers are Communications’ best tools, what is the best tool for communicators to use to equip managers with the information and skills they need?

One of the best tools is manager dialogue training. CEC members: you can access our full-blown Dialogue Training and Workshops AND learn more about how training managers to “dialogue” is very different than training them to “cascade.”

Of course, with thin training budgets and dispersed workforces, dialogue training may not be a feasible option for your communications team.  In that case, your intranet may be the best way to help boost your managers’ communications confidence.  I took a look at a recent discussion thread in the CEC Employee Communications Forum to pull out some smart ways your peers are taking advantage of their intranets to boost the impact of line manager communications:

• Toolboxes

Quick-tips, key talking points, worksheets to plan for a dialogue — intranet toolboxes that are easily accessible by managers help them confidently share information with their employees.

“I set up a Manager’s Toolkit site where there is a discussion board and a document library where they can pick up talking points as developed for key messaging.  I want to ‘teach them to fish’ so that they become better at communication and can deliver messages as leadership would hope for them to be delivered.”
Communications Consultant, Financial Services Read More »

I’m a strong believer that Corporate Communications should lead a company’s intranet strategy.  Unlike other possible leaders in IT, HR, or the business units, communicators highly value—and are measured on—employee engagement.  The intranet has quickly evolved into a key instrument to achieving this engagement through functionalities that promote connectivity, collaboration, and productivity among employees.

That said, in most organizations, the Communications function has yet to embrace the mindset and activities necessary to transform the intranet from “digital landfill” to “employee productivity tool.”  Communicators may say they want the intranet to boost employee productivity and engagement, but then focus on superficial fixes, primarily improving the intranet’s function as an internal news distribution service.   Sharing internal news is important, yes.  Optimizing the intranet to do only that, however, is short-sighted.

How do you know if your heart is in the right place, but your activities are not? Ask yourself, “Do we…

• Focus improvements on the “look and feel” of the intranet—such as logos, layouts, typefaces, buttons, boxes, menus, etc.?
• Rely on annual “intranet satisfaction surveys”?
• Track and depend on broad metrics such as clicks and views on news stories? Read More »

Once upon a time, the intranet’s purpose was to store information for a small set of users, usually just IT geeks. Back in those days, decentralized intranet governance was fine, given the simplicity of the systems.

Today, however, intranets have evolved into must-have business tools for all employees. We all know that this shift in scale, interconnectivity, and user base has significant implications for intranet governance. In short, loose models simply don’t work.

If these decentralized governance models no longer work, then what does? The best models I’ve come across promote co-ownership between Communications and IT. In these partnerships, Communications almost always owns the strategy and IT designs and supports the tools to execute this strategy. Read More »

Frustrated by employees who refuse to use the intranet? Tired of writing news stories that employees never read? Ready to give up on the intranet altogether and revert back to email blasts? (Someone out there raises a hand.)

Believe me, after 50+ conversations with CEC intranet managers, I can tell you that you’re not alone. I’d also suggest that the right approach to improve usage rates takes a page from the Marketing handbook: think of employees as your intranet’s customers, and learn more about what they want from this product. A great technique is a user profile exercise—describing clusters of employees based on how they currently (or could) use the intranet to get their jobs done.

Last week, Rick and I hosted a webinar on this topic, alongside a truly leading-edge practitioner—Jamie Parry, Manager of Intranet and Electronic Media at Chevron. Jamie talked about Chevron’s process for clustering 62,000 employees into 10 primary groups—such as “New Talent,” “On the Road,” and “International: Unwired”—whose goals and behaviors on the intranet are similar. From that analysis, Jamie is focusing on the most important intranet improvements that will drive intranet usage among these groups. Pretty cool, huh? If you want to try something similar, here’s a quick guide to his process: Read More »