How to master internal communications Think of it as your internal Facebook

Millennials spend six hours on social media every week - and Generation X spend seven!

Facebook alone has 1.86 billion users and ¾ of them log in daily to see, “like,” comment, and share photos of their friends and trending news.

62% of American adults get news from social media - 44% get it from Facebook specifically.

Wouldn’t it be nice if your employees interacted with your intranet to that enthusiastic extent?

Although it’s difficult to measure the impact on the bottom line because knowledge and social capital are intangible assets, they undeniably set the stage for more direct drivers of revenue and profit:

• Knowledge retention
• Productivity
• Efficiency
• Innovation

And the impact of internal collaboration systems more than doubles when employees start to use them on a large scale.

You may even think social software is “so last decade” when it was called “Enterprise 2.0” in correspondence with Web 2.0 components like wikis and blogs. This built on Enterprise 1.0, which comprised systems of record like document management, transactional applications, and of course email.

You would be wrong, of course. Now more than ever, as the demands of geographically dispersed mobile employees combine with the supply of smartphones and the cloud - now is the time for enterprise social applications.

Instead of copying many people on email chains, forwarding messages, and still risking leaving people out, employees perform better when they can communicate in one place. Some workers may not even have company email addresses, so mobile apps anyone can download are much more accessible.

People zone out when corporate messages are too professional and too vague. Employees ignore empty words filtered through corporate communications professionals and senior leadership, so they avoid the intranet and delete emails.

They want to get the real story from real people in real time.

“Internal communications’ function is to help leaders in your Department or Agency inform and engage employees, in a way which motivates staff to maximise their performance and deliver the business strategy most effectively. It is not about “sending out stuff.”

- Russell Grossman, Head of Profession for Internal Communications, Government Communication Service

These days, internal communication professionals have much higher priorities than distributing information, primarily:

• Facilitating the understanding of business goals and strategic decisions
• Helping to increase levels of employee engagement

Yet only 12% of communications teams believe their strategic plans are good at supporting their company’s top priorities. Their biggest obstacles for those priorities are line management’s lack of communication skills and internal technology’s misfit with purpose.

To be effective - to be used, even - corporate communication technology must be simple, engaging, and suited to the organization and its people. Any employee should have access at any time on any device to many channels for different preferences and needs.

1. Define your objectives, such as:
   • Change culture/behavior
   • Retain talent
   • Engage employees
   • Increase innovation

1. Develop your internal communications strategy to address communication gaps preventing behaviors necessary to achieve business goals.

1. Understand your audience segments, i.e. C-suite, managers, frontline workers, volunteers, remote employees, contractors, and other stakeholders. Focus on the segments who would benefit the most from collaboration.

1. Invest in the channels that shape your culture and drive business results
2. Choose the format that best deliver the messages.

1. Regularly measure and adapt strategy and tactics based on metrics

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