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In this report, we unpack the current trends in the world of internal comms and its role in reinvigorating the workplace. We surveyed hundreds of internal communications professionals and spoke with industry experts to determine what The Future of Internal Communications is in 2023.
Download the full reportDeborah Smith
Internal Communication Manager at Trustpilot
Jenni Field
Founder at Redefining Communications
Joss Mathieson
Chief Encouragement Officer at Change Oasis
Rebecca Johnson
Global Director of Internal Communications at Experian
Sharon McIntosh
President at And Then Comms
Tor Goldfield
Senior Director of Internal Communications at Expedia
Emily Forbes
CEO and Founder at Seenit
Now more than ever, employees are speaking up. They want to feel valued and heard, which demands a certain degree of awareness from those above them. Yet, despite it being more pertinent than ever, 40% of professionals we surveyed said the role of internal communications is falling further and further down the list of priorities for employers.
If organisations want to show that theyâre progressive and want to embody inclusive values, all of this must be (authentically) conveyed not only via external channels, but internally. Brands arenât off the hook, their employees expect them to reflect their mission and values back at them, establishing trust. And people trust people.
In this report, we unpack the current trends in the world of internal communications and its role in reinvigorating the workplace. We surveyed hundreds of internal communications professionals and spoke with industry experts to determine what The Future of Internal Communications is in 2023. Weâll draw from our research and experience working with customers from Amazon and Paypal to Vodafone and Trustpilot, to equip you with the best practices to tackle challenges and iterate your internal comms strategy.
At Seenit, we truly believe in giving your people a voice and that employee-led content is a key ingredient to an engaged workforce. Keep reading to find out why.
Emily Forbes, CEO & Founder, Seenit
Before tackling trends and challenges, letâs go back to first principles.
Definition: Internal communication, also known as employee communication, is the exchange of information between employers and their employees.
Traditionally, this may look like face-to-face interactions or formal letters, but new technology has enabled workplace communication to evolve to include instant messaging and video, for example.
So, why is it important? Well, 97% of employees have agreed that workplace communication has a direct impact on their ability to do their jobs. But thereâs more.
Storytelling sits at the heart of your brand, and people trust people. Itâs why tools like product reviews, testimonials and user-generated content (UGC) are so highly valued.
When it comes to communicating with your employees, advocacy is key. And driving this comes down to how you communicate back to them. UGC, content created by your users (or in this case, employee-generated content) can and should be used as part of your internal strategy.
With workplace technologies evolving, itâs an exciting time to be in internal comms (well, we would say that). But although modern technologyâfrom instant messaging to AIâcan get the ball rolling, nothing beats the human experience.
Weâve identified the main challenges and trends in internal comms in 2023. Letâs dive in.
Employee retention is a concern for 45% of internal communications professionals, and retention is key to engagement. So, how can employers get this right? According to the Chief Encouragement Officer at Change Oasis, Joss Mathieson, itâs partly due to a missed opportunity to add value.
When businesses are so focused on tactics, crafting and sending out a particular message, they often forget to turn inward and look at their culture and, in doing so, risk alienating employees. They need to remember that the relationship between employer and employee is supposed to be a partnership, but this is where internal communicators should get involved.
âLeaders are worried about, âour culture is fragmenting because we havenât got everyone back in the officeâ, when we need more flexibility. We need cultures to evolve, and I think the danger in leaving it to HR is that theyâll respond to senior leaders who have one view.â
Joss Mathieson, Chief Encouragement Officer at Change Oasis
It screams that the current state of internal comms is inherently one-sided; thereâs a disconnect between senior leadership and the people who do the work, albeit one which can be solved by listening and building capability.
So, how do you engage employees? How do you enable people to thrive in their job? How do you offer them the opportunity to develop in areas that allow them to be more influential? All of this shapes a companyâs employee value proposition (EVP), in other words, how it incentivises its staff to want to grow and develop within the business.
Many of the trends that internal comms people face crop up year-on-year. But these âtrendsâ arenât trends at all; theyâre âperennial issuesâ, to quote Expediaâs senior internal communications director, Tor Goldfield. If left unaddressed, these issues can lead to a severe communication breakdown.
âA lot of the things we talk about arenât trends. We see them pop-up year after year after year.â
Tor Goldfield, Senior Internal Communications Director at Expedia
On March 28th Tor and Emily discussed how to build a successful relationship between leadership and internal comms, and tackle some of these perennial issues. Watch the full webinar on-demand.
When thinking about different types of communications, 62% of internal comms professionals say they see the function of internal communications as a channel for leadership messages, but Joss urges them to think further.
Top-down comms is a common way to communicate. And thereâs a reason for that. Most communications teams resort to this method of communication as itâs the easiest one to implement (though we never said it was easy). There will always be a place for top-down messaging, especially in times of change, or when communicating important updates.
But building a relationship between leadership and employees through internal comms creates an opportunity for bottom-up comms as well. But itâs a tough thing to shift.
âItâs a one-way kind of cascade. Itâs been dead for decades. And yet, it still predominates.â
Joss Mathieson, Chief Encouragement Officer at Change Oasis
Global Internal Communications Director at Experian, Rebecca Johnson, argues that it runs deeper than that.
âThe top-down, authoritarian approach to comms, demanding people turn up to an office, is very one-way. It needs to be a two-way systemâ.
Rebecca Johnson, Global Internal Communications Director at Experian
For holistic collaboration between different levels and teams, internal comms people should consider a circular approach that loops back around.
âWhen you are a strategic internal comms function, that role of being the eyes, ears, and a voice for employees is such a big part of what we do. Weâre not just here to write stuff on behalf of the leadership team and push stuff out on behalf of employeesâ.
Tor Goldfield, Senior Internal Communications Director at Expedia
Although modern views on HRâs role in internal comms are optimistic, itâs clear that it canât be solely on them to figure out the fundamental shifts that need to take place.
Evolving workplace culture, as Rebecca says, âis about business, productivity and performanceâand they are not supporting functionsâ. It requires leadership and an understanding of commercial value and profitability.
âEvolving workplace culture is about business, productivity and performanceâand they are not supporting functions.â
Rebecca Johnson, Global Internal Communications Director at Experian
Itâs the elephant in the room: getting employees to actually read, watch, or engage with your comms.
We surveyed hundreds of people working at large organisations and asked, âhow regularly do you engage with internal communications?â only 60% said always, leaving 40% of the workforce sometime or rarely paying attention. But how do you change it?
The overall sentiment held by internal comms professionals is that video has potential to be more personalised and more relatable than other mediums and that it will only continue to grow in popularity, with 38% of people plugging personalisation among the top trends for 2023. Echoing this, 34% of the workforce say a video format would be more engaging.
Consider this when creating content to feed your internal strategy.
âLook at what your employees are consuming externally and think about how you can mimic it internally. And, for goodness sake, donât forget to have fun with it â our creativity is one of our superpowers.â.
Sharon McIntosh, President of And Then Communications & Coaching
In fact, 26% said they have implemented video internally already in 2023, while 67% said they plan to use video in their 2023 strategy, with 21% focusing on user-generated video and 23% taking it a step further with employee-generated video. And so they should.
Trustpilotâs Internal Communication Manager, Deborah Smith, says with their analytics platform, they can pinpoint exactly when employees stop watching video-based comms, which helps them to know âwhat gets people clicking through to read moreâ.
No one knows employees better than your internal communicators. Or at least, thatâs how it should be. But this isnât to say we shouldnât embrace or should be scared of new technology.
âThis is the year of AI as a productivity tool. Think of it like a part-time intern who can help internal communicators with tasks that donât feed our energy. We can use AI as a tool to spark writing or generate ideasâ.
Sharon McIntosh, President of And Then Communications & Coaching
So consider giving tools like ChatGPT a go.
But while Sharon believes that using such tools for âless strategic deliverablesâ can be invaluable, our jobs arenât going anywhereânothing replaces the humanity in storytelling.
Internal communicators are well placed to expand their influence not just within their organisation, but globally. They can benefit from extending their expertise to the wider community, helping to improve working conditions, now and for future generations.
It goes back to what Tor said about leadership being needed to evolve workplace culture. Today, influencers are leaders in their respective fields, which brings us to: the age of influence as power.
As we will cover later on, internal comms needs to work with all parts of the business to make an impact. However, one question often arises within the community: where should internal communications sit?
This varies from organisation to organisation. Often, the function will fall under People & HR or marketing, and sometimes under corporate comms. In some instances, internal comms can also be its own dedicated function.
Regardless of dotted and hard lines of reporting, what matters is not who you report to, but who you work with. Internal communicators can promote a type of advocacy or leadership by amplifying it throughout the business. But it must be rooted in trust.
Off the back of Covid, weâve seen endless talk about cross-functional and hybrid teams and value-driven hiring. An employee-generated video embedded throughout Amazonâs candidate journey was watched over 45,000 times.
Meanwhile, WPPâs social post about #MakingSpace hit 7 million impressions after the company gave every employee 2 days off to recharge.
Sony music achieved similar results when putting employees at the forefront of its comms, sharing A Day in The Life content.
On the surface, itâs a sign that people expect advocacy and accountability from brands. On a deeper level, it shows that an attempt to revert back to how things used to be, when the old paradigm is fundamentally broken, is ânot how innovation happensâ, says Rebecca. At Experian, no one has been forced to go back to an officeâtheir approach has been employee-led.
âThis is all about reverting to what we know and what weâve done in the past. And that is not the way you move anything forward, itâs not how you innovate, itâs not how you engage, itâs not how you develop products and services.â
Rebecca Johnson, Global Internal Communications Director at Experian
Collaboration across teams is critical, particularly if youâre an internal communications person.
âIt almost gives you a badge to speak to anyone in the company because that is your client: your audience.â
Sharon McIntosh, President of And Then Communications & Coaching
When cross-team collaboration is present at a company, employees are more likely to benefit from learning complementary expertise from colleagues outside of their silos, enabling them to develop faster. When it comes to internal comms, this horizontal model can breed trust, as well as a sense of equality and accessibility.
âWhen we use employee-generated video, it elevates our comms.â
Deborah Smith, Internal Communication Manager at Trustpilot
On a mission to be seen as a universal symbol of trust among consumers, Trustpilot is a leading review platform where customers and businesses can share information, collaborate, and improve. Since starting to collect and create content with Seenit, Trustpilot ran 36 projects, collecting over 600 video uploads from 99 employees. We spoke to Deborah Smith, Internal Communication Manager, about how theyâre embracing employee-generated video.
âA âday in the lifeâ video is so much more illuminating than just reading something.â
Deborah Smith, Internal Communication Manager at Trustpilot
Deborah: A big theme of our Seenit videos is that theyâre filled with lots of different Trusties, which helps to emphasise our flat structure. Our end-of-year video isnât focussed on the activities of the CEO â it features things that real people in the business have done. Weaving in real people makes it feel that much more accessible, a great example of that was our 2022 Pride project: Copenhagen Pride 2022: external.
Deborah: At Trustpilot, the Internal Comms team sits within the People Team. The People Team has two main KPIs that we track: one is engagement and one is attrition. Our engagement score is tracked through a company-wide quarterly survey, where we ask our Trusties to share their views and describe their experiences. As of 2022, our engagement score was 8.1, which is strong - but of course any increase would be positive!
However, one of our current priorities is improving our use of data. Weâve been quite a small team for a while, so we donât necessarily have all the metrics that we would want to track, and therefore we donât have the baseline for where weâd like to see improvements. While we are able to track engagement on video, including our Seenit projects, and some of our other internal channels, thereâs some work to join the dots. We really want to get serious about data so that we can quantify the impact of internal communication at Trustpilot.
Deborah: What we have seen is that when we have a video attached to a project or a campaign or a Slack push, particularly because we donât use video for every piece of comms, when we do use video, it elevates our comms. Itâs a signal to Trusties that âthis oneâs importantâ.
Deborah: It means that anyone can communicate; that anyone can take the lead on something. Anyone has access to the same tools at Trustpilot, anyone can create an article or a video, anyone can post in our all-company Slack channel. This year weâre moving to a more structured way of organising internal communication, so that Trusties have clarity over when the Internal Communications team leads on communication, and when theyâre empowered to run their own.
So what can we learn from Trustpilot? Video content is one way to ensure visibility among a sea of employees, while engaging people at all levels.
We know that a staggering 60% of organisations donât have a long-term strategy for internal communications. And, from what weâve discussed so far, itâs clear that a good place to start is identifying where you can add value.
âWe need to slow down and make sure there are opportunities for people to come along on the journey of the organisation. We must kick the hurry habit.â
Jenni Field, Founder of Redefining Communications
A great way to do that is by creating your internal comms strategy.
We also know the nature of internal comms means dealing with ever-changing priorities, and putting out fires - fast. Itâs easy to get caught up in the day-to-day, and simply be reactive. So how do you move on from that? For starters, you can establish the basics (pinpoint your knowns and your unknowns); identify your audience; set goals and key metrics; define your messaging; iron out tactics, channels and tools. Remember, you can swerve as needed, as long as you always bring it back to the plan.
Though we could simply list-out how to do this practically (stay tuned for our handy guide to creating your internal comms strategy), we believe thereâs even more value in refining your long-term strategy. Which is why we put together practical tips to help you along the way and support you to go the extra mile.
Weâre all different, and we all have different styles of communication. To tailor your message to your employeesâ individual needs, focus on connection. As well as getting to know your employees and âconversing, rather than just broadcastingâ.
âThe job of the internal communicator is to create an environment where the individual is most authentic, most comfortable, and most free to communicate in their authentic style.â
Rebecca Johnson, Global Internal Communications Director at Experian
Itâs not, as she says, âabout square pegs in round holesâ. In short, speak to your people. Youâll learn more from 1-1 conversations than you could in any pulse-survey, or assuming what they need.
Internal functions are blending, and internal communications should not exist in a vacuum. In fact, employer brand, HR and internal comms should work together.
HR, marketing, and strategy are like three legs of a stool. Joss says these lines of reporting, while not critical, can âinfluence the views and relationships you can buildâ. With this in mind, if internal communicators can fulfil their roles as explained by Rebecca above, they can have a great deal of influence.
We recommend starting with your external comms team. Whilst it might feel like the polar opposite of internal comms, and we get it (itâs in the name); both functions have common goals. So donât hesitate to join forces with Employer Brand or any other team that feels relevant in your business.
When talking about blending functions for better collaboration among teams, Rebecca raises a good point: âhow do you coach and enable companies to move forward into that wide space?â
Joss puts it down to three categories: rational, inspirational and invitational. Rational covers logic, why weâre doing something and how weâre doing it - pretty straightforward. Inspirational is what gets employees excited, what makes them believe in the companyâs purpose. As Joss puts it, âitâs that ability to be both human but also be a bit visionary.â
âA lot of leaders are very good at the rational part; they tend to be intelligent people with an analytical brain and strong reasoning. Some are also able to use an inspirational approach to connect with the aspirations and emotions of their people. But where I think leaders need to be better is to be invitational, encouraging their colleagues to get involved and help co-create the future.â
Joss Mathieson, Chief Encouragement Officer at Change Oasis
What is often missing is that invitational aspect. How are leaders asking people to get involved? How are they inviting them to play a part in making a difference?
Communicators must think about each of these to help senior leaders build capability.
A positive employee experience is key to both recruiting and retaining talented people.
âWhether itâs the great resignation, the great un-retirement, quiet quitting (or whatever term we want to make up to scare people into a trend) these are all symptoms of chaos! The root cause is poor employee experience.â
Jenni Field, Founder of Redefining Communications
Post-pandemic, burnout continues to be a concern among internal communicators as hybrid working has blurred the lines between work and home. The unlock to that, Sharon says, is âthe ability to step out of that reactive mode and have a plan that ties into the business strategyâ. A big part of this? Empowering your employees by giving them a voice.
Start with our guide to building a great employee experience strategy, and go from there.
One of the main side effects of being reactive, as weâve had to be these past few years, is lack of data. And, for internal comms people, data is gold.
âHaving the data that you can bring to leadership and say âthis is where we can save money or increase revenueâ, thatâs how youâre going to make change happen.â
Sharon McIntosh, President of And Then Communications & Coaching
Aside from getting senior leaders on-side, the right data can guide your internal content strategy. At Trustpilot, just by giving people the tools to create content, theyâre finding that employees are âorganically growing the usage of itâ. Whether thereâs a need to proactively encourage it going forward, is where analytics come in.
So what do you track? We often get asked this question when discussing data with our customers. We know it can be overwhelming to figure out how and what to measure. Here are 3 KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that other internal comms professionals are tracking and we think you should be keeping an eye on: employee retention, productivity and customer satisfaction.
Start by evaluating where youâre at, that will be your benchmark to report back on. And use your new metrics to iterate on your strategy as you go.
In an ideal world, people would communicate at work not because they have to but because they see the benefit in doing so and because engaging with their fellow employees is motivating by itselfâwithout there being another incentive.
If weâve learned anything from creating this report, itâs that internal comms isnât so much about leading as it is about creating an environment in which those who need to send a message feel equipped and empowered enough to do so.
Itâs clear that workplace models lack creativity and inspiration, which is leading to a trending disengagement among teams, and that employees need to feel advocated for, in order for it to change.
The paradigm has changed unequivocally, and employers must change their approach along with it. Internal communicators wonât lead, but they will be the ones to facilitate the shift.
With 74% of employees feeling they miss out on company updates, and attention spans reaching new lows, the fight for your colleaguesâ time is on.
Comms teams must look for new tools and channels to break through the noise and deliver timely, effective, and human communications. Thatâs where we can help. Seenit is the employee video software built for internal comms teams.
Leading comms teams at companies like H&M, Trustpilot, Vodafone, & EE use Seenit to create videos that increase engagement across their channels by up to 4x.
Collect, create, and host videos with your colleagues. Communicate better with your business with videos that employees actually engage with.
Search seenit.io for more.
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