Conscious Communications

Introduction

Getting your internal communications right can be challenging. It’s all fun and games when sharing business wins and employee success - but what happens when tough times arise, and bad news needs to be raised? If such messages are to land in a way that doesn’t offend, they need to be communicated credibly, empathetically, and authentically.

The modern workforce is evolving. Employees place ever greater emphasis on their mental health and wellbeing, the values of the business they work for, and feeling that the work they do is purposeful. This has already driven the evolution of hybrid working practices and employer brands, and now it’s the turn of your internal communications.

In this report, we’ve turned our attention towards resolving the sorts of internal communications challenges that we hear all too often from our clients and their peers. These include:

• Communicating authentically in testing times 

• Navigating the communication of change during and after a merger

• Engaging with deskless and remote employees in the modern workplace

• Creating internal comms that aren’t too much of time, budget, and resource commitment

• Connecting with a cross-generational workforce

• Using internal communications to improve hiring and retention

Sound familiar? Don’t worry. We’ve collaborated with industry experts to create a report that provides helpful insights and practical advice to power up your internal communications.

A major takeaway is the role that video can and should be playing in the modern internal communications strategy - and that’s where Seenit comes in. As the go-to choice for employee-generated video content, our goal is to create a more trustworthy world where everyone’s voice is heard and authentic human stories can be told in impactful ways.

We hope you find this report useful. If you’d like to discuss the topics in more detail or learn how to bring your organisational purpose with Seenit, please feel free to reach out to our team.

Freddy Cleveley, VP Customer Success, Seenit

Heard it on the grapevine

What’s preventing organisations from communicating consciously? 

In the modern workplace, one size doesn’t fit all - especially when it comes to internal communications. Situations can change rapidly, as we’ve experienced in recent years, so having a robust comms strategy in place is crucial if you’re to successfully navigate disruption.

However, disruption can take many forms, which is why we’ve identified six key communications challenges that we hear time and again from industry experts. In this article, we’ll dig into these challenges to better understand them and provide practical advice and examples on how best to overcome them.

1. Authentic comms in testing times

What we hear on the grapevine…

How can we better communicate challenging news?

The challenge

Having difficult conversations with employees can be, well…difficult! While organisations love to amplify good news, it’s essential that those in leadership roles can communicate effectively, empathetically, and authentically when times are tough. 

Given the upheaval of the past few years, more and more organisations are having to have difficult conversations around job losses, hiring freezes, and slowing growth.

64% of internal comms professionals say the cost of living crisis poses a challenge when communicating with employees. Whilst half say the recession is a major challenge.

We’ve seen plenty of examples in the news about how not to have these conversations, with employees laid off over Slack or simply locked out of their email accounts. 

Get your difficult comms wrong and expect to see a negative impact on company culture, business reputation, morale, and engagement among existing employees.

Why you need to get it right

Your goal should be to keep employees informed and the organisation aligned by coordinating communications coming from HR, IC, and Leadership teams during tough times.  

“As senior comms people, we have a role to play in giving leaders a candid assessment of how things might land.  A truly strategic internal comms function needs to act as the eyes, ears and voice for employees.”

Tor Goldfield, Senior Director, Internal Communications, Expedia Group

But communicate bad news authentically and empathetically, and the benefits are myriad. Get your comms right and you’ll:

• Build greater trust between leadership and the workforce

• Create a stronger, more authentic culture

• Reduce disengagement among workers

• Develop a better understanding of what, how, and when to share bad news that might arise down the road

How to tackle

When you need to deliver bad news, it needs to be handled well and can be a real test of leadership skills. Comms must be accountable, courageous and have credibility. Try to immediately clarify what the news means for your employee(s) and the wider business, then explain the reasons behind it. We’ve come up with a handy framework to “PEEL” your message:

• Planning; know what you want to say and the rationale behind it

• Explain; be honest and transparent, avoid corporate jargon, and keep employees in the loop without sugar-coating news to avoid miscommunications

• Empathise; talk to people like people, show empathy, and don’t minimise or neglect any potential emotional responses 

• Long-term; bad news doesn’t need to cast a lasting shadow, so consider what comes next in terms of actions or timelines to maintain as positive a relationship as possible.

It can take time to process difficult news, so it’s worth scheduling follow up meetings or check-ins to allow employees time to absorb information and then ask questions. 

The Seenit approach

Video can be a powerful way of communicating difficult news, enabling leadership to communicate openly, honestly, and directly to the company in a visceral way - seeing and hearing empathy in someone’s voice will beat bad news by email any day. 

In fact, viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading.

“We helped our CEO to create regular video blogs to introduce him during the pandemic. It was transformational in creating a human and authentic connection with employees, which words on a page couldn’t have done.”

Helen Kelley, Internal Communications and Engagement Director, Inmarsat

While some conversations will need to be conducted one-on-one, approaching difficult topics via video can help you to answer employee questions, address concerns directly, control the narrative and give a more authentic and personal feel that may be lost through other channels.

2. Communicating change during mergers & acquisitions

What we hear on the grapevine…

How can we better navigate communicating change during and after a merger?

The challenge

Going through a merger can be an exceptionally disruptive period in an organisation’s lifecycle - so it’s no surprise that 70% of change programs fail, according to research from McKinsey. So it’s important to take talent on a positive journey and improve internal acceptance of a merger if you are to successfully integrate people and processes.

But navigating uncharted waters isn’t easy. Get it wrong and it can have negative knock-on effects to company culture, lead to rumours that undermine employee trust and happiness, and make it challenging for all firms involved to find their place in the new combined entity.

39% of surveyed employees believe that people in their own organisation don’t collaborate enough with 33% of employees saying a lack of open, honest communication has the most negative impact on employee morale.

As one of the first workstreams likely to be pushed live as soon as a deal is discussed, structured internal communications can play a crucial role in minimising distractions and creating a solid foundation for future success.

Why you need to get it right

“Internal comms has got a really big role to play in terms of bringing people together and creating a sense of a global and combined team. Mergers can take time and while providing lots of opportunities for employees, they can create a lot of uncertainty as well and it can be hard keeping people engaged.”

Helen Kelley, Internal Communications and Engagement Director, Inmarsat

Planning effective and engaging internal comms during an M&A process can make a big difference to employee wellbeing:

• Sharing information reduces uncertainty and builds trust

• Pragmatic and proactive internal comms can help to control the narrative, mitigate potential rumours, and improve buy-in and retention of top talent

• Consistent, authentic, and conscious comms will serve to cultivate and reaffirm your company culture 

• Building a habit of open communication will improve post-deal integration

How to tackle

It’s best to embrace a position of authenticity and transparency when communicating M&A related changes to your organisation. While you and the other businesses involved will likely have differing cultures, where possible try to adopt a unified position to lay the groundwork for a possible shared culture post-integration.

Take your time here, or you may inadvertently end up in the same situation as AOL and Time Warner, whose clashing cultures of new media and old media proved largely incompatible and led to difficult integration and underwhelming results post-merger.

“One of the hardest things to do is tell a story about change in the organisations. You need to tell the story about where we’ve come from and where we’re going. Consider building a Change Champions network across the business to ensure messaging is both coming down from leadership as well as up from the bottom from employee voices as well.”

David Orford, Communications Transformation Consultant in the banking sector

Look to establish a clear, cross-channel comms strategy approved by leadership on all sides that ensures a consistent flow of information to employees about the process, the impact, the integration, and beyond.

The Seenit approach

It’s no secret that the world of work is evolving rapidly as a result of unprecedented disruption in recent years. Workplace technology has accelerated, enabling employees to be based further afield than ever before.

But when teams may be disparate and spread across the globe, it can be hard to keep them engaged and invested in both your company culture and employer brand. 

A 2022 survey by the insurance consultancy Gallagher found that one-in-five of the Internal Comms professionals surveyed said that their current channel strategy wasn’t fit for purpose in a hybrid and remote workplace. Likewise, not all employees may have access to - or pay attention to - the same communication channels.

“We need to be conscious of whether people are in the right environment. Sometimes even the simple act of having to go and get headphones then put them in to watch or listen to content can be a blocker.”

Tor Goldfield, Senior Director, Internal Communications, Expedia Group

Over time, this lack of face-time, lack of access, and lack of variety in communication channels can eat away at the motivation and engagement of deskless and remote employees.

Why you need to get it right

According to studies, 60% of companies don’t have a long-term internal comms strategy. With hybrid or remote work no longer a nice to have but a must have, it’s likely that a substantial proportion of your employees aren’t in the same office - or even the same country.

Establishing an internal comms strategy that caters to all can lead to a wide-range of benefits, including higher engagement, motivation, and productivity; improved retention of talent; a more tangible culture; more trusting relationships between employees and leadership; a demonstrable employer brand that can improve future hiring.

How to tackle

Almost half of employees say that video is the most engaging form of communication, as well as a time-saver compared to reading lengthy email communications. So why not embrace the video revolution?

Remote employees often want to feel more involved and part of the wider business, so consider inviting deskless champions to share their approach to success, or what keeps them motivated, in short-form UGC videos through Seenit, and then socialise with the business to build relatability and buy-in.

“Video gives us a real way to bring in more employee voices. We’re not constrained by where they are and it means we can foster that sense of a wider international community through the stories that they can tell.”

Helen Kelley, Internal Communications and Engagement Director, Inmarsat

Doing so can improve communication across the business, foster inter-team relationships, demonstrate and reaffirm your culture, and keep talent on board - wherever they are based.

Some key stats you should know

4. Internal communications are a time and resource burden

What we hear on the grapevine…

Internal communications are too much of a budget, time, and resource commitment.

We want to reduce the complexity of internal comms processes and make it easier to create content.

The challenge

During difficult periods, it can be all too easy to focus budgets and efforts on critical business priorities, while internal communications get pushed to one side, seen as too resource intensive. But this can be shortsighted.

Employees are an organisation’s most valuable asset and so it’s more important than ever to keep them informed, engaged, and motivated - even if your Internal Comms function is a small one in a big business. Remember that the cost to replace a highly-trained employee can exceed 200% of their annual salary. And employees are 87% less likely to quit a job if they are engaged in the workplace.

With a challenging economic climate and tightening budgets, it’s all hands on deck for internal comms teams, who need to get creative if they intend to make an impact.

Why you need to get it right

While resources might be tight, it pays to invest in activity that engages employees and keeps them informed. Data from the Workplace Research Foundation indicates that boosting employee engagement investments by just 10% can increase organisational profits by up to £2,000 per employee per year. 

Internal comms can play a cost-effective role in growing engagement and helping to deliver wider business objectives - but it needs to be considered strategically if resources are to be optimised.

“It’s easy to overcomplicate things in communications and get overwhelmed, ask yourself what the purpose of your internal comms function is to ground yourself. Otherwise, you’ll end up reacting to whoever shouts loudest.”

Jenni Field, Founder and CEO at Redefining Communications

A coherent strategy can help align competing voices and streamline the creation of comms content. It’s also a great way to build relationships and impress the value of the IC function across the business.

“It pays to develop your soft skills, your ability to build strong relationships, your ability to build a network, and navigate your way around the business effectively. Being able to operate effectively within the business is as important as having strong tactical capabilities.”

Tor Goldfield, Senior Director, Internal Communications, Expedia Group

How to tackle

Leveraging technology and software can be a savvy way of enabling the rapid and resource-effective creation of internal comms content. However, tech can sometimes cost more than we’d like - so consider the resources at your disposal smartly and strategically with a clear goal in mind.

“There’s an overwhelming amount of information that employees are dealing with. The way to deal with this is to focus your communications and make it into a campaign in which you’ll focus on a specific topic, rather than everything, and really try to move the dial on that.”

David Orford, Communications Transformation Consultant in the banking sector

Focus on the intended outcome of internal comms and then track and audit the tech and channels available to you, scoring their performance against your core needs. It’s also worth researching whether there are more affordable options available to you (e.g. such as Yammer or Google Hangouts). 

Keep reviewing and optimising and you’ll quickly fine-tune your strategy, simplify processes, and streamline your tech spend.