Lighten up to master the serious business of communicating with employees.
Wouldn’t it be great if employees wanted to read, view and listen to content from your company instead of feeling obligated to do so?
It’s not an impossible dream. But you might have to shake things up a little to make it a reality.
It hinges on making the content employee-centric. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
To start, know that there are two major parts to creating content employees will love: Leadership and You.
Leadership
You likely have no control — and only some influence — over how your senior leaders view employee communication. That makes it critical that you understand their perspective.
For decades, employee communication has been top-down and organization-centric, using formal language and stripping any overt emotion or humanity. This became the traditional way for organizations to share their news and information. That was before it was recognized how effective (i.e. easily received, understood and acted upon) communication affects business drivers and outcomes.
Yet, the vast majority of company leaders are still tied to some degree to this tradition. Why?
It’s usually not from lack of awareness of the relationship between employee communication and business outcomes. Generally, it’s an absence of an internal driver for there to be a different way.
You can be that driver. Create content that informs and motivates employees and you’ll show leadership how effective employee communication brings lasting value to the company.
You
It takes determination to move away from traditions within an organization. You may receive direct or indirect push-back from leaders or other stakeholders. Do what it takes to become clear within your own mind that creating employee-centric content is the most effective way to get employees’ attention. The world around us has changed and the way people consume information has changed along with it.
Technology is part of the story. However, it’s not the most influential part. The shift that has taken place is that we expect news, information, and other content to mean something to us — from the start. If we can’t quickly see what it means to us, we’re likely to turn away.
That’s why content employees love breaks away from the top-down tradition. A contemporary, employee-centric structure is the way to go.
Serving employees’ needs = serving the organization’s needs
Nothing turns employees off faster than reading or hearing about how the company cares / has done its homework / is proud / is succeeding (you get the idea) at the start of an email, article, presentation or video. Employees want to know what the content has to do with them. If it doesn’t matter to them, they can choose to stop reading / listening/ watching without risking missing something critical to them.
Wait! Don’t we want employees to consume everything that the organization pushes out to them or makes available to them?
That would be wonderful. However, it’s not realistic. Employees have only so much time and mental bandwidth. Give them what they (as the audience) want and need up front. Give them what they need to do their work, be informed and feel good about the company they work for. That will increase the chances of them spending the time and energy to absorb the parts that aren’t of immediate interest to them.
Ultimately, the organization needs employees who are appropriately informed and motivated. Give employees what they need and the organization also gets what they need.
Adopting a contemporary employee-centric structure is the biggest step toward creating content that will “speak to” employees.
Ditch the corporate language and style
The best way to get that information across is to be plain and direct. Use everyday language and sentence styles. Incorporate graphics. Adopt a business casual tone.
Give your organization a unique and approachable voice, not a distant overly formal one. Eliminate — or at least limit:
- Jargon and buzzwords
- Passive sentence structures (e.g. Passive: “Expenses were reduced by $100,000.” Active: “We reduced costs by $100,000.”)
- Formal word combinations except in extreme cases for emphasis (e.g. Use “we won’t” instead of “we will not” or “we don’t” instead of “we do not”
Note Breaking from tradition doesn’t mean ignoring all the rules. You still need good spelling and grammar skills. The content still needs to flow in a logical way and be coherent.
Tell stories
People enjoy stories. They help us learn and remember stuff. Especially stories that involve people and emotion.
There is no reason why content can’t be more story and less lecture. If you’re restructuring, why not share the perspective of someone who has had a positive experience with the new structure? Even if it was at another company. Employees can better put themselves in those shoes and take a cue from that person’s experience.
Or maybe you’re upgrading the servers and you need everyone to save their work and log off by a particular time. You might want to tell of the story of what happens if everyone doesn’t comply. Maybe it will add an extra couple of hours to the already long night ahead of the IT team and they’ll have to drink more coffee than is good for them.
Tip People are drawn to elements of humanity and emotion. They also don’t mind smiling when they read content from the company. Don’t be afraid to help them do that.
Closing thought
It takes practice to create content that employees will love. It’s worth the effort though. Employees may not always be able to say exactly why they enjoy reading the content you create. They’ll only know how it makes them feel and prompted them to act. And the results will show.
