Keeping non-wired employees informed and engaged is important to your company’s success.

If you’re like most internal communicators, you probably use electronic channels (e.g. email, intranets, broadcast messaging systems) most frequently. For most employees, these are good channels. However, if you have drivers, housekeeping staff, line production staff or others whose work isn’t personal computer-based, they are considered to be non-wired employees.

Help these employees stay as connected as their wired colleagues by ensuring non-wired tactics are a part of your communications plan.

Channels

Be sure you’re aware of all your non-wired channels. Many are under-used at the best of times.

  • Walls
  • Display cabinets
  • Managers
  • Mail / direct delivery
  • Telephone

Get out there

The best way to understand the environment in which your content is consumed is to experience it for yourself. Practically every non-wired group has a common area: lunchroom, change room, lounge, etc. Ask the manager if you can stop by to take a look at the space and how content is posted or otherwise shared.

Tip Your findings can also be used in a communications audit.

Partially-wired

There are employee segments that could be categorized as “partially-wired”. A common example is drivers. They often have mobile devices for specific uses (such as delivery tracking) but limited or no access to the usual electronic channels such as email or intranet.

Before you can properly serve this audience, you need to understand what devices they have and the capacity for distributing content. For example, there may be a messaging component in a task-specific app. You’ll need to know if you can make use of that and how.

When you talk to areas leaders as part of segmenting your audience make a point of asking about task-specific applications and if they have a messaging component. If they do, ask if you might be able to use it on occasion to reinforce organization-wide messages.

Seek Feedback

You want to pay particular attention getting feedback from non-wired employees. Without a little extra effort on your part, you may not get valuable insights from those who can’t just click and type to share their thoughts. Consider using one or more of these methods for gathering non-wired feedback:

  • Casual visits, chatting with employees about recent communications
  • Ask for 5-10 minutes of a team meeting to ask if the tactics currently being used are working
  • Put a physical suggestion box in a common area, clearly labelling it “Thoughts About Organizational Communication” (Don’t forget to go back every few weeks to collect input!)

Be a Strategic Partner

In your conversations with non-wired employees, you may discover that there’s an intention to wire them but it hasn’t happened yet. You might be able to help by contributing to the conversation. You could show how getting non-wired employees connected to broadly used channels could save time and boost the employee experience.