This episode features highlights of past guests as they open up their playbooks and give advice on employee feedback, building culture through technology, getting a seat at the table, and measuring ROI.
This episode features highlights of past guests as they open up their playbooks and give advice on employee feedback, building culture through technology, getting a seat at the table, and measuring ROI.
In this episode, you’ll hear from the following internal communications leaders:
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“I like actually asking people, ‘What did you think? How could we have done better?’ I want that feedback because your playbook can be your playbook, but it needs to be somewhat flexible to understand what is hitting and what is missing in terms of the communications. I think getting that feedback is important as a communicator.” – Michelle Press
“You're going to see a continued move towards more distribution, more flexibility in the workspace, more control over how you control your workday. Not just where you work, but when you work. As you embrace more asynchronous communication and a focus on outputs and documentation and things like this, sort of the core principles of remote work, you find that it's very easy to make the next leap, which is to something called the non-linear workday. Where you're basically able to choose when you work, not just where you work. And as long as you're delivering, then you're accepted as having done your work well.” – Chase Warrington
“For a long time, we've talked about having a seat at the table. And sometimes I think, especially for communications, it's just like, be the table. You be the table. And then you have people come to your table. Stop waiting to get a seat at other people's table. You form the strategic imperative and have people come work in that way with you.” – Victoria Dew
“The best piece of advice that I can give somebody just starting out in their career is remembering grace for yourself. I think it's really, really important. To what we spoke about earlier, about beating ourselves up and that pressure to get it right every time. If you can learn to give yourself grace and move on and learn from that, you will find yourself a whole lot happier in this field and able to contribute the awesomeness that you bring and the skillsets and the important value that's needed.” – Paralee Johnson
“I think what's important about ROI is that comms does need to take accountability for making business changes. And in order to take accountability for it, we just need to know what that is. [...] I think the key metrics will always net out to, ‘Did we produce the outcome that we wanted? What are we going after? Are we trying to reduce turnover? Are we trying to increase productivity? Are we trying to reduce injury in the workplace? Are we trying to increase employee satisfaction?’ Things like that, we want to really hook ourselves onto. And we really need to understand if we do do this, how do we know that we're making a difference? It's important to be able to know that. And it's important to be able to decide how many of these things we're going to tackle within a given period of time. So, the outcome should always be measurable.” – Pinaki Kathiari
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Episode Timestamps:
*(01:16): Parag, Natalie, and Michelle discuss using surveys to collect employee feedback
*(02:30): Rajamma, Wendy, and Chase discuss building culture through technology
*(05:20): Kristin, Beth, Victoria, and Tina discuss getting a seat at the table
*(08:08): Paralee and Debbie share internal communications career advice
*(09:19): Ben, Mary, Jason, and Pinkai discuss measuring ROI
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Links:
Connect with Amanda on LinkedIn
Amanda Berry: How do you collect employee feedback on whether it be in like, what's wrong with our culture or how can we improve our employee experience?
What are you using to collect that feedback?
Parag Kulkarni: What is different in terms of LiveEX is the live word, right? It's about being realtime. The fact that our platform allows communication and then can get realtime feedback on that communication is huge because not only does that allow you to double down on communication if it's going right, but it also allows you to course correct.
Natalie Ridsdale: It's just so valuable to hear what people want more of and. people want less of a lot of things. People are just overwhelmed. So it's being able to look at that and say, where can we cut back? Where can we streamline? How can we better package and curate this content for employees so that they don't feel overwhelmed by, you know, the volume of, of what we're sharing with them.
Michelle Press: I like actually asking people. So, um, what did you think? How could we have done better? I want that feedback because your playbook can your be your playbook, but it needs to be somewhat flexible to understand what is hitting and what is missing in terms of the communications. So I think getting that feedback is important as a communicator.
Amanda Berry: A lot of people are working remote from their homes. There's, you know, hybrid remote. Uh, but I wanna talk about what you feel, um, is technology's role in helping create company culture. You know, it's different when you can go in the office and the idea of the water cooler meeting leaders having, you know, more interactions with your colleagues or coworkers.
Um, so would you talk a little bit about what you see it's role in now that we're in the, in the pandemic of creating company culture, helping shape.
Rajamma Krishnamurthy: In a way, everybody's in the same situation. Everybody's working out of the, their, their bedrooms or their closets or whatever. basements. Yeah. They can find a, a quieter space.
So that has kind of equalized. I think what this has done is that it has, um, you know, totally taken away the line between home and. But this is actually not very healthy, that we are always, uh, at the backend call of the work and that it's like three steps away from your bed, literally. And that is not going to be a great place to be.
And I think, uh, as we think about the hybrid workspace, um, of the future, we really need to start thinking about how do you make that a reality for each individual that is working?
Wendy Pfeiffer: There's nothing. That I can do as, as a company CIO to fix a, a broken or a toxic culture. Although I certainly have compliance responsibilities, I am responsible to, in ensure that technology is used in a way that is equitable, that is, you know, fair.
And, and that is, um, monitor. . On the other hand, you know, we can be sensitive to the culture that exists and we can, we can use technology to enhance and magnify elements of that culture that will help with the, the company's productivity and help with the company's desire to provide egalitarian access, et cetera.
And so you. One of our responsibilities as technologists is to understand the ecosystem that we're a part of and add healthy elements to that ecosystem. Support the ecosystem.
Chase Warrington: I think for sure you're gonna see a continued move towards more distribution, more flexibility in the workspace, more control over how you control your workday. Not just where you work, but when you work as you embrace more asynchronous communication and a focus on outputs and documentation and things like this.
Like sort of the core principles of remote work. You find that it's very easy to make the next sleep, which is to something called the non-linear workday, where you're basically able to choose when you work, not just where you work. And, and as long as you're delivering, then you're, you know, then you're, then you're accepted as as having done your work well.
Amanda Berry: What advice would you give to someone who wants a seat at the table and doesn't know how to get it?
Kristin Hancock: I do try and avoid the word networking when I can, because really what we mean when we're saying networking is making connections, meeting people, and that's, I think so many of us are doing that naturally. We just don't call it networking. Yeah, right. I have calls with every new member and, and even members that have been with us for a long time to chat about what, what do.
See, how are things going? Did you like this last event we've done? I don't call it networking. Yeah. Right. But that's what it is. And so it's really about making connections and offering support. And I think if we stop calling it networking and start talking about making connections, yeah, then that's a better way of looking at it.
Beth Collier: Working with leaders, I mean, the first thing I think you've gotta come into is with, with curiosity and humility. Like I've been doing communication work for 20 years and I've done roles around the world and I've worked with people like lots of different areas, but everybody is unique and they've got their own situation.
So it's important to know where they're coming from and how I can best support them. So it's taking those people that have brilliant ideas and then helping them get 'em. In a way that's gonna connect with their audience. So you know, it's understanding how they can bring curiosity, how they can bring empathy.
Also, how they can be better listeners.
Victoria Dew: For a long time, we've talked about having a seat at the table, and sometimes I think especially for communications, it's just like be the table. Like you be the table , and then you have people come to your table, stop waiting to get a seat at other people's table.
You form the strategic imperative, right? And have people. In that way with you.
Tina Hawkins: Don't overemphasize the writing things like the wordsmithing, the grammar, et cetera, like that's table stakes. It's the strategic thinking that's the most important. What are we trying to achieve with this message or with this initiative or with what we're doing?
What's the best way to reach people? How can we do something that'll have the most impact and influence? And then personally, I try to concentrate. The business and connect with business leaders and you know, understand our goals and where we're trying to go and what you want employees to do, like what behavior changes we need from employees.
And then I find a grammarian somewhere, you know, on the team that I sort of have on Slack, where I'm like, Hey, does this sentence meet this or that? Like I don't spend the time like to look it up or to remember all of this so that I can spend the time on the things that make them wanna invite me to the room.
So I had people I'll call like my comma coach. You know, I'm like, I don't know. I'm pretty sure I could think through this to figure out this needs a comma, but what do you think? And they love it. So they're fine with like, yep, that needs one or no outta here, you know? But that's not what I'm in the room to talk about.
Amanda Berry: What is one piece of advice you each would give a new internal communications professional who's just starting out in their career?
Paralee Johnson: The best piece of advice that I can give somebody just starting out in their career is remembering grace for yourself. I think it's really, really important. To, to what we spoke about earlier about beating ourselves up and, and that pressure to get it right every time.
If you can learn to give yourself grace and move on and, and learn from that, you'll find yourself a whole lot happier in this field and able to contribute, you know, the awesomeness that you bring in, the skillsets and the important value that's needed.
Debbie Gunning: There's always gonna be a critic. Critics are loud. And don't worry about it because people are always going to have different feelings and let them have 'em and get super comfortable being uncomfortable.
Because being an HR professional in today's climate, every day there's going to be something that comes up that you're like, Hmm, didn't see this coming. Don't really know how to handle this. It's uncomfortable, but I'm gonna figure it out. So just get comfortable living with the discomfort and you'll just continue to grow
and thrive.
Amanda Berry: What are some metrics internal communicators can be using to show value, show ROI that would get their leaders attention?
Ben Matthews: And the truth is, no one can own employee experience. It's, it's too broad a subject for any one team to own. Where I do think we play is we can act as that connective tissue and glue to bring different people together to bring the.
HR team together, the IT team, security, facilities, whomever it may be. We can be the imagineers of a business. The people who help dream the big dreams. Mm-hmm. , Disney imagineers are the folks that ask those what if questions, but it takes an army of decorators and engineers and electricians and technicians and computer s.
And model makers and all of these other things to turn that imagination into reality. I believe that internal comms can be the imagineers of the business.
Mary Poppen: The internal side, measuring employee engagement and retention numbers. Overall onboarding experience or satisfaction with onboarding. And then here's the really interesting part.
Take all of those measures and start to correlate. So now you've got internal customer measures of success, external customer measures of success, and employee measures of success. When you start to look at the relationships across those measures, over time, you can start to see what has the most impact on each of those drivers, and that helps you start to focus your organization on a better customer and employee experience.
Jason Anthoine: Step one, breathe . Now you've finally gotten yourself in a situation where the CEO says something like that to you, and that, you know, that can be a little bit intimidating. And so the, the, the second thing after you breathe is get the c e o to give you a copy of the business plan, the business strategy, the long-term plan, the one that shows it by the quarter, the one that shows it for the year.
Whatever it is that the CEO and the executive team are using to track progress and, and how they are looking at KPIs, you get your hands on that thing and learn it inside and out because step three then is you're going to build an internal communications plan that drive. All of the business outcomes that the organization is looking for.
And when you start thinking about it that way, then you will naturally stumble upon ROI because now it's easier for you to measure those things because all of the comms that you're doing are attached to business strategies and business outcomes that matter. So, It's an opportunity for you to map anything that you would propose to drive whatever those business outcomes are.
Pinaki Kathiari: I think what's important about ROI is that I guess comms does need to take accountability for making business changes. Right, and in order to take accountability for it, we just need to know what that is. I think the key metrics will always kind of net out to like, did we produce the outcome that we wanted?
So what are we going after? Are we trying to reduce turnover? Are we trying to increase productivity? Are we trying to reduce injury in the workplace? Are we trying to increase employee satisfaction? Things like that. We wanna really hook ourselves onto. We really need to understand if we do do this, how do we know that we're making a difference?
So it's important to be able to know that, and it's important to be able to like, Decide how many of these things we're gonna tackle within a given period of time, right? So the outcome should always be measurable.