This episode features an interview with Andréa Topper, Director of Internal Communications at Guardant Health. Andréa’s path to internal comms has been anything but conventional. Starting out as a journalistic reporter and editor for publications like The Associated Press and Central Penn Business Journal, Andréa realized her passion for communicating with an audience. That passion took her to fitness company CrossFit, where she was in charge of content marketing. On this episode, Andréa sits down with Amanda to discuss how she built an internal communications function from scratch, the dos and don'ts of altering workplace culture, and the components of a change management communication.
This episode features an interview with Andréa Topper, Director of Internal Communications at Guardant Health. Andréa’s path to internal comms has been anything but conventional. Starting out as a journalistic reporter and editor for publications like The Associated Press and Central Penn Business Journal, Andréa realized her passion for communicating with an audience. That passion took her to fitness company CrossFit, where she was in charge of content marketing.
On this episode, Andréa sits down with Amanda to discuss how she built an internal communications function from scratch, the dos and don'ts of altering workplace culture, and the components of a change management communication.
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“We know what needs to get done as internal communicators. We know what the problem areas are, but you have to prioritize and then figure out what is my plan for this? What’s my comms plan for unveiling this to the whole company? My change management plan. Who do I need to get on board? And how long is this going to take to really do based on the tolerance of the audience? And look for your early adopters. If you have fans right away, use them. They can be your champions so that when change starts to happen and people go to them because they are the company influencers, even though they might not be in senior leadership positions, people go to them because they respect them.” – Andréa Topper
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Episode Timestamps:
*(01:51): Andréa’s background
*(07:26): Andéa’s current role at Guardant Health
*(10:04): How Andréa built Guardant’s Internal Communications program
*(14:17): Segment: Story Time
*(14:44): How CrossFit shaped Andréa’s Internal Communications career
*(19:02): The dos and don’ts of changing culture
*(25:39): Segment: Getting Tactical
*(26:19): Relationship between change management and internal comms
*(32:13): Components of a good change communication
*(37:59): Segment: Seat at the Table
*(38:40): Advice for professionals who are struggling with change initiatives
*(41:59): Segment: Asking for a Friend
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Links:
Amanda Berry: Andréa, thanks for joining me today. How are you?
Andréa Topper: I'm good, How are you? doing?
Amanda Berry: I'm doing really well. Thanks for asking. I want to start off and talk about your background a little bit. I find it very fascinating because you have a very non-traditional path into the corporate space. you start as a journalist and the news world, you transitioned to fitness, and now you're an internal communications.
Amanda Berry: Can you just talk a little bit about that? How you made those transitions between those different industries.
Andréa Topper: Absolutely, and the quick answer is not on purpose. So I do have a very untraditional background when it comes to corporate communications. Just like you said, I started out in journalism for about 12 years, and then I fell into content marketing and actually didn't even know I was doing content marketing and I was like, oh, this is kind of like journalism, except for CrossFit.
Andréa Topper: And I loved CrossFit so much that I just sort of fell into that and was doing journalistic style, articles, right. Creating that content kind of like magazine-length feature stories and taking a very journalistic approach to it. And so I didn't realize until after the fact when someone was like, Hey, that's content marketing.
Andréa Topper: I was like, oh, okay, cool. Didn't realize that's what I was doing. And then just sort of fell into that. after I left CrossFit, got recruited for a job at Agilent Technologies, which is a biotech company, here in Silicon Valley and they make instruments and kind of consumables for biotech. They provide stuff to Guardant.
Andréa Topper: Actually They provide, all kinds of consumables and other things to, to Guardant. So Guardant is a customer of Agilent. And then I got recruited into this role that I'm in now and sorta ended up here. So it wasn't part of any kind of grand plan scheme or anything like that. so yeah, my path has been very untraditional At first I saw that as a negative when I started, especially when I started at Agilent. And that was kinda my first time being in a, kind of maybe your typical kind of corporate environment and the words were different and I didn't understand the parlance or the lingo.
Andréa Topper: And I'm like, I'm really confused and I'm a little loud. And I just realized that we had different words for things, right? Like at, at Agilent and at Guardant, we call it an editorial calendar. In the newsroom we'd call it a budget. Right. It's just completely different parlance. And I had to get accustomed to that.
Andréa Topper: But what I will say is that if you know, you're in communications and you're kind of thinking about like, well, that path doesn't seem linear or how can I get there? It's the basics are the same, right? the biggest kind of decision you have to make when you're thinking about communicating as who's your audience?
Andréa Topper: And we all do that, right? I mean, some of us, so that you went in a professional setting, kind of think of it a little bit, maybe more strategically, but literally every human does this, you talk to your mother differently than you talk to your significant other, than you talk to your sibling, than you talk to your friend, right?
Andréa Topper: We have that in us already. So all that is the same, identifying an audience. How do I resonate with this audience? And that's really like the two basics. That's all the same. but yeah, I, I, I am kind of the, odd one out, usually in, in both of these settings, in both Guardant and Agilent, I don't have a traditional corporate comms background,
Amanda Berry: Yeah, I love that you're open to, just taking that path as it comes to you. I, I, I oftentimes the people who I speak to on the podcast say that that's how they end up there and there, and they're happy that they did. I know I talked to people who have a very strict career path and this is what they want to do, but then I also really love finding people like you, who just, this is just the path I've been on.
Amanda Berry: And I've just sort of along for the ride
Andréa Topper: yeah.
Andréa Topper: It hasn't always been like that. I actually, like when I first started my career, I was an all through, through my journalism career. And up through, I got to CrossFit. I was very much like I have a plan and this is my plan and this is what I'm doing and I'm executing. at CrossFit, I worked there when the founder was still involved and he's no longer involved.
Andréa Topper: He sold the company, maybe a year or two ago. I was involved when the founder kind of had a change of heart about the direction of the company. I was among the people who was laid off and I probably should have expected it at the time, but I didn't. And so I kind of fell into a space where like, what am I good at, I'm not really sure how these skills are transferable.
Andréa Topper: And like I said, because in the corporate world, the parlance and the lingo is different than my journalistic experience. I didn't think that there was a match there. I didn't think that my skills would be useful someplace else. And it was after I got to Agilent and, you know, sunk my teeth in after a few months.
Andréa Topper: And I was like, oh, this is just a different way of saying this. I just am not used to. The way these people are speaking or the different lingo that they're using, but my skills were transferable. And that was kind of a big aha moment for me, where I just kinda got in a rut. I mean, anybody who gets laid off knows how horrible a feeling that is like your company is basically saying like, well, we don't need you anymore.
Andréa Topper: And it's not a fun, it's not a fun place to be mentally. I think I kind of went from like, I have this plan, this is my path to like, it just got disrupted. And then I was like, all right, well, let's ride this thing out and see what happens. And that it was at that time at Agilent that I really started to understand, appreciate, and kind of, sort of fall in love with the power of internal communications at a company, how it can.
Andréa Topper: Shape and strengthen a culture. And Agilent has a great CEO who is very passionate about that and was able to change the culture over the course of five years. And he even talks about that with, with Wall Street. So that was something that I was like, wow, this is amazing. This is really cool.
Andréa Topper: Right? Like I jumped into this environment where I was like, I don't really fit in here. What am I doing here? And it developed into like, wow, this is awesome. Look at this. Like, I can really help here. I can be one of these pillars of holding up company culture.
I'm writing this down cause I want to come back to that idea of changing culture and IC's role in that. But before we move on, will you just talk a little bit about, give a high level overview of your role as Director of Internal Communications at Guardant Health?
Sure thing. So I am actually establishing the function from scratch. So Guardant is a very fast moving, still young company, so there is a lot to learn about communicating maturely, about having processes. So a lot of what I do is kind of stopping people and being like, Hey, so the reason we need to do this is because XYZ. So there's a lot of explaining that. What is internal communications? I have had that discussion with people. People are like, I don't know what that means. So, you know, going and explaining that, explain why even bother, like, why do we need continuity? Why do we need consistency? Why do we need to communicate this throughout the organization?
Andréa Topper: Why does executive management team need to cascade this down and ask their direct reports to communicate this to, to the rest of their team? So that is a lot of what I do is kind of establishing those processes. some of them even minor, like the other day, I sent out an email about, Hey, this is how we need to handle company-wide emails.
you can't just send them willy-nilly and just send them whenever you want. because we, we sort of dilute the potency of email and people just started ignoring it. So a lot of what I'm doing is that, but a lot of what I do also is just kind of what many out there might expect. I create a lot of decks.
Andréa Topper: I organize events. I am in charge of the all hands and working with our co-CEOs to present that and organize that. our foremost value is put the patient first. So we're always thinking about how we can think of patients as our own family members and frankly, and unfortunately it's not very hard because most of us have been touched by cancer, whether it's ourselves or a family member or a friend it's unfortunately a very pervasive disease.
Andréa Topper: So I also try to get a hold of actual patients to come and talk to employees to really motivate and inspire them, to keep working. Cause you know, what we're doing is we're in a very competitive market place, like super, super competitive, and we need to find a way to really connect with employees so that they stick around.
bringing that voice in is, is such a key. I mean, when I've worked in financial services and in higher education, bringing in that why are we doing this moment for everyone to ground again, is, is one of the most important tools I think, you know, IC folks can relate really lean on to get the most bang for the buck.
Andréa Topper: Absolutely. Yeah. it has to be real.
So you're building this internal communications program. I mean, I've, I've done that. It's it's wildly overwhelming. You have so many things to do. Yeah. Anything from, how do we send emails? What's in our email signature, what goes into all hands? What is the, you know, everything, it's everything.
Amanda Berry: How are you prioritizing that to not get overwhelmed?
Andréa Topper: Yeah, that's a great question. Cause sometimes I feel like I fail at that. I feel it prioritizing getting overwhelmed. so one thing that I think. Is helpful in my particular situation is that I mentioned before that we have co-CEOs at Guardant. So we have two CEOs. They are both founders of the company, and I report to one of them, which is pretty rare in internal communications that happens, but it's not common.
Andréa Topper: That is hugely helpful to me in prioritizing and also in affecting change. Because he really cares a lot about the culture and he wants to make some significant changes as we mature from a startup mentality. We're not a startup, but we have that mentality still. Some of that's good. Some of that's bad to a mature organization where people feel like they have a good work life balance.
Andréa Topper: So the company, people feel, productive and efficient and they have, they're doing fulfilling work. And so there's a lot of stuff that we need to get done. That's not internal communications related in that respect, but I think what I'm getting at is that it has to start from the top that change. You have to get that support from the top because you can have people down below that are like everything you want to see, but they're going to bump up against, that senior management level and not be able to get things on anymore because they're pushing down, kind of figuratively speaking.
Andréa Topper: Right. So we're pushing, I guess, kind of against the change we want to see. So that's hugely important. If I can get him on board, he can kind of proliferate that downward. Right. And that's, that's a rare situation, but I would say like an Agilent, I did not report to the CEO. It was a couple levels down.
Andréa Topper: And so at there we had someone or you have someone still he's still there. He deeply cares about the culture. So that was huge. That was huge. Cause you saw his staff, people who, his direct reports, really trying to imitate an echo, those values and the way that we treated other people. And I just can't stress that enough.
Andréa Topper: And I think, during the pandemic a lot change for corporate and internal communications a lot, and it keeps changing. And one of the good things that came out of that, I think as leadership at most places realized how important we were.
Amanda Berry: the value of internal comms really bubbled out. Absolutely.
Andréa Topper: And so that's a good place to be right now because now internal coms, if it didn't before, and now it has a seat at the table now it's like, all right, we need to involve you to make sure that employees have an understanding of this, that employees appreciate this.
Andréa Topper: And employees feel valued. That employees feel recognized, all those things that are important. So that to me is, is key. Like how are you working with leadership to ensure. That they're onboard. And it's sometimes it takes a lot of explaining, you know, of things that, you know, all of us have get comfortable in our own industries and our own jobs to where like, well, of course you would need to do this.
Andréa Topper: Why would you say it like that? Right. But sometimes people just don't necessarily, you know, understand that it depends on the audience you're working with and biotech. We have a lot of people that are really technical. we have quite a number of people who are very into. So we need to figure out a way, to work with them and help them to understand the value of employees feeling fulfilled of feeling appreciated, feeling recognized that they are critical, right?
They are any company's most valuable asset? It doesn't matter who it is like that is the most important thing. You can have a wonderful mission, but if employees aren't on board, like there's only so far, you can go.
Amanda Berry: right. Absolutely. I've got a bunch of questions based on everything. I said, because it's really, it's exactly what I want to get into. So I'm going to move into our first segment called story time. I want to back up, you've mentioned CrossFit quite a bit. I'm a big fan of CrossFit. I lived in Madison, Wisconsin for many years for the hump.
CrossFit games are, every summer and probably will be for awhile. but you've been in there, I believe about 10 years. If I remember correctly, you're currently a head coach and leading learning and development at CrossFit. how has your time at CrossFit really shaped your career in internal comms and are there parallels you can draw between the two
I worked at CrossFit headquarters for, about 10 years. And then the whole time I've been out in Northern California, I've been coaching at CrossFit, Silicon Valley. So one of the one, a CrossFit gym, and that's where I'm, head coach serves a, part-time kind of, I do this for fun sort of thing, and lead Learning and Development for the coaches there.
It's an interesting question, because at the time when I was involved in CrossFit and the founder was still involved and like I said, he's not involved anymore. He was a very iconoclastic man in his view. So he would look at best practices at other places. And just because they were best practices, he'd be like, we're not doing that. That's corporate. And there was a lot of appeal to that for many of us. I mean, CrossFit was born out of controversy and it's still a little controversial, I guess. And so we wanted to kind of be like the anti-corporate right. But at the end of the day, there's some things you just can't get away from it.
Andréa Topper: I mean, you need to communicate with other people. I learned from, in terms of number one, how you can really inspire and motivate people. Right. that was huge for me is seeing how you can get everyone moving in the same direction. And that was everything from. Him as a leader that founder, as a leader who still to this day is one of the best public speakers I've ever heard.
just incredible and could really just rally and galvanize people around the mission, the objective, whatever it was at that time. So that was a big one I was a writer there and then we had writers. We had videographers, we had a travel coordinators, HR like everyone. And what I saw there for a while is just everyone, no matter what their role was.
Andréa Topper: They were like, we are helping make people's lives better through fitness. Everyone believed that like sincerely believed that even if, no matter what your role, no matter if he didn't really directly touch, an individual at a gym and help them with their chronic disease through fitness and nutrition. That was a moment in my life that I will cherish. So I'm not sure it will ever come back of that level of people were so fired up about CrossFit. And I mean, the people who work there. So, you know, if I took a spreadsheet and we were to have logged, like, okay, everybody who worked at CrossFit HQ, these are the number of hours you work today.
Andréa Topper: You were in the office, right? And then you go to a CrossFit gym. And because you work at HQ, like, you know, you have a certain kind of role even in that community. And then maybe like after hours you go and hang out with a bunch of people from work and you're talking shop the whole time, like our whole lives were CrossFit.
Andréa Topper: And so if you had, if you had logged that on a spreadsheet, anyone who did not. Work there didn't know much about it might have looked at that and said, these people are overworked and they're going to burn out. This is not sustainable, but that's not the way that we viewed it. Like we loved it.
Andréa Topper: Couldn't get enough of it. It was just give us more. We wanted to be involved in everything. And how can you get people to that point? that's the trick, that's the magic. I'm not sure that you see that in many places. And for me, I think that might've been like that, that was my one in a lifetime kind of experience that I had, but that's always the goal.
Andréa Topper: So I always think of that. Like how can I get closer to that? And wherever I'm at, how can I move? Like the employees closer to that? and the reasons being, not because we want them to work 80 hours a week, but because we want them to feel fulfilled. We want them to feel like this is meaningful work.
Andréa Topper: This is fulfilling work. I love doing this. And I mean, you know that when you love doing something, it doesn't feel like work. And you know, when it does, because at the end day you're exhausted and it, you might've just like been doing stuff. That's not particularly high brain brainpower, but you're just like, I am so tired.
Andréa Topper: I just need to have a glass of wine and lie on the couch
is there any parallels you can draw? You mentioned in a previous role, you'd watched a leader who cared about the culture and change the culture, and then thinking about the culture at CrossFit and your role in helping train the culture at a previous company, give us the do's and don'ts, how does that happen?
Amanda Berry: Like where does the enthusiasm come from? How did the employees, you know, receive it, help bring me along in that. I'm very curious about changing culture.
I think it's, it's interesting that you asked this question cause I saw a lot of parallels. after, after I'd been at Agilent for probably like six months, I saw a lot of parallels between Agilent and CrossFit, which seems crazy because CrossFit was a private company. it probably only ever employed roughly like 200 people. at that time, there were seminar staff that would travel all over the world. Teaching courses at that time, I don't believe they're full-time employees. They might be now. And then Agilent, which was, you know, publicly traded company, 16,400 employees all over the world, way different, not founder led, but it had some similarities and those similarities were. You heard from the leader often. So after the pandemic kind of, first struck in the Northern California area, and we all watched that sent home, the CEO of Agilent just started making home videos, checking in like saying like, here's the latest stuff He called his office at home, the Agilent newsroom.
Andréa Topper: And by the way, like no one in internal comms told them to do this. I'd love to take credit for that, but he just did it. Right. And that was awesome.
Amanda Berry: Yeah.
Andréa Topper: So that those are the similarities. they talked often to the employees, rallied them behind. This is what we're doing, and this is why you are integral to this process. And we care about you here. You matter. It was really like the three main messages that, that both of them had in common. So people felt safe, they felt supported. And I felt excited that. that leadership component and the communication from that leader was huge because in both places I saw what happened is that everyone was like, we're in this together.
Andréa Topper: And we're all like rowing that way. There was agreement on that and that filtered down to how people treated each other, which was a pleasant experience and how people kind of viewed what we were doing. And like I said, the direction that, that we were going there was unification around that galvanization around that.
When I had that realization, I was like, that's so crazy. Right? Like these companies could not be more different because when you go into Agilent, it's sort of like, I would say socially conservative, not politically conservative. It's kind of like a socially conservative place.
Andréa Topper: Right. And CrossFit, if anyone knows anything about CrossFit, I mean, you know, they used to post like naked pictures of the internet of athletes. Right. It always was trying to push the envelope of like challenge you in terms of What you thought was kind of right. Or prudent or whatever.
Andréa Topper: So totally different philosophies, but very similar reactions from employees. And I feel that that boiled down to the leader.
How are you measuring along the way? I mean, I heard you talk about like, the employees were excited that they care and how are you gauging.
Andréa Topper: Yeah, a lot of it was employee comments. So you know, everything from comments on. Yeah. The videos that we posted of, a leader speaking, particularly CEO at Agilent. So how many views are we getting this? How many comments are we getting? How many comments are we getting through email? And then employees would contact us.
Andréa Topper: They would feel like so moved by something, they would send something. And either to that leader or to us, or we had access to, to kind of had like an alias mailbox. So we would take a look at that and say like, all right, like How has this working? Agilent also does a yearly, they call it a leadership survey, but it really it's, it's kind of like a pulse survey, but it's, it's done each year and it's connected to the best places to work.
Andréa Topper: And so they, they take that very seriously there. So it's kind of broken down by, you can tell which teams people are on. like, are you in finance? Are you in sales? then the leader of those teams or organizations or departments will take that feedback and ingest it, read it, really allow it to percolate and see what kind of changes need to be made.
Andréa Topper: And that was something that was a very big deal. It wasn't like here's another pulse survey. Tell us if you're happy. okay?
Andréa Topper: bye. It was quite a thing. And the CEO is the one who sent out the message about it. Like, this is why we're doing this. This is why this is important. Tell us where we're failing and tell us what's working.
Andréa Topper: So there was a lot of measurement there. and I think. I mean, that's critical, right? You have to have that data and especially to, even for yourself just to know what you're doing, but I mean, it also will, will help you to, gain another head count or spend money on some more technology. you need that to be able to prove your case, and especially at a place like Guardant, where we have so many scientists that are focused on what's the data.
Andréa Topper: Show me the evidence behind this. need to make sure that I am being very mindful of the details
I just want to call out as, as you were talking about that. One of the things that I hear, whether it be about DE&I. Any sort of change or any initiative that's important to accompany, I guess, is what I'm going to is, needs to be CEO led. They need to have the support of the CEO and, and they, they very mentioned about CrossFit.
and the examples you're just giving us, that's what I'm hearing.
you're absolutely right. I mean, it can only go so far, right? Like I mentioned before, like you can have a huge swath of the employee population that maybe has a deep understanding of what needs to happen, but it will only go so far because they're trying to kind of percolate it up. And if, if those folks are resistant and they're like, no, And they keep pushing back against it and it really can only go so far.
Andréa Topper: And I mean, the leadership really, it sets the tone for the company. I mean, they really do right. in the same way that, I. Coach at CrossFit. And I have people from all walks of life and ages and backgrounds come in. Like I, as a coach set the tone for the class.
Andréa Topper: And so without them, without their buy-in. It can only go so far and it's probably in the end a recipe for disaster really. everyone needs to be moving in the same direction or you're just going to, the boat is going to crack
I want to move into a next segment, getting tactical, get some real details from you, Andrea. several tips and tricks of how to execute. We've been talking a lot about change. so I'd, I'd love to talk with you more about change management and having a role internal communications play. I read somewhere.
Amanda Berry: It was like yesterday, today that 70% of change. could fail for any number of reasons, but I really want to focus on what IC internal communications can do to help avoid failure. First, I'd love to get your opinion. What is the relationship between change management and internal communications?
Amanda Berry: It's often used interchangeably and I'd love to have your opinion on them.
Andréa Topper: so at Guardant, I mentioned that I'm starting to function from scratch. So there's a lot of, this is what internal communications is. This is why we need to do this process. And it's because of where Guardant is in terms of its maturity. As a company now at Agilent, much older established company, you know, twice as old.
Andréa Topper: And we had a lot of people or you have a lot of people. There are, I won't say a lot, maybe a significant amount of people who came from HP. Agilent was spun off of HP. So you have people that are like, I've been with Agilent 40 years and you're like, hold on Agilent. It's only been around for 20. I don't get how that works.
Andréa Topper: So it's, they came from HP and they just kind of continued right. There was a lot of Hey, we've always done it this way. That's not how we do it. So I had to do the same thing. So as you said, it can be interchangeable. And I think the biggest part of this as an internal communicator is patience. Prioritize, have a plan, have your strategy, for a year. Figure out what's . The most important thing in your mind, you know what you need to do.
Andréa Topper: Right. Okay. This has to happen. This is bad. This can't happen this way. But if you just flip that switch and you flip too many of them and like, this is different, this is different. This is different. People are like, They'll they, they, in all likelihood, they'll probably ignore you. That might become irritated with you.
Andréa Topper: And then, you've regressed in terms of your effectiveness with them.
Amanda Berry: Yeah. Change fatigue is huge. I think that's probably what you're alluding to there. I know that I've worked at companies where everything was changing and people were just like, I can't handle any more change.
Andréa Topper: Yeah, exactly. You're exactly right. And, and put that further into the context of the world. We've been living in as a society, as a global society. And it's like, now what? Right. It's compounding this effect. So I have to be very mindful of that. I have to be very careful. When other people get impatient with me and are like, well, how come you haven't rolled out this process yet?
Andréa Topper: Because I know that it needs to be, I know that, but if I do this too quickly, I have to bring people along. I have to help them to understand. I have to show them my value. I have to earn their trust and then we can start having a conversation about, okay, this is what needs to happen. So to get real specific that, that process for company-wide emails.
Andréa Topper: So the process had been, I don't know what's coming and when it's coming and it'll be sent to a distribution list and I, on the other end of it, I either approve or reject this for release to the whole company. Literally it could happen at any time. Didn't know when it was coming at all. I got no headsup. 'cause that's what people were used to.
Andréa Topper: Right. And someone on the other end, it was IT before, because there was no internal communications. It was like, yeah, approved, it was a rubber stamp, so I needed to wait. I need to get more visibility. Right. And that happened like, you know, I am on the all hands. Like I asked, I'm the one kind of moderates questions, ask questions.
Andréa Topper: People need to get used to seeing my face, understanding my value, understanding how I can be helpful to them and useful to them. And I only rolled out that process. What was it? Was it last week or week before? I mean, I've been here. What nine months and someone else could have argued that that was an easy one.
Andréa Topper: You should, should've just done it right away. Well, people are so used to doing this. Like first I had to get people to come around and say, Hey, not every single person we hire needs a company-wide email. Like we're at 1420, or something. Turns into employees 1,420 somewhere. We can't send out an email for every single new hire we have.
Andréa Topper: I mean, we've been hiring at a record pace and I need to get that part done first. So, all right. I've transitioned everyone over there. Now, posting that on, on a dedicated Slack channel, that searchable it's all in one place. People can find us. I was like, kind of like step one. And then what I did is I got a couple of people involved early. So I said, Hey, I'd really love to do this. Like, instead of sending your email out on 4:30 on Fridays,
Amanda Berry: I know that Andréa, I know that.
Andréa Topper: right.
Amanda Berry: Yup. here at 4:30 waiting for final edits, you're sending at 6:00.
Andréa Topper: send, you're like it's Friday for God's sakes. No, one's here. Yeah, So I got to move that up, but I, in that process, I had to explain they're like, I don't understand why we can't just send it.
Andréa Topper: to. Okay. Okay. Well, Simon, please read it. Cause I get some comments like, okay. So I have to go through that explanation that takes time now, but once I can get them as supporters and that's an email that's actually sent every week, once I can get them on board.
Andréa Topper: And I got someone else on board early in the process it was two people, one from our program management office and they loved process and regulatory and quality. Also loved process and then someone from IT, more process lovers. So I got a group of folks to kind of adopt early. And so when I sent out that email saying, here's the process and it kept it super simple.
Andréa Topper: I wasn't a lot of verbiage and explanation. It was just like this new process goes into effect. And in the name of continuous improvement, this process goes to effect this date. Here's the process. Step 1, 2, 3. Here's the reason for this process. Shortlist. And then thank you to all these early adopters who have already been doing this, you know, add in a little emoji of a trophy, simple stuff.
Andréa Topper: But that was huge because they already had people doing it. So no one could come to me and say, well this isn't going to work. No, one's going to do it. So I know I already had people doing it.
Amanda Berry: that's interesting. I like that. I was going to ask you that's one of the things that came to mind as you've been talking is what are the components of a good change communication,
Andréa Topper: Oh, gosh. Yeah,
let's talk about that. It means you're talking about sending out that message, you know, what are we doing? Why are we doing it?
Amanda Berry: When are we doing. And then I love that. And thank you to everyone. Who's already been to it to get rid of that, that naysayer of like, no, no one's going to want to do
Andréa Topper: Right, right. Yeah. No,
Amanda Berry: you would add?
no, that's huge. And I think maybe those are all the, the major components, I think maybe adding into the. Would be timing, you know, sometimes some things kind of take a little bit more of a phased approach than others. So when I got here, I started meeting right away with folks in our, infrastructure engineering group in it.
Andréa Topper: And I'm like, Hey, teach me, everything you know about our current industry. I know that we, you know, there's, that's kind of in my purview and I would like to change it. Cause it's, it's a site that doesn't have a, doesn't allow for interaction, employee interaction. It's not dynamic, super stale. I think people forgot about some of the pages they created.
Andréa Topper: there like,
Amanda Berry: It's like a graveyard and it becomes a repository.
Andréa Topper: Right? Exactly. And.
Andréa Topper: so I started planting that seed. I think I was maybe two, three weeks in while I was like, Hey, I'd want to do this. So I started gathering, I started meeting with all the folks that I needed to in IT infrastructure, engineer, engineering, business applications, and saying, talk to me about what you think about the current intranet.
Andréa Topper: What will you like to see and what would it take to, you know, kind of make that change. And then I had. A bunch of one-on-one meetings. My first, probably three, four weeks. with people all around the organization. So a lot of them were very senior leaders. And also something like director level folks that had been there a long time.
Andréa Topper: Tell me how I can be helpful to you. So this accomplishes two things. Number one, I exist here. Number two, I want to be helpful. I am listening. So it was sort of a way to do a bit of a internal communications. Like right away. Right. We ended up hiring an external company to come in and do that as well, but it gave me a chance to really gain an understanding right away.
Andréa Topper: And so I kept hearing that from people like our, intranet is terrible. Like, can you please do something about that? So, all right. There's sentiments already out there. So planting that seed with IT because it's, I mean, I can't happen without them. it's impossible. So I needed their buy-in.
Andréa Topper: So. That took some time they were very receptive, but you know, then we get into like, oh gosh, the migration, oh gosh, this right.
Amanda Berry: The change part of it
Andréa Topper: Yeah.
Andréa Topper: yeah. exactly. So I think, this is all to say depending on the initiative and not just the initiative, because there's not a one size fits all the tolerance of your audience.
Andréa Topper: Right. The employees, like, like I said, like all of us are probably sick of all the change because of this pandemic. And then, Exacerbate that with a company that is fast moving, constantly changing in a super competitive environment. And wow. it can be stressful. So I don't want to come in and be like, change, change, change, change.
just like everything is changing. I have to go slow. And I think that's, that's a good exercise in patience because you know, we know what needs to get done as internal communicators. We know what the problem areas are, but you have to prioritize and then figure out, what is my plan for this?
Andréa Topper: What's my comms plan for unveiling this to the whole company, my change management plan, who do I need to get on board? And how long is this going to take to really do based on the tolerance of the audience, And look for your early adopters. if you have fans right away, use them, They can be your champions so that when. Change starts to happen and people go to them because they are the company influencers, even though they might not be in like senior leadership positions, people go to them cause they respect them
Amanda Berry: And you might get some of that. You'd mentioned meeting with like directors and above you could really get some information. I'm sure you probably heard that from some of those folks going, our intranet is not great.
Andréa Topper: yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Amanda Berry: really where you can start to pick those adopters and influencers.
Andréa Topper: for sure. And I, one of the things that we did, you know, early on in with the internal communications audit is created a core team for the audit. So you really get their opinions and solicit ideas. And this is a group that I want to maintain. that's not just for the audit.
Andréa Topper: Like I want to keep them around and maybe switch out members and stuff to make sure we have fresh ideas. And whether there's anything major, we be like, Hey, what do you guys think about this? And then once I get support, like I said, people will go to them anyway. Cause those that's the kind of people they are.
people are going to them for their opinions on things. They are influencers. And they're like, oh Yeah, I know this is awesome because XYZ, we should do this. And they're champions. They're also proliferating it among their teams. They're telling their leaders about it. I think everywhere internal comms is understaffed.
Andréa Topper: Right. So
Amanda Berry: absolutely.
Amanda Berry: I've never heard any person go. I have too many staff, you know that, that would be ridiculous to
Andréa Topper: exactly. So that, that's a huge one. And, you know, I try to leverage my manager when I can, and my manager's a CEO. he often starts our one-on-ones with, how can I help you? Awesome in and of itself, but I sometimes say like, I need your help with this. I'm going to be doing this.
Andréa Topper: If you could just show up for the first 10 minutes of this meeting, just tell everybody you support this. This is awesome. thank you for your participation. I look forward to seeing the outcome of this. Like that's really all I need and maybe it's just five minutes. It goes such a long way to help with that.
Andréa Topper: such a long way. it's timing, I think was only the only thing I'd I'd kinda add to some of that stuff. Yeah.
Amanda Berry: yeah. I want to move to the next segment that connects to this. The next segment called seat at the table. When we think about these initiatives, whether it be change, M&As anything big that you're going to need to be a part of an internal comms? from my experience that when IC doesn't have a seat at the table and last minute, you're told like, oh, we're we acquired this company or, you know, meeting with their employees tomorrow.
Amanda Berry: And you're like, what? I don't have anything ready. Like an intranet site. I don't have documents from HR. Nothing presentations. So my question to you is I know you work with your CEO now, who sounds very supportive and that's fantastic, but what advice would you give to someone who's in internal communications?
Amanda Berry: Who's really having a difficult time getting a seat at the table to participate in these from, you know, from the starting line, so that to help prepare and make you know, anything, any big change initiatives successful.
Andréa Topper: Measure where you can in any way that you can. let's say someone is at a company where they have an intranet that's ancient that doesn't have a way to measure. Right. Gather any kind of anecdotes. Someone has probably says to you on the way this, this is. Great. I love this, whatever, if that can be written down somewhere, like all those emails, right. I have a folder that I keep called nice things and I keep it by, by year.
Amanda Berry: I do that too..
Andréa Topper: Do you really? when I used to my performance evaluation, this is a previous boss would say, I want to hear the things that, that people say that a nice about you. cause you, you hold those in. And so I kept a nice folder.
Andréa Topper: Right. Yeah.
Andréa Topper: exactly. it's your evidence, right? Like I'm doing something worthy here and the next part would be find your champions and your supporters. And preferably if they're at. The senior management level, right. VPs and above. If you can find people there that maybe you created a comms plan for someone who resigned on their team unexpectedly, or maybe you've been writing messages for them for a couple of quarters, or maybe you helped with a specific team or department's initiative and getting buy-in on something, track, all that stuff.
you know, for me, it's even, it's hard because there's so much coming at me at one time. I have a weekly one-on-one with my manager and at six months I told them, Hey, like, I've been here for six months. I'd like to talk about, um, get any feedback from you about how I've been doing.
Andréa Topper: I want to talk about my career path. And so I was like, you know what? I should sit down and just, let me just keep it simple. Let me just write a list of stuff. I've got. That's it just stuff I've gotten done. And it's funny because I've been moving so fast as part of this culture that I kind of went into it thinking, I don't know that I've really gotten anything done.
Andréa Topper: And then I made my list and I was like, oh my gosh, I've done a lot. So. You have to record it somehow, like make that list and just keep it like an ongoing document. Find your stakeholders. If you can get, like, if it's emails or you can get someone to write something down, even be like, Hey, I know that you said like, this person loved this.
Andréa Topper: Is that in an email? Or could you write that down? And could you send it to me that all builds and builds and builds. If you don't have tools that you need to make. You know, if measure, likes and comments on content or interactions with email campaigns, if you don't have that, then figure it out a different way to measure it to sh to show that you are making a positive difference.
Andréa Topper: I think sometimes the pulse surveys can help too. Right? Like we aren't, depending on the company, aren't always in charge of that. Sometimes it's a, it's a function of, of someone in HR. but if you can get insight into that and. A question, hopefully about communications in there. You might be able to get some measurement in there as well.
I know, like I often try to use some sort of survey tool after an all hands meeting or after the newsletter goes out, just to help gauge, you know, even if you can see even those page views and even just to get that, that, that extra sentiment, like, did you, you know, what, what do you like most about this?
what can we . Improve? You're right. that's content is super important.
Andréa Topper: Yeah, absolutely.
Amanda Berry: Yeah, I went move into our last segment, asking for a friend. I'm going to get your expertise, for our hypothetical friends out there.
Amanda Berry: What do you see are the biggest challenges internal communications professionals face in the future?
Amanda Berry: I mean, we never could have predicted pandemic and everything going digital. And, I'm not sure that was like a huge challenge, but it was a challenge. Right? we had to train strategies. We had to really focus on good technology and does the technology meet we're going to do so I'm very curious as to what you see, we are going to face the next five to 10 years.
Andréa Topper: I think there's a couple of things. One in the context of this great resignation, great reshuffling is retaining employees, helping them understand how critical they are to the mission. Making sure we're providing an environment that's fulfilling. That has a good work-life balance. That's the first thing that comes to mind and then just the hybrid environment. So right now, for example, you know, at Guardant only essential workers are going onsite . Because of Omicron. And we're hoping that maybe we can get back to the office in early March, that lack of human interaction. Has had a profound effect on a lot of people on their mental state, those kind of,
Andréa Topper: Water cooler. Talk the kind of the, the spontaneous, that's the word I'm looking for? The spontaneous conversations that erupt don't anymore. You're just like one zoom to another zoom to another. I just don't think that's natural for us or sustainable in the longterm. So while we have some people that probably are craving that interaction, we also have folks that are like, I'm good. I'm good. I'm stay at home. so that hybrid environment. It's going to be, I think really challenging moving forward.
Andréa Topper: I don't think that's, that's something that's going to go away or well, we're just going to get back to everybody going in the office now. I'm like no cats out of the bag on that one. Like that's not that's we are not going backward now. it's hybrid. So how do you connect employees emotionally to a company so that they are.
Andréa Topper: Fulfilled. They are appreciated in this type of environment where there's so little interaction and opportunities to create relationships I mentioned we've been hiring so many people. Like some people have never even seen our senior management team don't even know who they are. So how do we do that?
Andréa Topper: Like how do we create these deeper relationships? And these, video conferences and then once we're in person and we have some people in person, some people not, how are we gonna manage that? I think that's tough And the reason it's tough is because there's no one size fits all.
Andréa Topper: And it's so, so individual, we just did a series of kind of fireside chats with our executive management team, kind of senior vice presidents and C-suite folks. And. I mean, the feedback runs the gamut and it just depends on the person. One person is like, I really love this format. This is great.
Andréa Topper: Perfect. I wouldn't change anything. Someone else's like, this is way too big. They used to be 10 to 15 people in here. you know, one person is, this is wonderful. I love how personal it is. One person was like, this was awful. I don't think any of us can go down that rabbit hole of trying to please everyone it's not possible.
Andréa Topper: It just makes it a little harder. Like how can you have the broadest positive impact? And that's, you have to always, I mean, you kind of doing change management on yourself, right? You're like, all right, well that didn't work. I'm going to have to figure out.
Amanda Berry: exactly. I love being a part of this, almost like a paradigm shift and internal communications, right. Where this stuff worked in the past. And now we're all just like, oh my gosh, we got to kind of really figure out what works for our company and for our employees, it's a lot different.
I think about, I mean, you've, you've alluded to it, the new employee experience, right? When you can't go in an office, you can't walk by people's desks. you can't like lean over a cubicle, your coworker and go, how do I submit an expense report? just those little things where you have to like book time.
Amanda Berry: Someone now you're taking like a real time from their day and it's tomorrow. Cause they're booked up with other meetings. It's a very interesting change that we're seeing. it's gonna be interesting to continue to try to navigate this.
It's so interesting to think about how we started and like the frame of mine, of folks, employees at the start of the pandemic, which was more along the lines of, oh my God, what does this mean for my job? Am I going to lose my job? Am I going to get laid off? To now people are alike peace I'm out, you know, like so different.
Andréa Topper: It just in a couple of years, I don't know that any of us could have foreseen this, but it just keeps changing all the time.
Amanda Berry: And that's an interesting thing to think back, and I'm glad you brought that up. I spoke with someone on this podcast a few months ago, we're really not even in the employee experience more we're we're, you know, it's the human experience. And, and works just a part of it, but we're interacting with that. I don't know how many times, and I love it to see, you know, new parents with our baby while they're on meetings, because that's just the life that we're living in or dogs barking, you know, freaking out in the background, my dogs barking, or, the need a plumber to come by.
Amanda Berry: So it's a, it's a completely different world we're living in. We don't bring employees to work anymore and we have their full undivided. As employees we're now living in their space. do you have any like final thoughts on that?
Andréa Topper: This came up the other day in a meeting. And one of the things that I would say is a positive is just exactly what you described is like, we used to talk so much about bringing your authentic self to work, but we thought about it very physically. I go to the office, this is what I'm like at the office.
Andréa Topper: I leave the office. This is what I'm like when I leave the office. But now those lines are so blurred. So blurred. We have parents on calls. I mean, that has happened at Guardant where someone was having a meeting and like their three year old, four year old, he might've been five came over and sat on his lap and he just kept talking.
Andréa Topper: Like, he just was like, didn't even, he was in the middle of saying something to like a group of probably like 80 people. And, he was like, Hey bud. And then he just kept talking and people were like, that's so cute. Oh my God, I love your kid. So we're getting. Employees full selves, more so than we ever have before.
Andréa Topper: And I think there's some good in that being able to feel like your authentic self at work and being like, this is me, take it or leave it. it's been an issue. I think in some places where people for whatever reason might feel like an other. And here, I feel like there's a little bit of democratization there where it's like, oh, here I am, I've got like a dragon on my wall.
in the background and this stuff over here, and my dog just barked and I'm trying to, do a presentation and he's barking. Cause he's decided the FedEx man is here to murder us, that kind of stuff. And I, I, I think that that's some of the good things that have come out of this.
Yeah.
Andréa Topper: there's a couple of other good things. I think you, you mentioned. You know now instead of kind of peeking over someone's cubicle wall and be like, how do I do that again? Now you have to write out like an email or a Slack message. And while that is kind of annoying, you really have to get your thoughts put together. Clearly you have to write that and articulate that clearly. So that it's not a back and forth. You don't have time for a conversation now, right now it's booking time, as you said. So you have to figure out a way to, to get that kind of done the first time, especially if you're working in a company that is global and you're in completely different time zones.
I have to figure out how to write this email. Clearly say what I want clearly, because while I'm sleeping, they're working and there's like maybe like an hour of overlap there. And then. And if I don't do this, now, it's going to take another week to get this done. there's some good things in it, but, I think that's why a hybrid model is nice.
if you want to go into the office and have that interaction and those spontaneous conversations, you can do that. And then on the days you want to kind of stay home and just have zoom meetings, you can do that as well.
Amanda Berry: Yeah. And you're in your pajamas to stay home and take zoom meetings in your pajamas.
Andréa Topper: Exactly. Yeah, no.
Amanda Berry: bottoms.
Andréa Topper: Yeah, no one knows I'm wearing slippers right now.
Andréa Topper: Right.
Amanda Berry: I hear that a lot. Well, Andréa, this has been so much fun and I really appreciate you bringing all your expertise. I've learned a lot today. before I let you go, let our listeners know where they can find you.
Andréa Topper: Yeah, sure. So I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. so you.
Andréa Topper: can find me there. Andréa Topper, would probably be the best place to, to find me.
Well, thank you for joining me today. This has been fantastic.
Andréa Topper: thank you. I appreciate it, Amanda.