This episode features an interview with Jordan Katz, Chief Insights Officer at Simpplr. Jordan advises organizations on the influential use of data and analytics to develop strategies that predict outcomes and increase performance. Prior to Simpplr, he was one of the Heads of Employee Experience Strategy at Qualtrics and has consulted hundreds of SaaS companies and global organizations. In this episode, Shawn and Jordan dig into Simpplr’s 2024 State of Internal Communications Report. They discuss the most surprising results, creating highly effective teams, and using AI to tailor messages.
This episode features an interview with Jordan Katz, Chief Insights Officer at Simpplr. Jordan advises organizations on the influential use of data and analytics to develop strategies that predict outcomes and increase performance. Prior to Simpplr, he was one of the Heads of Employee Experience Strategy at Qualtrics and has consulted hundreds of SaaS companies and global organizations.
In this episode, Shawn and Jordan dig into Simpplr’s 2024 State of Internal Communications Report. They discuss the most surprising results, creating highly effective teams, and using AI to tailor messages.
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“We're creating not a time machine, like go back in time machine, but a save you time, reduce friction. Where everything is served up at your fingertips in a way that not only helps you get your job done, helps you be more productive, reduces cycle time on search and access to information. And by the way, can help you eliminate some of the administrative tasks or recognize your peers or any of the things that you want to do on a day-to-day basis that are not the high value stuff that drives crazy impact at your job. But instead, helps lift you up so you can do the best work that you can possibly do in the most efficient manner possible.” – Jordan Katz
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Episode Timestamps:
*(03:45): Rapid fire questions
*(10:43): Surprising results from the State of IC Report
*(18:59): How AI can improve IC messaging
*(30:12): Jordan’s advice for implementing an intranet
*(35:17): What makes highly effective IC teams
*(46:56): What’s next for IC in 2025
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Links:
Connect with Jordan on LinkedIn
Read Simpplr’s State of Internal Communications Report
Connect with Shawn on LinkedIn
Shawn Pfunder: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Cohesion. And today I'm joined by Jordan Katz, he's the Chief Insights Officer at Simpplr. Jordan advises organizations on the influential use of data and analytics to develop strategies that predict outcomes and increase performance. Previously, he served as one of the heads of employee experience strategy at Qualtrics. And there he was responsible for developing and deploying employee experience, impact strategies to help clients achieve their organizational goals through data and analytics.
Shawn Pfunder: Jordan has consulted hundreds of rapid growth SaaS companies, world class global organizations. I'm excited to nerd out with Jordan today. Jordan, thanks for joining.
Jordan Katz: Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here, and I'm super excited to have joined Simpplr this year.
Shawn Pfunder: That is awesome. It's probably not fair for me to say nerd out as soon as I see the word data.
Jordan Katz: No, no, that's 100 percent accurate. No disagreement on my end. It's just like a fancy way of saying I do math. I like math. I'm not afraid by math. I'm still not able to do my daughter's sophomore year high school math anymore. But, you know, when it comes to org math, I got people analytics that I can handle.
Shawn Pfunder: That's good. That's good. I mean, cause I've seen Moneyball.
Jordan Katz: It's cool too, right? Yeah. All right. Yeah. Keep trying to tell my, again, back to the high schooler. If you try to tell my high schooler that I'm cool. Get a different response, but yes. Moneyball for organizations. I'm going to predict that something's going to happen, and then if we do the right stuff, Hopefully that will happen or close to it.
Jordan Katz: And then everybody wins and is happy. That's exactly it. That's my job.
Shawn Pfunder: Right on. Money belt for organizations. There you go. Well, I have, I have five, five sort of rapid fire questions. It gets to know you a little bit better. Starting at the top. What are the five most opened apps on your phone?
Jordan Katz: Oh God. Wait, do they have to be like fun apps or is it like Gmail, Slack?
Jordan Katz: You just have to be honest. I like the finance app. I've got obviously Gmail and Slack. I'm constantly texting people and there's this other app. It's like, it looks like a little, like one of these things. I use it to call people because I get tired of texting. Are you familiar with this ? You can speak to them, you know, not through like typing things.
Jordan Katz: You get to have a full, use your voice. I like that one a lot.
Shawn Pfunder: No, I love it. I like I, at first I saw you sort of mimic what we're talking like, and for
Jordan Katz: Looks like a banana.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, for a second I was like, wow, what is this gonna be? Yeah. No. Is this gonna be No. Yeah. Alright. Calling people.
Jordan Katz: There's one more that I think is, is fun and interesting. And that is, I really spend a decent amount of time as the social media manager for my family. So I'm in charge, I'm super tech support, and that means, like, I have to go into Instagram and perfectly curate how amazing our life is. No one else will do it.
Shawn Pfunder: They're like, just need to, everybody needs to know, right? There's, it's only perfect.
Jordan Katz: Everyone else is too busy. To do the tech work that, no, I'm just joking. I'm super tech support at home, social media manager, maybe. Is it curated? No, I'm a terrible photographer. You know, I'm actually getting a little bit. I do spend a little bit of time on Instagram.
Jordan Katz: Oh, very cool.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, I would expect that you'd study the algorithm.
Jordan Katz: I'm gaming the whole thing.
Shawn Pfunder: Through, right, right. To make sure that you kind of float up to the top. Yeah, I wish. Moneyball social media manager for your family. What's the last book you read?
Jordan Katz: For work or for fun? Both. Okay, so I'm super into science fiction.
Jordan Katz: And I've got two favorite authors, Alistair Reynolds and William Gibson. And Alistair Reynolds just came out with a new book in one of the series I like, but it's been like years. So I just re read this book called The Prefect. Okay. So that I could get ready for the new book. And William Gibson is like, you know, very much a futurist sort of cyberpunk and the peripheral and the William Gibson books that just came out.
Shawn Pfunder: I could be getting this wrong and I super apologize. Is it Neuromancer, Johnny Mnemonic, that stuff?
Jordan Katz: Yeah, exactly. And as a matter of fact, I just heard that they are finally making a live action or some sort of show. about Neuromancer, which is going to be exciting.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, very cool. Yes. Yeah. Super applicable now to the whole like AI people's superhuman robot thing.
Jordan Katz: Chips in the, in the skull. You can't wait, right? Exactly. I mean, science fiction or science fact? Who knows?
Shawn Pfunder: That's right. Elon, if you're listening, I'm raising my hand. What about for work?
Jordan Katz: Talent tectonics. I have a good friend, Steve Hunt. He's the chief expert over at SAP for Workplace and SuccessFactors.
Jordan Katz: And he wrote a book about talent, talent mobility, employee experience, technology, and skills on talent. All kinds of stuff that's relevant to right now. And not only is he a good guy, but he's really smart and has been around the block here in HR technology and experience strategy for a million years. So, real great thought leader, great content, highly recommend.
Shawn Pfunder: Sounds fantastic. Yeah, I'll definitely check it out. Next question, knowing what you do, like as soon as we say we've got a, you know, a whole bunch of, whole bunch of listeners that are in comms or HR or whatever, what's the biggest Myth or misconception about what you do and the field that you're in.
Jordan Katz: I think everybody feels like other areas of the organization lead when it comes to technology and technology innovations.
Jordan Katz: It's like the Marcom technology and the, you know, finance, fintech, they've got fancy names and everything, but in actuality. You'd be surprised that HR led the way in technology years and years and years ago with like the first business technology was running payroll and comms. It was on the forefront of technology using email when that first came out.
Jordan Katz: And so the myth that, you know, there's less spend, less tech, less innovation. I think is a major myth in actuality, HR technology and internal and, and comms technology oftentimes leads the way and opens doors and leverages the hottest stuff, but others get the credit.
Shawn Pfunder: What's an insult that you've received that you're proud of?
Jordan Katz: I get like you're way too, you have too much energy. Like I come in, I walk in, I maybe I, you know, I like to be center of attention. I don't know, but I bring a lot of good energy and sometimes, particularly if you're not as extroverted as I am, like, that's not going to feel great if I'm like zoned in and I'm talking and, you know, animated and whatever, not everybody loves that.
Jordan Katz: And am I aware of that mildly? Can I adapt? Probably not, but it's in good faith, right? My heart is in the right place, and I'll try to be a little bit less, you know, in your face if I notice that you're not loving it.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, you know, we haven't met in person, but now I'm getting the sense, like, maybe you even have a saunter or a walk when you're really When you're really digging it, when you walk in like a George Jefferson.
Jordan Katz: I'm not cool enough for that.
Jordan Katz: You're giving me too much credit, but I am a very fast walker. I'm a very fast walker and it drives some people absolutely insane, probably because I'm impatient, but on the flip side of that, that serves me well in a number of respects, right? Number one. I like, I think I'm very productive. Like I get stuff done.
Jordan Katz: I'm, you know, when I'm in the zone, I'm in the zone. Number two, I love doing like this stuff and being on stage and giving speeches and all that. So like people can, who don't love that can back that off on me. And, you know, number three, I like to think that my good energy and my optimistic, you know, center hopefully lifts other people up and makes them feel good.
Jordan Katz: Cause I genuinely like, Like all the people I work with, I want to be liked, and I want them to feel good too, so. Imagine if I was all energy and mean, that would be terrible. That would be Too much anger and meanness. That would be terrible. Yeah, so. At least I'm coming from the right end of things.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, do you, too much energy and mean.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Yeah, great. Here's what I'm excited to get into. So we got the rapid fire out of the way and we're just going to jump right in. Simpplr has just published, this is their fifth State of Internal Communications Report. You've been involved with this. You know, this type of stuff, you're able to look at the data, sort of analyze the data and see what some of the trends are.
Shawn Pfunder: In this report, was there anything that you saw that was surprising? Were there surprising results in this report?
Jordan Katz: Yes, there were three things, but I reserve the right to go on to a fourth. So, pace and adoption of technology, very clear evidence, people in internal communications are already leveraging artificial intelligence to be more productive, to get their work done, to get started on things.
Jordan Katz: Not only that, It's not just that they're leveraging it and using it, but they're actually allowing it to be a strong resource that frees them up to do other things. So not only did people say that, you know, headcount was not necessarily increasing on average this year, but as a matter of fact, headcount is not, you know, necessarily increasing and many organizations are seeing a decrease in, in internal comms headcount, but they're not feeling overwhelmed.
Jordan Katz: Right? They aren't getting more resources. They aren't getting more team members. But, as a result of leveraging better tools, leveraging better technology, and the ability to use AI,
Jordan Katz: there's no negative effect. So they're able to do more with less.
Shawn Pfunder: So it makes sense to me on paper to see that. But having worked in internal comms, I'm not going to say they're all emotional all the time. It's not like I'm working with theater departments. Right. But for them to say, Hey, like I'm able to do this.
Shawn Pfunder: I'm like, I'm not complaining. I'm not saying this is going to restrict my movement or my ability to do work. That's fascinating to me.
Jordan Katz: And it's the first time I've really seen it. In IC or HR. So 63 percent of teams that we surveyed are either going to have the exact same amount of people this year, or they expect to decrease the headcount.
Jordan Katz: That doesn't, normally that would play out like, oh my gosh, we're feeling burnt out and we're not going to be able to get our job done, like we don't have enough resources, but the overwhelming percent is our feeling that they have the right amount of resources to do their job well this year. And so, like, when I was looking through that data and saying like, oh man, We're not getting the resources we need.
Jordan Katz: We're not getting the people or the headcount we need. We're going to see a major increase in, uh, you know, disgruntledness or burnout or whatever, or people are going to really complain that they're not adequately staffed to handle their organizations. You know, 60 percent of teams felt like they were fine.
Jordan Katz: And so that's the first thing that I felt surprising, but also it loops around to say, Unlike other areas of the organization, IC is a first adopter or tends to be a rapid adopter of technology, which is great. And as a result, they're in better stead. Now that I'm not talking about every team, but if you're in IC, you know, you have the muscle memory to understand new tech to leverage it, to get the most out of it.
Jordan Katz: You should be striving to continue that momentum. The other thing is kind of on the negative flip side, right? 40 percent of IC teams just have no ability, no way, no focus on measuring the efficacy of their actions. They don't think about like, I'm communicating out, I'm providing resources, I'm giving information.
Jordan Katz: And I'm going to see what the downstream effects of that are. They don't even have a plan. Like the response wasn't just like, we don't know cause we can't, it was literally, we don't even attempt.
Shawn Pfunder: Is that new or is that something that like, you're just like, you're surprised. Hey, come on. Like we've got the tools we could survey.
Jordan Katz: We use marketing metrics. It's not new necessarily. I think there's a number of different contributing factors to that. Accessibility of data, culture, focus. You know, it's not easy to look at, I did X, Y, and Z, and then Z, Y, and X were affected. But it is, to me, Measuring and calibrating based on how effective your efforts are in any role.
Jordan Katz: Critically important. Critically important. Cause, not because you have to say at all times, I justify my job, right? Cause you don't. You just do the best you can and in general, the results will come. But because if you're not measuring and you're not monitoring and you're not thinking back like, Okay, I did.
Jordan Katz: I took specific action in one direction. What if the exact opposite of what you wanted to occur occurred in terms of downstream effects, right? So it's more about how do I closely calibrate and curate All of my efforts to have the best impact and leveraging data to know that.
Shawn Pfunder: I think, you know, knowing that and my experience, I think you're suggesting this as well, as a, as somebody in internal comms, communications, employee experience, whatever it is, if you're in those roles, it's a lot easier to pitch something nutty.
Shawn Pfunder: Or something that's experimental, or something that's new, or even just to have that back and forth on this email. Sounds crazy. And you need to simplify it and get it out if you have the data.
Shawn Pfunder: So you can just be like, oh, we'll just let the data do it. You know, I'll eat crow if your passive voice performs better than my active voice.
Jordan Katz: And let me be very clear what I'm referring to, because I want to make sure that the audience understands. The question was, you know, our IC function has a clearly stated charter and measurable goals. And that, from a baseline perspective, to me, is if you're running a business unit, that's the first thing, that's the thing you start with.
Jordan Katz: Maybe you start with a vision and then you move on to the charter, but it's like hand in glove, one of the most important things you do, not only from like the way you communicate to executives and people who fund your unit, but also how you communicate to your employees, how you recruit and retain people, your employment brand within your unit, which is critically important.
Jordan Katz: So I found that surprising, maybe a little, like didn't make me feel happy. The opposite of what I normally go for, right? I got one more for you, and that one is, I'll get around to good news later, I promise. Less than half. of 48 percent of IC teams leverage dynamic targeting. And what I mean by that is, instead of sending every communication the exact same way to every single person in the organization, which intuitively, you know, does not work as well.
Jordan Katz: That's like 52 percent of our respondents just send the same message out to everyone. 48 percent create specific communications for specific audiences. Some of them, they send out, everyone receives all communications, but they arrange content by audience, which is like halfway there. You know what I mean?
Jordan Katz: So maybe everybody gets the same newsletter, but if you're in sales, the sales stuff is first, if you're in manufacturing, the manufacturing stuff is first, but either of those sort of categories of dynamic targeting yields much better outcomes in terms of. I see efficacy and performance, the likelihood that they get, you know, the budget they request for the year or budget increases every year and better outcomes for the employees for sure in terms of consumption and ingestion.
Jordan Katz: And actually opening or reading the content that you're sending out. Yeah.
Shawn Pfunder: Do you see something like generative AI or AI being leveraged to the point that it's, we talk about this, like, right information, right time, right audience, that kind of stuff that goes together. And, AI can help with all of those things.
Shawn Pfunder: I'm wondering if it's, like when you mentioned that I might serve the sales content up a little bit higher. Is the voice different? Is the content different? Is that, I guess, some of what you think when you think targeting when getting out to employees?
Jordan Katz: I mean, when I, okay, a couple of things. When I see this data, I want to just start with the fundamentals.
Jordan Katz: Right. When I see that more than half of groups are not even targeting at all. I want to start with the fundamentals, which is an AI is very good at this, right? Cause it's really just data. It's not necessarily static data, but it is like, it's almost binary, uh, or it's what group are you in? Did you open the list?
Jordan Katz: Or did you open and or read the last message that went out? Did you go through the training? Like these things are all just very, they're not at all soft stuff. It's very hard, hard data. So AIs can be very good at that in terms of segmenting and sorting, right? Here's the organizational hierarchy. So we know what group everybody's in.
Jordan Katz: Here's the stats and the telemetry on whether people interacted with communications in the past and how, right? And AI can do that in its sleep, basically. The other piece of AI that really works and is helpful in internal communications is the part that you just described, which is How do we write something that is more likely to capture eyes?
Jordan Katz: So if you have the right sort of integrations, data integrations, in your comms telemetry and you're putting AI, an AI layer on top of that, it can look at how did you interact with specific comms that came through specific channels that were written in a specific way and then. Spit out the most optimal approach to getting eyes by segment, right?
Jordan Katz: Which is like the next level version of, you know, you go down the bunny hill when you're skiing. That's like, let's send out communication. Then you get to the, you know, the greens and then it's like, let's send out the communication to the right group at the right time. And then on and on until you're on the double black diamond, which is like the right channel.
Jordan Katz: So lots of people don't necessarily have email in this world. If you're a frontline worker or you're a manufacturer or whatever, maybe you have Slack, maybe you just have a handheld, maybe you have a kiosk in your warehouse, right? So, we need to think multi channel and we need to think about and leverage the tools we have.
Jordan Katz: Thank God over the past year we've gotten significantly better, more evolved tools. We need to think about channel, we need to think about content just like you described, and we need to think about ingestion and like that. How do we moneyball the approach to what we're trying to educate our employees on in a way that influences it to more likely result in a read or an open, a digestion or an absorption.
Jordan Katz: And then the ultimate outcome, the downstream est effect is behavior change that leads to some sort of organizational KPI impact, right? And as a human being. All of that could take me hours just to send out one communication. But, thank goodness that there's plenty of technology tools, not the least of which are like AI powered employee experience platforms like Simpplr, that can serve all that information up to you in a frictionless way, and then even leveraging generative AI Get you started on what you want to write.
Jordan Katz: Cause I mean, you certainly make a career and doing this amazing interviews and shows and pockets, whatever, like sometimes you probably sit down and go like, what am I even going to ask this person? Like, how do I even, I got to get smart on X, Y, and Z. What do I gonna write? You know what? The number one thing that, that I see that helps a lot of people is just overcoming inertia and object at rest stays at rest, right?
Jordan Katz: Generative AI can give you that push. Right? Get me in motion, get me started, and we can talk about ethical AI and how to do this in a governed way, maybe on a home of a show, but the fact of the matter is that the tools and resources that internal comms teams have In March of 2024, light years ahead of what we even had in January 20.
Jordan Katz: Yeah. If you move fast to adopt that, your ability to execute and drive downstream effects will improve in a commensurate fashion.
Shawn Pfunder: I love that you talk about the inertia, the You know, for writers, it's the fear of the blank page, but developers, mark, like anybody, it's like, okay, we're going to, we're going to take the next step or do this other thing and just getting, you know, Anne Lamott talks about, she calls it first drafts.
Shawn Pfunder: She's like, you got to get good at that. Just like getting it out. And now you've got something that can help you not just come up with an idea or a project plan or, Hey, we could try this.
Jordan Katz: That's super helpful. Yeah. I mean, and I want everybody to be very careful because like your first, chat GPT draft or Gemini or whatever you use is going to be crap because like it's scraping the entirety of publicly available and or licensed information sources to like spit out whatever.
Jordan Katz: But like sometimes all you need is just a little nudge to get you started or help with an outline or like it's, it's so bad. Like I'll, you know, you type it in and you get the result and like, that's terrible. The fact that you even know it's terrible gets you started. Like, why is it terrible? You know why.
Jordan Katz: Boom, I'm writing things, right? And speed has been achieved. Now, granted, the other stuff is like the data and the information about how to target and what channels to use. That stuff is, is gravy. But the getting started part is, I like, it's a good feature.
Shawn Pfunder: I don't know, you know, I may like any communication, like any emails, Slack messages, anything I send to you, I think I may feed through now and say, can you write this in the style of William Gibson?
Jordan Katz: Yeah, oh, that'd be great.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, and then send it to him. I will be riveted. Like, oh my gosh, I love this guy. The detail on the prose is unbelievable.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, that's what's fascinating about what you said is getting to the point where I might, I might treat the sales department different. I might treat engineering different.
Shawn Pfunder: I might treat the support functions different and the voice tone, how it shows up. Maybe some people like the Socratic method back and forth to get questions answered and things like that. But eventually being able to get, you know, All the way to the individual level. Like maybe you have somebody in engineering that really likes to get information, like somebody in marketing, being able to figure out like who that is, how they sell.
Jordan Katz: And let's not forget, it doesn't even have to be in text anymore.
Jordan Katz: So we can generate video, audio content, video content, whatever, or we will be very soon in a way that is as good if not better, right? Because in this fast paced world of distractedness, maybe not everybody out there is going to read 2, 000 words on, you know, the new vacation policies.
Shawn Pfunder: That's right. Those go in there and say, come on, what do I really
Jordan Katz: Well, those are probably pretty important words.
Jordan Katz: Robots.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, tell me what I need to know, sum up, which is a really common thing. A lot of people are doing that with, yeah, summarizes, chat GPT or Gemini or whatever.
Jordan Katz: Yeah, you have to be careful. I'd be remiss if I didn't say it again. You can't just go out to public chat GPT or Gemini with your company information.
Jordan Katz: One of the things we talked about, particularly in follow up with a lot of different respondents in on our, in our state of internal communications virtual summit, For our internal communications virtual summit is having a general AI policy that's highly governed and that ensures that people aren't taking internal confidential information or any company information for that matter out into the public public.
Jordan Katz: model, right? Because just like, you know, you're not going to bring out your trade secrets and post it in the Times, pre internet, like you don't want to be training this large language model on companies.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, it doesn't make sense to a certain degree as a HR team or IC team. You want to use something that's leveraging the data that's important to you, which isn't necessarily the entire internet.
Shawn Pfunder: I mean, maybe for voice or tone or getting ideas or things like that, but you're going to need a place where. The data resides so that if you're like, Hey, you know what? I want to write this and I want this to go out in Slack. I want this going to email. I want this to post to Simpplr and however people consume their information, we're meeting them wherever they're at.
Shawn Pfunder: Where am I getting it in the first place in order to do that unique to my organization? That's what I got to start with as far as data set, right?
Jordan Katz: And I will say, it's my opinion that the more we reduce reliance on email and Slack communications. The better we will be in terms of speed and access to information and frictionless elements of productivity.
Jordan Katz: And what I mean by that is we get, some of us get hundreds of emails and slacks per day. And so if I'm sending out some critical communication, then those are automatically the most crowded channels. But if you have a centralized, holistic, and very broad area of information that hopefully can access information across all different platforms within your organization, you've immediately created a place that people, A, will go to as their primary source.
Jordan Katz: Right? And B will be assuming you're using one of the, you know, modern ones that exist, right? Now, I know I'm very biased. You will actually can be served up the information you need on your front page, right? A dashboard, not just to how you work and what you do and how you access your technology and applications, but actually something that helps you be more productive as opposed to gives you another needle in the haystack or a haystack.
Jordan Katz: Stock in a haste, right? You know what I mean? So yeah, yeah. We're eliminating, you know, single point of failures, just like emailing everything. And we're increasing our employees ability to have that positive employee experience, right? Which incorporates technology experience. As it never has before. Yeah.
Shawn Pfunder: I so pressing, because you probably know this and I won't put you on the spot with the data and the report, but I believe it, it covers this as well, is how many people are using a space like that instead of just Slack or just email or, because it, like all companies, it, it got super. Super hot in the early 2000s.
Shawn Pfunder: We're like, guess what? We're going to create the intern internally. Uh, so you can go there to get that. But it seems like it's always been a little bit of this uphill battle of go there or RTFM or like, like. It hasn't been, we haven't been able to meet them, where they're going. I'm sure this is a conversation at Simpplr, you're part of coming with the data and coming with the information.
Shawn Pfunder: How do we get people sort of like headed that direction? Any thoughts? Any ideas? So that it's not, it's no longer a, geez, don't give me someplace else to go to find this stuff.
Jordan Katz: Well, so that's the thing. The First of all, we did study it, just like you said, only 48 percent of the respondents indicated that they have a company intranet.
Jordan Katz: Oh, wow. My theory on that, and we're running a supplemental survey to dig more deeply into a number of different areas. So we constantly have a feed on information and the, and stay ahead of trends in, in, in terminal communications. Yeah. My theory on that is that a lot of companies just have content management systems.
Jordan Katz: So like a giant warehouse. Or let's call it a junk drawer, where you just toss all your stuff. Right? That's right. Yeah. Maybe that's too much of a sick burn, but I'm saying it, right? It's a place Hello, Wiki. Exactly. Exactly. It's where everything lives. Right. Is it, well, organized? Is it accessible? Is it integrated with other Sources of information, absolutely not.
Jordan Katz: They would have answered differently if they felt that way. Right. And so that does not cut and think of all the jobs you've worked at where like, you've got like just one giant play. I go to X, Y, I don't want to name names, but I go to X, Y, and Z. And then I search for, you know, presentation on digital experience of Bob, whatever the graphic user interface.
Jordan Katz: And you get like 72 pages worth of responses. You're like. That's not at all helpful. And it definitely was like, this one's from 1996 and that's the top. So the first thing we need to do is to make it good. And maybe make it great so that not only are you, do you have one place to go as opposed to another place to go, you have a place that you kind of want to go and that does serve up actual value, right?
Jordan Katz: Because if there's that, people don't go to Starbucks because they want to pay 8 for coffee. They go to Starbucks because they pay 8 for coffee and they like it. You know what I mean? Like there's nothing, there are coffee shops that have better atmospheres than Starbucks. But Starbucks makes it super, they have their own app, they give you rewards, they have all kinds of food things they got, they've really curated the experience in a way that people want, they're in the right places, right, they want to go, you can do the same with your, let's call it employee digital workspace or employee hub, right, in the sense that All day, every day, you need access to information, right, or you need access to resources, or you need to go on your laptop and get whatever app you need to work on.
Jordan Katz: And we know that, you know, from other research that I've done at previous organizations, like 38 percent of people are feeling serious burnout, um, pains or symptoms, right? And the number one correlate to that is inefficient systems and processes. Right? You can't get done what you want to get done. You can't access the stuff you need to access, can't access the people, right?
Jordan Katz: But if you create essentially like a time machine, not a go back in time machine, but a, how do I save myself time machine? Maybe it's a speed up the time machine. Then you literally can create value for these people. One place where you access all your apps, one place where it serves up the information you need.
Jordan Katz: One place where you have a chat bot that can help you get done what you need to get done, one place that has. You know, answers generated through AI that aren't just serving you up 72 pages of results, but says, Hey, it looks like you might be looking for the policy on, you know, wearing flip flops to the office.
Jordan Katz: We're in Silicon Valley, basically. You're cool. You can wear flip flops, right? It's a rapid growth tech. Or You know, we're a law firm, like, why would you even ask that question? You're so dumb, right? Maybe not that aggressive, but in any case.
Shawn Pfunder: I would like that if that's what the response was, custom for me.
Jordan Katz: Yeah, I've never worked as a lawyer, but in my mind, everybody's constantly yelling at you. In any case, we're creating not a go, not a time machine, like, you know, go back in time machine, but a save you time, reduce friction, right? Where everything is served up at your fingertips in a way that not only helps you get your job done, helps you be more productive, reduces cycle time on search.
Jordan Katz: And access to information. And by the way, can help you eliminate some of the administrative tasks or recognize your peers or any of the things that you want to do on a day to day basis that are not the like high value stuff that drives crazy impact. at your job, but instead helps lift you up so you can do the best work that you can possibly do in the most efficient manner.
Jordan Katz: And that's how you create the Starbucks of organizational platforms.
Shawn Pfunder: So shifting, shifting gears just a tiny bit, but it's certainly related with these teams. The results show kind of what makes internal comms teams highly effective. Yes. Like, what do we learn about teams that are doing well? What are they doing to do things well?
Jordan Katz: So. Okay, a couple of different things. First of all, we did what's called a max diff analysis. The max diff analysis basically presents different scenarios and different attributes and characteristics to the survey respondents and helps them generate the value and strength and scale of each of the different attributes or characteristics.
Jordan Katz: It basically requires that the respondents evaluate possible pairs of items And choose the pair that reflects the maximum level or difference in importance. So basically, it's a way to understand people's preferences. But also the strength and importance of the things that we're showing. And we found a couple of things, and these are more about like the characteristics of an individual internal communication, right?
Jordan Katz: If we're sending out a piece that has information, the top three elements that lead to high effectiveness of that communication as reported by respondents, like, is it authentic? Is it credible? Right? Do people believe it to be the truth? And is it engaging? Right? Did I fall asleep while reading it? It's probably not the best thing.
Jordan Katz: And then like a couple of, you know, also highly ranked elements. Is it timely? And is it actionable? So we want to know, if someone comes to me and says, how do I write a great communication or how do I Generate a great piece, you know, whatever multimedia piece, right? First, we want it to come from a place like a human centered place, right?
Jordan Katz: Is it authentic? Does it sound like it's complete BS? People are not going to like it. They're going to talk about it outside. You know, you're going to get the negative. And luckily, right? Like the. That's like a pretty fundamental element. And most I see groups, and we asked this as well, like not only what's the importance, but how well did you perform?
Jordan Katz: Most groups indicated that they perform pretty well on authenticity. Now, we also asked respondents whether they felt like their team overall was like highly effective or not so effective. Like how good is the impact you generate as a result of your internal communications? Like how well would you rate your performance?
Jordan Katz: So in the aggregate, like 80 percent of people felt like they're, they were very authentic, but yeah, that's a hundred percent, well, not a hundred percent, but largely driven by the highly effective teams. Okay. Okay. The teams that feel like they did not have great impact in their, the performance of their IC team was not phenomenal over the last year.
Jordan Katz: Only 40 percent of them felt like their communications were authentic. Only 35 percent of them felt they were credible. 30 percent said timely 15 percent actionable. So like. When we get down to the part where I said earlier, like, I really just want to work on fundamentals for many of the IC teams, getting things out on time strikes me as a baseline, right?
Jordan Katz: Like, we're going to play basketball, I need you to learn to dribble. And doing things in a credible way, like, I feel like that's like shooting where these are fundamental, huge, now, highly effective teams were like, felt like they were very incredibly credible. 89 percent felt like they were very credible.
Jordan Katz: 84 percent engaging, you know, 83 percent timely. And so like, we've got best practices out there that will help us execute on what we need to execute on. But when you're thinking about, you're sitting down and you're going to get started on crafting a critical communication to go out to critical populations, authentic, credible, engaging, and timely, like I'm giving you four now, are there.
Jordan Katz: The things that you should center yourself around in order to get that 75 to 100 percent open and consumption rate and feel like the effects, your downstream effects you're having of your efforts are tangible.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, it feels, I could be really wrong on this, I'm wrong. 62. 7 percent of the time. But it builds chicken and egg a little bit.
Shawn Pfunder: Like, you've got the high performing teams, who are like, yeah, we're really good at this. And then the people that were really bad at this were not a high performing team. Are there any other factors that we've learned that contribute to a team becoming high performing? Like, beyond, like, What I've always called the empathy, advocacy, and truth, which is that have credibility, be honest, you know, build trust, be engaging, things like that.
Shawn Pfunder: Is there any other things that we sort of learned that help make an IC team high performing beyond, hey, we're really good at this stuff? Or is it more of just a talent?
Jordan Katz: We hired the right people. No. First of all, hiring the right people is a critical element for everything. But there are a few. You say no.
Jordan Katz: I don't want to disagree with, with like, established, definite facts. But there are a few things that absolutely we think are great from the data, but also from our experts and general expertise, which is Like the creating the charter and measurable goals, right? You have to plan for success. You really need to figure out like, what are you hoping to achieve?
Jordan Katz: And how are you going to measure that? So you can set your North star to give yourself a goal to reach. Yeah. But the next piece of that. is like, how do you understand what your audience truly needs? And how do you curate what you're doing in order to reach that level that your audience indicates is important?
Jordan Katz: And that in itself, those two things right there, will set you off on the right path. The other thing to do is to make sure you're publishing your content or deploying your communications for a purpose. Anecdotally, we know that credibility And timeliness and authenticity are decreased or decelerated. If the pace of everything, it's just nonstop, like a fire hose of information.
Jordan Katz: Yeah. Right. That's going to result in non optimal outcomes, no matter what, just because there's no way for your people to keep up and still do their job. Remember their job is not to ingest. information. It's to do their job and your job is right to support that, right? No matter what I think in my own, you know, inner monologue, like not everybody's job is to figure out what I'm doing and then celebrate, right?
Jordan Katz: So, so being measured. And being intentional, right, is a strength rather than a weakness in terms of certainly the authenticity and credibility, and that's intuitive, but the timeliness as well, right, because you'll be much more on time if you're publishing less. But higher quality content. And then finally, we absolutely saw a much higher likelihood of high effectiveness if you are targeting people to with the right information at the right time and using dynamic channeling, meaning don't send people Slack messages who don't use Slack or email us the messages who only have access to a device or a kiosk at certain times during the day, meet them where you are and be cognizant of the effect that has.
Jordan Katz: As well as like, these are, you're reaching out to your co workers, you want things to be easy, and feel good, and feel personalized for them, be cognizant of that as well. That makes sense.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, you know, a couple more things, one of them I know traditionally, I see teams, if they have the buy in at the leadership level, so executive level, everything that they're working on, they at least seem to believe that their job's a lot easier and they'll be more effective.
Shawn Pfunder: Would you suggest these types of things, like having a clear mission, like targeting, you have to measure to make sure that you're getting those things right, is that a path to getting buy in with executives and other people that would then make your job a little bit easier?
Jordan Katz: Yes, for sure. So there's a couple of things around that, which is number one, we actually researched where teams sat in the organization.
Jordan Katz: Right. Like, did you, does IC report up to, do they have their own group or do they roll up to human resources or it, or, you know, do you not know? Right. And we definitely saw, I'm not joking, 5 percent of teams don't know where, who they roll up to, right. And maybe they just didn't like the question and didn't answer.
Jordan Katz: But the interesting thing was if you reported up to HR or IC, basically not IT, you are much more likely to get a budget increase last year, right? Or for this year. And so, and you're mildly more likely to rate yourself as highly effective. So there's definitely an effect on your resources and the ability to do your job well if you are rolled up to a team that truly understands and values internal communications.
Jordan Katz: I'm talking generalities like There are lots of IT teams that are incredibly progressive and very strategic. And the same thing goes with, like, your ability to get more budget, right? If you were in HR or rolled up to your own IC team, much more likely to get a budget increase. Now, in itself, suggests potentially, you know, anecdotally again, that the leaders of those teams, the executive leaders of those teams value the work you're doing and are more likely to be supportive.
Jordan Katz: Of the work you're doing and more likely to be engaged. And we absolutely saw, you know, effects around leadership engagement in terms of effectiveness and how likely employees are to consume the information. If you had good and strong and frequent leadership engagement. Now it's not always the case. In fact, leadership engagement was highly variable throughout this study, right?
Jordan Katz: But there's definite. Value and impact of A, proving and continuing to communicate your value and impact on the organization to senior and executive leaders. And then B, in turn, asking them and getting them to be highly engaged and to amplify the messages that you're trying to distribute and to help with the targeting and the highlighting of critical elements of knowledge and learning that you're, you're hoping to.
Shawn Pfunder: Super helpful. I mean, this is just rich with data. I've gone through the report and having done this, oh my goodness, 25 years now, not a young whippersnapper doing this type of work. It's, well, it's just great to see some of it confirms and some of it is, oh, that is interesting.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, that is surprising that you don't know where you report up to. Right. In an organization. Let's crystal ball this a little bit. From your perspective, what you've been seeing, and I know that you're super data driven. So me saying like, all right, let's get woo woo and you predict the future. But what do you think?
Shawn Pfunder: Because you've seen, you've seen the trends over years, you've been doing this for a little while. What would you predict where we're going to start to see in 2025 in internal comms?
Jordan Katz: Yes. Well, the number one thing that I think we're seeing across the board is better integrations of different data sources and different platforms, right?
Jordan Katz: No longer having to, as an internal comms person doesn't just, their job isn't just writing copy, right? There's a lot that goes into it and their ability to frictionlessly go from platform to platform or app to app or program to program. It's gotten way better. The channels that we are able to use to reach people are going to be so much more robust.
Jordan Katz: I mean, how far in the future do we want to go? There's augmented reality considerations that can help. And in fact, lots of manufacturing and health care organizations and units are already using augmented reality, which could be a great, since they're using it to help them perform their tasks, a much better channel than email or Slack or even, you know, Native video in a, on a website or whatever.
Jordan Katz: But I think that in a little bit more near term, I think video and multimedia. is going to have an upsurge, hosting that in your, on your intranet or your employee experience platform and serving it up to a person dynamically as opposed to trying to ping them in parallel to whatever they're doing, right?
Jordan Katz: Please go look at my video. Please go look at my video. I get an email, please watch this video to hear the new, whatever new behavior you're supposed to do, like, you're automatically, by having Someone take another action. You're automatically decreasing the response rate or the ingestion rate. So the frictionless approach to serving up information to people in a centralized location where they all go, when they open up their computer, they put on their AR goggles or they are checking their handheld or they're in a retail space and they log into their POS system or they're in healthcare and go to the, you know, the nurse's station, right?
Jordan Katz: All those areas. are great places to deploy the critical information they need, but you have to do it in a way that they're more likely to ingest and you have to make their lives easier around that. To obtain information that is not just by like a push notification, right? And so the ecosystem of intelligence and information around them, around people and employees, no matter what their work dynamic is, is going to be higher speed, easier to access.
Jordan Katz: And I think much more robust.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, yeah. Well, here's to hoping, you know, I mean, I know you bring up the nurse's station kind of idea, but I'm sitting at my desk at home right now staring at you, but I go to sit down to work and up on the wall in one corner, I've got my glasses on or whatever, and there's the latest news on my wall.
Shawn Pfunder: Because I've set up the space and this is where I work and I can talk to people that way and see that information. That's like just having more of those places where you can get that information and serve it up. That's remarkable. That's definitely William Gibson-esque.
Jordan Katz: Very much so. Very much so. It's the, but it's science fiction, but it's like, Sort of halfway.
Jordan Katz: It's almost science fact. We're almost there. We're getting close.
Shawn Pfunder: Where can people go to learn, to see the results, to see the report? Places like that.
Jordan Katz: Yes. Go to simpplr.com. S I M P P L R dot com and then go to the Resources tab and you'll find all different information, all types of information about. All the research we're doing, which is all highly valuable.
Jordan Katz: And then absolutely check out The State of Internal Comms, as well as like some of the analysts. information that's out there from Gartner and Forrester, because it is eye opening what's going on, what's out there, and what is headed our way in terms of near and far future.
Shawn Pfunder: Very cool. Well, Jordan, thanks so much for joining, for chatting with me, for putting up with my Push back on the, uh, different places to go.
Jordan Katz: This has been a pleasure. Thank you. Feel free to write in the chat, all the real insults that you're thinking about me that may or may not be so positive. That wasn't the question that was asked, but I've got a thick skin. So bring in the noise.
Shawn Pfunder: Right on. Thanks.
Jordan Katz: Thank you.