Welcome back to our internal communications blog series! I recently had the chance to speak with my colleague, Mark Diller, who has a wealth of experience in internal communications. Before joining exaqueo, he worked for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he owned the content strategy for the company intranet, and T-Mobile, where he implemented new ways to engage employees using social media.
As a senior analyst at exaqueo, he conducts and analyzes workforce research to help our clients build, strengthen, and sustain their employer brands. His experience offers a well-rounded perspective, not just on internal communications strategies, but the value workforce research can have on stronger employee engagement. I’m excited to share the highlights from our conversation and hope you’ll walk away with actionable recommendations you can start applying right away.
Q: How would you describe the intersection between employer brand and internal communications?
When we talk with our talent attraction partners, we remind them that showcasing the employer brand doesn’t stop with candidates and the hire. It continues with employees—it’s also about retention. Internal communications play a huge role in retention because they own the greater part of communicating with the employee base. Employer brand helps Talent Acquisition bring candidates in, and as those candidates transition to employees, Internal Communications keeps them engaged. Also, one of the most effective employer brand content types is employee testimony, and Internal Communications is best positioned to connect with employees and capture their sentiments. They can bring the employer brand to life, leveraging employee sentiment to create authentic content.
Q: How can organizations ensure consistency between the employer brand strategy and their internal communications strategy?
The first step has to be executive alignment from the top down because these teams need to work in lockstep. I’ve seen things break down when you have two teams and their leaders are not fully aligned—they need to agree that their teams are not rivals, everyone prospers when employer brand and internal communications work together. Beyond that, regular, cross-functional meetings are essential to keep everyone on the same page. If you look at the messaging pillars for the two functions, they won’t be identical, but there should be alignment between them. You should be able to see where the two teams are consistent in their messaging, and where the messaging for one picks up from where the other’s left off.
Q: Let’s talk about the work you do within the Insights practice at exaqueo. In what ways can our research benefit an organization looking to elevate its internal communications strategy?
In my experience, many internal communications teams run regular employee surveys but don’t always have a plan in place for how to act on the data. Additionally, their team members may not have much expertise in working with qualitative and quantitative data. At exaqueo, we’re equipped to tailor employee insights to fit a larger narrative, leveraging our research to identify baseline sentiment and potential problem topics to address. Internal communications teams can benefit from our analytical rigor to make data meaningful and actionable.
Here’s just one example of how our research can benefit an internal communications team—we conduct workforce research that helps our clients identify the core truths of the employment experience, or what I like to call, the big three:
- Attractors–the positive aspects of the employment experience, based on what candidates want and what employees value
- Realities–the aspects of the employment experience that are not necessarily positive or negative, they’re simply part of what it means to work there and within that industry
- Detractors–the aspects of the employment experience that are getting in the way, enough to make an employee consider leaving or dissuade candidates from applying or accepting an offer
From an employer brand perspective, these insights help a talent acquisition team identify what to market, the things they can authentically convey, and what they should work with company leadership and Human Resources to address. However, these insights can also be leveraged by an internal communications team.
The typical internal communications team has a “big three” of their own—to inform, engage, and inspire. The core truths (Attractors, Realities, and Detractors) identified in our research translate well into this framework, as internal communications really should be addressing the Realities and Detractors that employees are inevitably discussing amongst themselves. And then the Attractors are those great things about working for a company that you’d want to celebrate.
Q: What trends do you see shaping the future of internal communications? What should organizations do to prepare for these trends?
Social media and short-form videos are only going to become more dominant. Long-form content can have a place, but it needs to be high-value if you’re going to ask employees to consume it when they have so many other things demanding their time. One useful exercise for internal communications teams is to imagine a hypothetical scenario in which Slack is their only channel—no email, no face-to-face meetings, no flyers on the walls, nothing but Slack channels. What changes would that force? How would they adapt their messaging—the form, the content, and the cadence to those constraints? The conclusions you’d reach in this exercise will help point the way forward.
Another consistent theme we see in our research is employees’ desire to hear from executives more often. All too often, leadership communications go through multiple rewrites before they go out, and employees can tell when you’re giving them spin instead of being authentic. Executives should feel empowered to speak directly to employees without so many rewrites. While there’s a sense of safety in having produced, polished content, you’re inadvertently putting out content that won’t connect with your audience.
A really easy, fun way for an executive to better connect with their employee base would be to have a dedicated channel that they’re posting content to, regularly. This doesn’t have to be formalized, it can be casual and ad-hoc. Maybe while the executive is sitting down to drink their morning coffee, they have a thought that they’d like to share with people. They can have their own channel and post to it now and then. As long as your executives have training on the do’s and don’ts from a brand perspective, they should be able to confidently connect with employees directly. Over time, this builds trust in leadership, which is critical to a strong employer brand relationship.
Q: Can you share a memorable success story where internal communications made a meaningful impact on an organization’s employer brand?
During my time at T-Mobile, I was tasked with identifying ways we could use social media to start engaging with employees. I started by using social listening tools to see what employees were saying about T-Mobile online.
There was a lot of content out there that employees had been posting organically, which led to the idea of starting a “Brand Hero” series. This consisted of us using our internal channels to spotlight employees who were actively sharing their love of the brand and their experience working at T-Mobile (e.g. selfies in the store, talking about connecting with customers, and how much they loved their job).
This turned out to be a great grassroots tactic to reinforce the employer brand and celebrate employees who were helping us by being brand advocates. The best part was that this was all grounded in organic content that employees posted of their own volition. It encouraged more employees to share their stories on channels where passive and active candidates would come across them.
Q: What advice would you give to organizations looking to strengthen the partnership between internal communications and employer brand teams?
Developing a common, cross-team strategy is crucial, and it can’t just be based on what seems like a good idea—you need to gather the data that show your efforts bring value to the brand. Presenting analytical proof helps executives lend you their support. They care about employee sentiment and retention, and you can help them see how internal communications and employer brand are rowing in the same direction. This helps ensure that employees are happy and excited about the company’s direction.
We welcome you to continue following our internal communications blog series, where you’ll learn more from the exaqueo team, and even some of our clients. ICYMI: Be sure to check out the first blog in our internal communications series—Internal Communications: Your Essential Employer Brand Partner.
Are you interested in weaving your employer brand into internal communications strategy, but not sure where to start?We can help! Fill out our Contact Us form or reach out to me directly on LinkedIn.
