Congratulations, you’ve made it through the initial crush of the COVID-19 crisis. It’s been a sprint, right? Unfortunately, we aren’t sure just how long we’ll be running, so it’s time to shift into a pace that you can sustain for a while.
Here are three strategies you can use to keep up with the demand for communications without ending up curled up in a corner.
#1 Go beyond the intranet and email
Just about everyone has created a dedicated page or site as the single-source-of-truth for all-things COVID-19 within their company. And this is a great start.
But today’s intranets and digital workplaces, no matter how much they’ve evolved over the two decades since they were first created, are no longer able to serve as the be-all and end-all they once were.
Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that no matter how much effort companies have spent redesigning their intranets, and promoting them as key information resources, employees typically don’t start their day by checking out the news headlines on their intranet home page.
Download the guide to 2021 Comms Strategies
What employees are doing these days, besides - and in many cases, instead of - checking email, is going to Microsoft Teams and their related SharePoint teamsites - where people spend the bulk of their time getting work done.
The simple truth about getting your message heard and seen: put it where employees spend their time most: Teams, Teamsites and mobile alerts.
Here’s what that can look like, and how to make that happen:
#2 Use Tools that Automate Your Publishing, Curation and Content Flow
Employees need to trust that the content they’re seeing is the latest, and most accurate. And in a situation like we have now - where information is constantly changing, that content needs to be updated constantly, consistently, and in a way that is accessible by many, from many places.
The first step is to realize that the old ways of managing content can no longer withstand the demands of volume, frequency and fragmentation. The only way to succeed is with automation. Automated publishing. Automated curation (to battle fragmentation). And automated search optimization.
Consumer marketers faced these dilemmas a while ago, and embraced innovative tools that manage content in automated ways. Some of these vendors include Salesforce, Hubspot and Marketo.
But these consumer-facing content tools did not trickle down for use by employee communicators, for communication to employee groups, and on secure channels used by employees. The result: most companies are still managing content the same way, and pushing down the same channels (intranet, email) for the past 10+ years.
How do you make sure you’re not stuck in 2005-2010? How can you manage more content, faster, and with less manual intervention for the New Normal?
Use one of the new breed of solutions built specifically for this purpose.
While information might be coming from HR, internal comms, company leadership and even from employees themselves, using tools that can automate the way information is categorized, how it’s pushed to different channels, and the analytics to track effectiveness.
Here’s an example of what this can look like:
#3: Take Advantage of One-Click Broadcasting
Getting critical messages distributed to employees has been a manual-intensive process that included sending an email, posting content to an intranet page, publishing a text message, and making sure they all hit at the same time.
Now there’s a much faster, easier and far less labor intensive way to manage this. The latest Office 365-based solutions allow you to push out updates whenever you have a new message in a one-click process.
For example, let’s say that there’s a new video clip from the CEO or CHRO talking about a plan for work-from-home employees to start to return to their offices. Using new solutions (like Velaku) means that as soon as you drop content onto the SharePoint page, it will automatically send an email “there’s a new video on the COVID-19 page” in Outlook, which is great. But, if you want, it will also automatically post a notification to the Teams feed, Yammer feed, update the resources page, push out a text message and even put a notification directly into your PC or Mac.
Imagine this happens once a day, every day for the foreseeable future. Now your employees are more likely to see this new info without having to check their intranet, or even stop what they’re doing and switch software apps. They’ll simply see the information directly from within the Office 365 app they’re working. Seamlessly, easily, and consistently.
Make Your Job Easier
By following these suggestions, you’ll be able to make substantial changes to your communications, vastly improve effectiveness for employees, and get some critical time back in your day. How you use that time (perfecting your pour-over coffee technique, playing with your kids) is up to you.
Velaku dramatically improves the employee experience by engaging employees with content that appears right in the flow of their work. The results are personalized, contextualized and seamless for the employee. Visit www.velaku.com or contact info@velaku.com to schedule a demo today.
