Despite its promises of faster, smoother workflows, digital transformation often breeds multitudinous platforms, logins, and complex navigation menus that squander your people’s productivity and satisfaction instead of enhancing their experience.

In practice, this “digital friction,” which Gartner defines as the “unnecessary effort an employee has to exert to use data or technology for work,” might look like:

• Numerous logins for systems that don’t support single sign-on (SSO)
• Excessive digital step counts, like a dozen clicks to approve an expense report or complete another simple ask
• Costly context switching as your people are forced to muscle through multiple platforms to perform a single task or look up basic information

All that overextension can lead to burnout – and grind work to a screeching halt: As Gartner states, the additional effort required to navigate some technologies “silently drains employee productivity”.

This fallout stands to intensify as hybrid work demands new digital tools to bridge an increasingly distributed workforce. Yet relying on multiple tools that a poorly integrated – or lack integrations can make things worse.

Poor experiences with patchy tech can also stamp out employees’ willingness and ability to adapt to new tech down the road. It’s a big loss because cultivating this “digital dexterity” is vital to a company’s agility, alignment, and resilience in the face of disruption.

To remove friction and smooth the path to dexterity, progressive organizations are turning to “guided attention” principles and tech. In this emerging approach, an intelligent digital assistant or other enabler acts as trailblazer, alighting the swiftest, most direct route through the maze of platforms and tools that make up a company’s digital ecosystem.

Guided attention technology connects with key business systems, streamlining the digital experience by focusing solely on the content and tasks that are relevant for the user.

This can mean, for example, sending the right nudge from the right platform at the right time to help an employee execute a time-sensitive project objective, or automatically routing them through the set of tools involved in completing their benefits paperwork or timesheet.

You don’t need a fancy new chatbot or AI team member to realize these wins. In fact, Forbes Technology Council recommends that leaders “look at your existing technologies and find ways to improve them to enable greater digital dexterity” before considering any investment in eliminating or changing tools.

A modern intranet, with its ties to numerous essential business platforms, is a great place to home in. As part of an integrated and centralized digital workplace, it provides a single, searchable source of truth, reducing heartburn and boosting spirits.

Ahead, find reasons why and how to use your intranet to guide attention, reduce friction, and buoy employee and business outcomes.

Pave the way to digital dexterity through guided attention

“The majority of enterprises that have implemented a digital workplace framework have not improved the employee experience or advanced digital dexterity,” Forbes Technology Council writes in an analysis of DEX trends.

Unfettered digital friction is likely to blame.

Digital friction zaps productivity

Large companies use an average of 211 software applications in their tech stacks (Okta, 2023), leaving the typical employee increasingly likely to lose valuable time sifting and shifting through different digital tools and platforms.

This digital friction can manifest in the following ways:

• Application overload: Thanks to proliferating workplace apps, employees typically context switch more than 1,200 times every day.
• Information overload: Today’s workers are expected to wade through endless streams of content, conversations, interactions, and tasks – even as they bump up against data silos that make it difficult to find the right information at the right time. It all puts a damper on productivity, decision-making, and wellbeing.    
• Digital noise pollution: Employees face an exhausting barrage of ‘noise’ from these apps and tools, with pings, alerts, signals, emails, @mentions, and tasks all fiercely competing for attention.

Common culprits of this friction are lack of IT oversight to facilitate connectivity between adopted platforms, low visibility into or low-quality data on tool performance, inextricable workflows that make it tough to pinpoint individual points of friction, and varying worker views on where and how much friction exists in the first place.

It all adds up to frustration and overwhelm which can both be major factors in increasing employee turnover. Given these potential consequences, creating efficiencies and guiding focus can prevent serious damage not only to your people’s productivity, but also to their wellbeing and willingness to stick around. 

Your intranet can reorient and reenergize your workforce

To create a streamlined experience, guided attention technology taps into channels that your employees frequent, such as those on your intranet, collaboration platforms, or mobile and desktop apps. In turn, this enhances employee productivity, improves decision-making, and creates a stronger sense of alignment with the organization, resulting in greater job satisfaction and improved business outcomes.

You can get these results without shelling out serious cash on a newfangled chatbot or digital assistant. As a first step, evaluate existing tech for opportunities to “enable greater digital dexterity,” Forbes Technology Council advises. If some aren’t passing muster, only then should you “consider eliminating them or changing to new technologies.”

A modern intranet with the right set of features can facilitate guided attention while also performing more traditional functionalities, such as internal communications, knowledge management, and enterprise social networking. Interact customers often refer to their platform as a “one-stop shop” for enhancing the employee experience through the simplicity that it brings to their digital journeys.

Although your intranet doesn’t include every application, it serves as a single home for many native and integrated tools. Given this far reach, a platform outfitted with guided attention features can seamlessly integrate workflows, eliminate information silos, and provide employees with quick, unified access to critical information, plus build your case for additional attention-focused tech investments down the road.

Ahead, gain insight into how you can find a modern intranet or optimize your existing platform with guided attention capabilities.

Set your strategy

As always, the first step is to distill business objectives and employee needs into a clear set of goals you aim to achieve by applying a guided attention lens to your intranet. Once you’ve identified your north star, use the following strategies to reach it. 

Take stock

Make informed decisions by understanding the current technological landscape within your organization. Take inventory of your existing infrastructure, tools, and content to identify strengths and weaknesses.

“Organizations should conduct thorough audits of their digital tools to assess their impact on employee productivity and satisfaction,” one tech exec told journalist David Barry in an article for Reworked. “This involves not just cataloging the tools but also understanding how they are used in daily workflows and where redundancies or gaps exist.”

It may help to lay everything out on a digital workplace map like this:

Prioritize people

Since your people’s perceptions of digital friction will likely vary, ensure you’re getting representative viewpoints to shape your workplace map and enhancement efforts.

To gain a full picture of all your people’s intranet experiences – including those of frontline members who may be on the go far more often than they’re at a desk – gather data from a variety of sources, such as interviews, focus groups, surveys, and social listening efforts.

As you implement guided attention approaches, keep the lines of communication open through pilot programs, tech hackathons, digital forums and suggestion boxes, and other engaging avenues that demonstrate the continued role your people play in shaping their digital experience. “This not only ensures the tools are more closely aligned with user needs but also fosters a sense of ownership among employees over their digital environment,” Barry writes.

Use personas

Employee personas can help translate your people’s perspectives into actionable pathways for applying guided attention principles.

“Use personas to understand where employees experience a digital dexterity gap, which widens when the rate at which the organization deploys technology exceeds the employee’s ability to use it,” Gartner explains.

Long a hallmark of marketing and sales strategy, personas are fictionalized snapshots of the people you’re keen to sell to or, in this case, guide. They include vital information on each avatar’s experiences, motivations, and other variables that might indicate the tech roads they travel. Good ones can help you generate guided attention strategies that hit the right notes for each archetype.

While the details and format can vary, your end product should typically include the following:

• Name
• Photo
• Role / title
• Location
• Short bio and description of personality

Also consider digging deeper into certain dimensions, such as:

• Gender, age, and other demographics
• Typical schedule, workload, tasks, and processes
• Goals and motivators (and frustrations and demotivators)
• Network and community
• Level of organizational awareness

Once you’ve developed your personas, “hunt for digital employee friction by breaking down the employee journey into specific moments, pain points and challenges,” Gartner advises. Create a journey map for each persona in each relevant situation.

Build skills

Beyond sourcing their input, empower your people with the capabilities, bandwidth, and runway they need to flex their digital muscle.

Determine the roles specific teams should play in the adoption process. As an example, organizations that enable business technologists are 2.6 times more likely to accelerate digital business outcomes, Gartner notes. As for marketing and customer success colleagues, there may be an opportunity to consolidate email and other communication platforms.

Regardless of their specific role in the effort, all employees should be supported in building new capabilities that encourage dexterity. Because digital tools evolve rapidly, “continuous learning should be embedded into the organizational culture,” an expert notes in the Reworked article. So rather than “generic training programs, offer targeted upskilling opportunities that are directly relevant to the tools and technologies employees use.” 

Optimize the right intranet features

Once you’ve set your strategy, it’s time to review your current or prospective intranet for features that can be optimized to reduce noise and guide attention to the right information at the right time, so your people can enjoy bright, productive work futures.

Easy access

By enabling users to log in once through SSO, you can create a secure access point and eliminate the need to juggle myriad passwords. Biometric authentication options, such as Touch and FaceID, can further improve speed, security, and ease of use. Finally, optimizing your hub for mobile ensures that employees can stay connected, collaborate, and access essential information anytime, anywhere.

Intuitive integrations

By integrating many of your enterprise applications with your intranet, you can significantly enhance productivity by curating access – and guiding attention – to a single space. As an example, an organization that uses Microsoft 365 infrastructure can surface Outlook emails or Power BI analytics all within their connected intranet.

Aside from M365, modern intranets like Interact can connect numerous such business platforms, including Slack, Zendesk, ServiceNow, Salesforce, Workday, SAP Concur, Google Workspace, and Dropbox.

Seamless search

“Intranets often get a bad reputation for findability and navigation issues,” says Anna Kaley in an article for UX consulting firm Nielsen Norman Group.

Intelligent enterprise search can help transform your intranet into a one-stop shop where users instantly find content and tools required for everyday tasks from across the platform and connected document management systems.

Key features and capabilities to look for in an intranet’s centralized search tool include:

• A Google-esque experience in which search results include “likely answers” to posed questions, along with the standard list of links for further reading
• Federated search capabilities spanning natively created intranet content and third-party data repositories (e.g., SharePoint Online) that allow users to source the best information across myriad systems that power your organization
• Use of natural language processing and machine learning to enhance search result relevance for every user
• An advanced people search that connects colleagues by skills, interests, department, and custom criteria
• A mobile app that replicates the same search engine experience and results

Other modern intranet features that can promote seamless information dissemination, among other inclusion wins, include:

• Multilanguage translation of text communications for global organizations operating in diverse linguistic workplaces
• Alt-text generation for images and automatic captioning of video content so colleagues with vision or hearing impairments can access and understand content
• Text-to-audio conversion for a podcast-like way to digest company news

Peerless personalization

Personalization in the digital workplace boosts productivity by customizing tools and experiences according to individual needs and circumstances. Organizations can deliver on it through personas, permissions, and built-in intelligence, ensuring relevant content is delivered to each employee based on factors including role, location, and preference.

Profiles and past interactions, for example, can help pinpoint and push relevant news, announcements, and resources to everyone, as well as ensure content being created and shared by active employees is reaching audiences interested in the subject matter.

An AI-driven recommendation engine, meanwhile, can facilitate the automatic discovery of new content. Subscribing to content guarantees that crucial updates to essential information are never overlooked, and customizable alert settings ensure the right content is always prioritized.

Geofencing can further refine location-specific content. By setting up a virtual perimeter around specific locations, each time an employee logs on to the intranet within that space, they only see content intended for them. This is extremely effective in cases where individuals move frequently and require different content and documentation across locations (e.g., salespeople or senior leaders on location visits). 

Human-driven design

According to Forbes Technology Council, “employee-centric policies around tech are more likely to provide a positive work experience.”

In this way, a human-centered user experience is pivotal for reducing friction and focusing attention. This principle can be brought to life through a clean design that strategically organizes building blocks on each page and menu. This user-centric approach, exemplified by a task-driven design, not only facilitates easy access to essential workflows but also avoids overwhelming users with convoluted navigation menus.

Helping employees find what they need easily can be as simple as grouping content within menus or giving popular pages or content areas a prominent position. It’s also worth replacing quick links with HTML widgets. In essence, this means using a clickable image or icon instead of a standard text link, with a text overlay on the image, to show users exactly what the image is pointing to. This will help users find the content, resources, or applications they need quickly and easily.

Online forms streamline business processes (such as submitting expenses), which saves valuable employee time and improves information accuracy. Interact’s Workflow & Forms feature employs a user-focused design that allows non-technical people to create simple, easy-to-build forms, supporting efficiency by removing the need for IT support.

Centralized multi-channel communication

When multichannel communications are managed and deployed from a centralized platform such as a modern intranet, each message can direct employees back to the platform for further information and resources, regardless of whether it’s received via mobile, web, email, integration, digital signage, or some other such channel.

Offering a variety of communication avenues helps overcome barriers. Different individuals may have different preferences, and providing multiple options ensures everyone can engage in a way that is most comfortable and effective for them.

Real-time updates deployed across instant communication channels such as Slack and Teams can facilitate prompt information sharing, addressing time-sensitive matters and preventing delays that might inhibit productivity.

Incorporating mobile channels via an employee app can allow people to stay connected and engaged whether they are deskless or on the move, promoting continuous access to communications at their fingertips.

Keep it human

A modern intranet can guide attention and reduce digital friction without requiring a steep investment in new tech. As for your people, your focus on these principles will set them up to live their happiest, most productive work life – so long as you keep them at the heart and helm of your effort.

“The key to success is scaling human interaction, not replacing it,” Reworked’s Barry writes. “AI and other tools are great for making the lives of staff easier and simplifying complex tasks, but they cannot replicate the complex level of care that a human provides.”

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According to Gallup, only 27% of U.S. employees strongly believe in their organization’s values, and less than half even know what those values are. Maybe that’s because just 7%  strongly agree that communication in their workplace is open, accurate, and timely.

The best way to uplift listless communications? Adopt an internal marketing mindset.

“When you think of marketing, you more than likely think of marketing to your customers: How can you persuade more people to buy what you sell? But another ‘market’ is just as important: your employees, the very people who can make the brand come alive for your customers,” says marketing exec and agency founder Colin Mitchell in Harvard Business Review. And yet, “companies very often ignore this critical constituency,” dedicating far more brainpower, bandwidth, and budget to the buyers than the builders.

But extending the same care and intention to your internal market—your people—can pay off big. Mitchell again: “By applying many of the principles of consumer advertising to internal communications, leaders can guide employees to a better understanding of, and even a passion for, the brand vision.”

For their part, companies with happy, engaged people are 23% more profitable.

Adopt an internal marketing mindset

When it comes to scaling your internal marketing tactics, tap into tech. You’ll be in good company. “Companies are using external marketing strategies—including communication software—to strengthen internal employee engagement and brand buy-in,” writes Zach Brooke for the American Marketing Association.

Ahead, a bit more about how to leverage each trick and its tech enablers.

14 steps to great internal communications

Download this handy eBook and discover practical tools and tips to maximize engagement and impact business performance through internal comms.

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Get personal with personas

Prioritize personalization. According to McKinsey & Company, 71% percent of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and even more (76%) get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.

Your internal customers can be just as put out—or gassed up—by such efforts.

An employee experience (EX) or intranet platform can come in handy here. Profiles and past interactions, for example, can help pinpoint and push relevant news, announcements, and resources to everyone, as well as ensure content from active employees is reaching audiences interested in the subject matter.

But before all that, you need to know who you’re working with and what they’re looking for. Enter employee personas.

Long a hallmark of marketing and sales strategy, personas are fictionalized snapshots of the people you’re keen to sell to or, in this case, engage. They include vital information on each avatar’s experiences, motivations, and other variables that might indicate the messages they care most about. Good ones give you a guide for personalizing your internal comms so they cut through the noise and hit the right notes for each archetype.

Your personas, though fabricated, should be based on the realities of your people. To ensure they’re representative, gather data from a variety of sources, such as interviews, focus groups, employee resource groups, town halls, social listening, and surveys. 

While the details and format can vary, your end product should typically include the following:

• Name
• Photo
• Role / title
• Location
• Short bio and description of personality

Also consider digging deeper into certain dimensions, such as:

• Gender, age, and other demographics
• Typical schedule, workload, tasks, and processes
• Goals and motivators (and frustrations and demotivators)
• Network and community
• Level of organizational awareness

Once you’ve built your personas, you can use your EX or intranet platform to create and scale custom comms experiences inspired by them. Consider, for example:

• Crafting homepages, discussion groups, and content for each persona
• Defining employee groups based on persona criteria so new joiners automatically see all the stuff you’ve designed just for them
• Using features like Geofencing so employees see location-specific content regardless of whether they’re based in one place or are on the move
• Tailoring intranet broadcasts by recipient group and delivery method so everyone gets the parts of a broad-based message that resonate most with them
• Creating topic tags that allow employees to discover and subscribe to relevant information—and help them surface ever more insights by fueling AI-generated suggestions based on their past behaviors
• Allowing employees to select where and how they’re notified about new information on their favorite topics (e.g., by email, by push, or in platform)

Become a better listener with surveys

According to The Workforce Institute at UKG, 74% of employees say they’re more effective and engaged when they feel heard. And yet, that experience is far from the norm: Only 30% of U.S. employees strongly believe that their opinions count at work, Gallup says.

Employee listening is the antidote. It’s the ongoing capture, analysis, and actioning of what your people think and feel, and it can help you shape comms that stick by allowing you to speak their language and shift course based on what they share.

14 steps to great internal communications

Download this handy eBook and discover practical tools and tips to maximize engagement and impact business performance through internal comms.

Download the free eBook

Take a page from a marketer’s customer research playbook and design your listening program with both individualized outreach (e.g., through focus groups and interviews) and broad-based efforts. The latter can be facilitated by your EX or intranet software. As an example, Interact’s suite of custom pulsing tools allows ICers to deploy:

• Quick-hit surveys and polls at frequent intervals, such as monthly or weekly, to get a temperature check on anything from morale to manager performance
• Continuous surveys that run in the background and are pushed to employees at the right point in their journey, such as during onboarding or offboarding
• An eNPS as part of the annual process to get broad consensus on the organization’s performance

In short, a savvy listening approach can help you tap into how your people are doing, individually and collectively, so you can respond in smart and helpful ways.

Get smarter with employee idea management

Your listening efforts can go even further with a dedicated idea management strategy.

Just like marketers crowdsource product and service ideas from their customers, you can solicit, organize, and action employees’ ideas to boost business and culture. Here again, your intranet can help you scale. Leaders of a listening initiative, for example, may use a dashboard with an aerial overview of the conversations going on across a business to identify superusers, popular ways of engaging, and hot topics to fuel future campaigns.

Here are some best practices to keep in mind when implementing your approach:

• Integrate idea management with your other listening efforts. Same goes for the origin of your requests. If you’re already using an intranet or Microsoft Teams, make that the place employees can submit ideas so they don’t have to look elsewhere.
• Break up your asks into specific campaigns (e.g., customer appreciation ideas one month; productivity hacks the next), and segment by persona as appropriate (e.g., client-related asks should go to client-facing folks).
• Incentivize participation by creating leaderboards and rewarding those who submit ideas that are later implemented.

Crunch the right numbers with intranet analytics

Once you’ve pulsed your people and personalized their experiences by persona, don’t ditch all that data you collected; with the right touch, you can keep using it to delight your internal customers.

“Robust internal marketing, like its external counterpart, is facilitated by advances in data analysis,” writes Brooke in his AMA article. “Tapping that data can be a game changer for employers looking to encourage employee responses, related to workload or lifestyle.”

At McKinsey & Company, for example, managers review their teams’ responses to the firm’s weekly pulse surveys through a self-serve portal. This focused listening has produced actionable insight into how to improve inclusion, childcare and mental health benefits, connection for remote and hybrid workers, professional development, and more. 

14 steps to great internal communications

Download this handy eBook and discover practical tools and tips to maximize engagement and impact business performance through internal comms.

Download the free eBook

Home in on the metrics that matter most in your organization by pairing the usual suspects (email click-through, open, and click-to-open rates) with ones that measure specific feelings you want to evoke and behaviors you want to encourage.

In addition to gauging satisfaction and real-time sentiment through your listening activities, consider how well you’re cultivating community between employees near and far. Along with participation in IRL teambuilding activities, measure virtual engagement. Interact, for example, has features to help you answer, analyze, and act on the following inquiries:

• How many of your employees are using the internet, and how often are they doing so? Who stands out as an internal champion based on their login and activity history, influence scores, and engagement with features both mandatory (e.g., required reading) and optional (e.g., bios)?
• How are personas or other groups of interest using the intranet in comparison to each other?
• What content are your employees craving more of based on their searches, views, likes, shares, and comments? What can use a tune-up based on a nearing expiration date, a distant publication date, or another warning flagged by the software as high priority? 
• How, when, and where are workers engaging most (and least) with your content and each other? Does this activity peak during or outside core business hours? Are people tuning in from their phones or laptops?
• How does your intranet experience stack up against offerings from organizations of a similar size and industry based on real-time benchmarking scores?

Build a banner internal brand with employee newsletters

Internal branding helps connect your employees with your company’s identity, values, and culture—a big win for today’s purpose-driven workforce. When implemented correctly, it can drive engagement by making workers at all levels ambassadors of your brand, thereby improving key business outcomes such as productivity and customer satisfaction.

When building your internal brand, consider the following inputs:

• Your vision, values, and mission—these become the drumbeats you hit again and again.
• Your external brand identity—you’ll need the same elements for the internal counterpart. Think logo, font, colors, tone of voice, messaging, and more (slogans and jingles, anyone?). Ensure both sides of the brand align—especially when it comes to values—but don’t be afraid to riff on colors, logo details, and naming conventions.
• Employee feedback—launching a dedicated listening initiative will ensure your internal brand really resonates with employees. Because they built it.

Employee newsletters are a great launching pad for your internal brand. They can also help on the purpose front by highlighting how the work of various teams and individuals is propelling your values.

And they can do all that without clogging inboxes. It’s a win for everyone. In a study of more than 300 communications and HR professionals, 71% said employees don’t read or engage with company emails or content, and 64% said the biggest challenges they face are volume of expected communications and leadership buy in.

14 steps to great internal communications

Download this handy eBook and discover practical tools and tips to maximize engagement and impact business performance through internal comms.

Download the free eBook

Newsletters can help on both fronts by creating a channel that’s consistent, recognizable, and—if you play your cards right—highly anticipated. Leaders need only buy in once to an initiative that accommodates a variety of news, updates, and even experimental comms tactics, such as:

• Spotlights on employee achievements and milestones, along with upcoming events
• Drilldowns on new, popular, or under-the-radar benefits
• Updates on change initiatives, like a new merger, or progress toward key goals, like a new recycling effort
• Requests for employee feedback through features like a form, one-click poll, or other idea management tool

Once you have your features defined, create a striking template that reinforces your internal brand. Ensure core elements, such as the following, are consistent and easily scannable:

• A clean, functional design that stays organized with section dividers, headers, and/or one- or two-column layouts. Take inspiration from your favorite online magazines.
• Subject lines and titles that are clear, captivating, and voicey (if you dare). Experiment with emoji and wordplay to see how they affect clicks and opens—but don’t go so far as to sacrifice clarity.
• Eye-catching visuals (e.g., images, vectors, infographics, gifs, and videos) to break up text, reinforce concepts, and radiate identity.
• Crisp call-to-action buttons following relevant news items that encourage readers dig deeper or share input (and allow you to better measure that behavior).

Your intranet software can help you build and deploy your newsletter. Within Interact’s content management system (CMS), for example, anyone with content author permissions can create a template by dragging and dropping elements into place—no coding or design experience required—and then send it out to the right audience segments. To further boost engagement, the software offers an automated email digest that rounds up all the intranet content your employees may have missed on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Start a rallying cry among brand advocates and champions

Beyond newsletters, another way to avoid getting lost in the email ether is by crafting a strategic multichannel communications strategy. It’s the internal equivalent of a marketer’s transmedia storytelling, which involves breaking up a narrative into pieces and then making those pieces available across different media. Chances are, you already have a lot of media (channels) to play with: email, intranet, social, SMS, mobile app, Teams, Slack, shadow-IT WhatsApp threads, and more.

Here again, your personas and analytics come in handy. Use them to figure out how, where, and on which parts of your overarching message your people like to engage.

Then, let your internal champions do the heavy lifting.

“Influencer marketing has been around since long before social media, and it can—and should—be applied to internal communications campaigns just as it’s used as a tactic in external marketing programs,” says Mike Tippets, VP at Hughes, in a Forbes Communications Council post.

Your bottom line will thank you: In a Hinge Research Institute survey, nearly 64% of employees performing social media advocacy said the effort brought new business.

Your EX platform can help you find your champions and extend their reach within and beyond your organization with features like:

• An influence score that aggregates indicators of user reach and engagement, such as shares, comments, active forum membership, or blogging.
• Content creation tools, such as an accessible CMS, that make blogging and sharing effortless.
• Mobile-friendly design,such as an appthat allows your people to create on the go and at the precise moment inspiration strikes.
• Social advocacy features that make it easy for employees to share insights, job openings, and other brand-building content to their external networks. 
• A recognition program that rewards good behavior, like championing company values, with points that can be redeemed for gifts and distinctions.
• Forums, discussion boards, and communities that giveemployees a place to connect over specific themes, challenges, or interests—and surface internal influencers who are answering questions and generating more discussions.
• Social media functionality that makes your platform sticky and keeps your people coming back. Think @mentioning, #hashtagging, image-friendly newsfeeds, forums, commenting, sharing, and gamification.

Enjoy the fruits of your labor

Flexing your internal marketing muscle makes your culture and business stronger. Your comms team gets strategy straight form the source, your people enjoy redoubled commitment toward a vision they helped build, and your customers reap the ultimate reward: a better product.

14 steps to great internal communications

Download this handy eBook and discover practical tools and tips to maximize engagement and impact business performance through internal comms.

Download the free eBook

Main image by freepik

The post Marketing tricks to try in your internal communications appeared first on Interact software.

Employee activation is tipped set top-performing organizations apart. It’s not quite listening, or empowerment, or advocacy, but a propulsive combination that puts workers at the helm of company culture, strategy, and reputation.

Today, just 22% of companies consider employee experience at all when designing work—even though it’s a force multiplier for customer and worker happiness as well as financial performance—and a paltry 10% involve their employees in organization and work design, according to recent research from the Josh Bersin Company.

Given this gap, setting your employee activation strategy now can put you ahead in an ever-tighter talent market.

How employee activation compares to employee engagement and advocacy

Employee engagement is the measure of your employees’ involvement and enthusiasm in their work and your organization—and it can make or break myriad crucial business goals, including customer loyalty, retention, productivity, and profitability, Gallup says.

In employee activation, your employees become catalysts of company culture, strategy, and reputation through your systematic collection, synthesis, and application of their insight and enthusiasm. It’s a propulsive combination of listening, empowerment, and advocacy that’ll mark the future of an engaged workforce and a peerless employee experience.

Get the guide! Beyond engagement: Employee activation

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Employee advocacy is your employees’ promotion of your company and/or its offerings through word of mouth, social media, or other channels. Advocacy can be organic or strategically cultivated, and figuring out how to do the latter can be powerful, as employees trust their coworkers more than any group of leaders within the organization, according to Edelman’s research.

Shape your employee activation strategy

Research shows that organizations thrive when their employees have the space to share, be understood, and see action taken based on their feedback. So successful employee activation programs will incorporate these elements into a flywheel of continuous momentum:

Let’s dig a little deeper into each element.

Listening

Employee listening, also called continuous listening, involves the ongoing capture, analysis, and actioning of employee sentiment.

An evolution of the annual survey, it typically combines broad, quick-hit pulse checks at frequent intervals, such as monthly or weekly, with more targeted outreach at key milestones, such as someone joining or leaving, or the organization itself shifting course.

In short, it’s how you tap into how your people are doing, individually and collectively, so you can respond in smart and helpful ways.

This practice can also boost goodwill and the bottom line. According to The Workforce Institute at UKG, 74% of employees say they’re more effective and engaged when they feel heard. And yet it’s an experience that’s far too rare: Only 30% of U.S. employees strongly believe that their opinions count at work, Gallup says.

An employee activation strategy can help systematize listening efforts so your people can see that their input is valued. When shaping this dimension, consider:

• Your objectives: What’s your “why” for listening? What are you trying to accomplish with each component activity? At McKinsey & Company, for example, focused listening has produced actionable insight into how to improve inclusion, childcare and mental health benefits, connection for remote and hybrid workers, professional development, and more. 
  
• Your audience(s): When, how, and why are you tailoring activities by dimensions like team, role, and tenure? Consider tools like audience maps and communication cascades to guide your choices.
  
• Your commitments: What’s in it for contributors? How will you protect their privacy and confidentiality? How will you share and use their collective input?
  
• Your channels and formats: How will you reach people with different preferences for sharing their thoughts? Consider, for example, which of the following will appeal to your people: surveys, town halls, employee resource groups (ERG), focus groups, individual conversations, and/or social listening (e.g., on external platforms and internal ones like those offered by your intranet software).
  
• Your cadence: How will you tailor timing by type of listening activity? By audience and goal? Be sure you’re not inundating any one group.
  
• Your questions: Are they as clear, concise, and relevant as possible?
  
• Your resource needs: Who should be involved in the asking? How much time, money, and lift will the effort require? Will any special technology or tools be involved?
  
• Your success criteria: How will you measure and track outcomes? Who will be responsible for delivering and reporting results?

Then, make it sticky and scalable.

One company transformed its notoriously “brutal” culture by systematizing their listening approach, recalled Jamil Zaki, author of The War for Kindness, in a recent conversation with McKinsey. “So this organization implemented a much more full-spectrum and frequent pulse survey of its people, gauging how folks were feeling, what they needed, what they were struggling with. And they showed concrete support and responsiveness.”

Understanding

A robust listening strategy will produce a multitude of insights stratified by channel, team, role, and more, so you’ll need to know how to slice, dice, synthesize, and distill all that data into meaningful action that shows you’ve taken what your people have said to heart.

And that requires some serious EQ.

Enter empathy. It’s an umbrella term for the ways we connect with other people’s emotions, and Zaki calls out one type that’s particularly helpful in the workplace: empathetic concern, or compassion. It involves feeling and expressing genuine care for what someone else is going through without taking on their pain (and risking burnout).

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Despite the stereotype that empathy is too “soft and squishy” for a place of business, decades of research show it’s actually “a workplace superpower,” Zaki says.

“When people feel connected to their colleagues and to their leaders, they work harder, faster, and more creatively,” he explains. They also tend to call out less often with stress-related sickness and express more intent to stick around.

To cultivate it, he recommends managers spend dedicated time connecting with people and asking more or better questions—a practice that’s too often overlooked in the “quest for efficiency.”

But the two objectives don’t have to be at odds. The right tools can enable empathy at scale by removing barriers like time pressure, which has been shown to decrease empathy, and compassion fatigue, which can come from too much ad hoc or unguided listening.

As an example, McKinsey’s people analytics team built a self-serve portal that allows managers to tap into their team’s weekly pulse survey data. The reports can be filtered by date, population, and other characteristics, as well as compared with longitudinal data to guide decisions.

Acting

According to Zaki, empathy (a largely internal experience) should translate to kindness (an external behavior). In other words, listening on its own isn’t enough; you must be poised to act on findings.

And this is where most employers struggle: Only 18% of U.S. employees say their company is agile, according to Gallup. “Agility is more than an approach to work. It’s a way of experiencing work,” and it demands a culture that prioritizes, among other things, cooperation, empowerment, and knowledge sharing.

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Here are some ways to make change—in good time and at scale—based on what you’re hearing:

• Enlist the C-suite: Because employees often enjoy little facetime with senior leaders, ensure your employee activation efforts bridge the gap. Tap the C-suite for listening and response activities by having members (or their internal comms ghost writers) lead targeted outreach efforts, as well as post regular blogs, vlogs, and social activity on your intranet. Don’t underestimate the value and power of simple likes, shares, or comments. When people see those at the top being involved or engaging with them, it incentivizes everyone to follow suit.
  
• Reward good behavior…: According to Gallup’s employee engagement research, one of the hardest statements for an employee to strongly agree with is, “In the past seven days, I have received praise or recognition for doing good work.” And yet, Josh Bersin’s research shows that “an organizational focus on fair and equitable rewards is one of the biggest drivers of overall outcomes.” So don’t skimp on it. And don’t forget to reward good citizenship as much as you do good work, Zaki says. “Call that out in a positive way, emphasizing empathic behavior and helping it to become normal behavior.”
  
• …So you can also hold people to account: Accountability is essential to organizational design, according to Josh Bersin’s research. You can apply this same principle to employee activation: Identify who’s responsible for carrying out a specific response to a listening finding, what the accountable party will do to drive outcomes, and how you’ll celebrate success. It’s the surest way to see real gains. “Accountability without rewards will fall flat, and not rewarding outcomes may be perceived as unfair,” Bersin says.  
  
• Rally your superfans: Find those employees who take an active lead in your ERGs and social communities. If there’s a good place to begin activation efforts, it’s with them. Arm them with the encouragement, information, and tools they need to spread the good word internally and externally. More on that in the next section.

Enable employee activation at scale

Given the scope and scale of activation activities, finding the right technology to enable your strategy is essential.

Indeed, in the Josh Bersin Company’s research into employee experience, “advanced people analytics surfaced as the most important technology.”

Find an EX platform that amplifies and enhances your employees’ connection to each other, your leaders, and the organization at large. “Listening is not something confined to the employee experience function or the people analytics team,” Bersin says. “It spans every area of business and HR.”

When determining how best to power your employee activation strategy, here are some EX platform features to look for:

• Surveys and questionnaires
• Social features
• Ideas management
• Personalized content
• Advocacy tools

Let’s dig in.

Surveys and questionnaires

Paper surveys, physical suggestion boxes, and other types of questionnaires are a stalwart of feedback gathering, but their reach is limited in large, dispersed organizations. Online survey platforms have a wider wingspan and can complement traditional formats.

In addition to broad, quick-hit surveys at frequent intervals (e.g., monthly or weekly), consider more targeted outreach at key milestones, such as:

• Someone joining, departing, or celebrating an anniversary with your organization
• Someone stepping into a new, expanded, or more advanced role
• A team kicking off or wrapping up a project
• The organization restructuring or changing course
• External factors and macro forces, such as geopolitical conflict or climate events, impacting employees’ lives at work and home

To hold interest and encourage response, use a variety of question types (e.g., multiple choice, Likert, and free text), and mix up survey formats. Continuous surveys, for example, can run in the background and be pushed to employees at the right point in their journey, such as during onboarding or offboarding, while an eNPS can be part of your annual process to get broad consensus on how you’re doing.

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Pulse surveys, meanwhile, can be deployed frequently—weekly or monthly—to get a temperature check on anything from morale to manager performance. The key is to make them quick, transparent, and actionable.

As an example, a dedicated people team at McKinsey combines answers to pulse surveys with employee information, anonymizes them, and synthesizes findings by role, tenure, geographic location, and/or other dimensions as relevant. “Results are shared with employees weekly, reiterating how their contributions can help leaders identify and shape changes and reinforcing the shared responsibility of colleagues at all levels of the organization to monitor and improve the culture,” the organization explains.

This transparency has been a powerful driver of participation: Within three years of launch, the pulse survey drew upward of one million responses from more than 40,000 employees across 140 offices around the world, representing feedback from more than 90% of the firm’s employees.

Social features

Social activation and listening come to us from the world of marketing. Companies use tools such as Hootsuite when they want to monitor public social media conversations about their brand, its competitors, and the shape of the market more broadly.

You can use a similar approach internally. Consider opening up—and tapping into—the following social intranet features:

• Forums or discussion boards: Use them to generate discussions and give employees a place to talk about specific themes or challenges. Beyond encouraging shop talk, consider creating space for connection over shared interests, such as a forum dedicated to dog owners or a specific hobby. The chance to bond with dispersed colleagues may lead to the emergence of internal influencers who can help others by answering questions and generating more discussions.
  
• Social media functionality: True engagement comes when people get a place to add their opinions. @mentioning, #hashtagging, image-friendly newsfeeds, forums, commenting, sharing, and gamification options are all effective ways to get people active in your digital workplace. Consider launching mini-campaigns to encourage your people to post, like, and share their peers’ posts. This gives a boost to contributors and generates important conversations and connections.
  
• Recognition programs: One of the most consistently popular and well-used aspects of Interact’s intranet is the rewards and recognition feature, which allows people to dole out points as thanks or recognition for anything from providing support on a project to resolving a customer issue. Recipients can redeem points for a range of rewards, including gifts and distinction as “employee of the year” or a champion of company values. It’s quick, simple, and plays a huge role in boosting morale and citizenship. It also makes the intranet social and engaging so that people come back and are continually exposed to news and updates when they do.

Idea management

Idea management involves crowdsourcing employee ideas and then managing them at scale through a dedicated platform.

On the backend, this may involve a dashboard that gives the leaders of a listening initiative an aerial overview of the conversations going on across a business. This can help you identify your superusers and superfans, popular ways of engaging, and hot topics to build future campaigns and cascades around.

Idea management can play a vital role in your employee activation strategy by systematizing your approach to synthesizing input and translating it to action.

Here are some best practices to keep in mind:

• Break up innovation generation into specific campaigns. Request ideas on customers one month and productivity the next.
• Gamify the process by creating leaderboards and rewarding those who submit ideas that are subsequently implemented.
• Make idea management part of your other listening efforts. Pulse surveys, in-person meetings, and idea gathering can all have a place.
• Ask different questions for various groups. Not everyone will deal with customers so they will have less ideas. Give them the opportunity to contribute too.
• Integrate asks into the tools your people are already using. If your company uses an intranet or Microsoft Teams, make that the place employees can submit ideas so they don’t have to look elsewhere.

Personalized content

While there are some company-wide updates everyone must see, surplus digital noise is a major deterrent to engagement (and a major pain for internal comms teams). 

Make your employee activation related shares as customized and compelling as possible with an EX or intranet platform that enables personalization. For example, profiles and past interactions can help pinpoint and push relevant news, announcements, and resources to everyone, as well as ensure content being created and shared by activated employees is reaching audiences interested in the subject matter.

Geofencing can further refine your location-specific content. By setting up a virtual perimeter around specific locations, each time an employee logs on to the intranet within that space, they only see content intended for them.

This is extremely effective in cases where individuals move frequently and require different content and documentation across locations (e.g., salespeople or senior leaders on location visits). This builds value for your people and helps them see your EX platform as a hub for connection with each other and your organization.

Advocacy tools

You can suss out your social-savvy superfans with features of platform’s front end and analytics suite, such as:

• User profiles of the employees that contribute and interact most with your intranet content
• Indicators like shares, comments, active forum membership, or blogging
• An “Influence Score” that an advanced intranet might create from aggregate data

Once you’ve spotted your superfans, look for built-in tools that can help amplify their reach:

• Content creation tools, such as an accessible CMS, that make blogging and sharing effortless
• Mobile-friendly design, such as an appthat allows your people to create on the go and at the precise moment inspiration strikes
• Social advocacy features that make it easy for employees to share insights, job openings, and other brand-building content to their external networks  

Shape the future of EXcellence

Now more than ever, people want to see themselves, their values, and their voice woven into the fabric of work—and they’re not shy about looking elsewhere or airing grievances when employers fall short. Channel this energy for the common good by partnering with your employees to put forth an employee activation strategy that allows them to shape success. Because it’s your people who will power the future of work and a peerless employee experience.

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In 2024, the world will hold an unprecedented number of elections. By year’s end, nearly half the global population, spread across more than 60 countries, will experience a national election that stands to shape life – and work – for the foreseeable future.

Since 2020, people have watched their employers speak out on hot button topics ranging from coronavirus and civil rights to Brexit and the Israel-Hamas war – and they’ve learned how to parse genuine stands from opportunistic grandstanding.

It means political discourse, once considered a corporate taboo, is becoming table stakes for a growing segment of the workforce. In the U.S., for example, a 2023 Glassdoor survey found 64% of workers feel supported when their company takes a stand on issues they care about; the proportion of proponents is even higher among Gen Zers (71%), Millennials (70%), and women from those groups (81%).

As an internal communicator, your influence stretches up, down, and all around the organization, meaning you hold tremendous power – and responsibility – to radiate a clear, consistent, and inclusive approach to addressing and discussings politics in the workplace.

But you’re facing some formidable headwinds: Remote and hybrid work are redrawing the bounds of homelife, purpose is taking precedence in employment choices, and the genesis of a six-generation workforce is sowing new norms for relating to one another, all as polarization and division surge. 

It’s enough to make even the most stout-hearted internal communicator throw up their hands or batten down the hatches.

Both can backfire.

Letting political conversation free flow can foment hostility and discrimination, while attempting to stamp it out can fuel rebellion, deeper division, or even mass exodus.

So instead of drawing a line in the sand, internal communicators can use the tips ahead to foster a culture that’s strong enough to handle charged conversations with empathy, respect, and curiosity. That’s the sign of a healthy business.

“If you have an impulse to ban political speech at your organization, it may signal that the organization cannot handle difference and challenge  –  a bad sign for the company’s ability to be agile and innovative,” researchers Megan Reitz and John Higgins write in the Harvard Business Review.

Assess the state of play

The reality is that political shop talk is likely already happening in your organization, regardless of whether you like or are even privy to it. 

In Glassdoor’s recent survey, 61% of U.S. employees said discussing politics in the workplace is something they have done within the past 12 months. The trend holds in the UK, where 67% of respondents to a recent Raconteur survey said they’re at least somewhat comfortable taking on the topic at work.

“I think for a long time it was considered taboo to talk about politics in the workplace, but these conversations have always happened to some degree either in lunchrooms or at bars and happy hours and are now happening in a lot of other places as well with the changing world of work,” Glassdoor’s chief economist Aaron Terrazas tells CNBC.

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Of course, not everyone is keen on discussing politics in the workplace. Comfort levels can vary by age, gender, country, and many other dimensions of identity and preference.

Raconteur found, for example, that 18- to 24-year-old workers are three times more likely than their counterparts aged 55 to 64 to want managers to address such issues head-on.

As for national and cultural differences, public-affairs software company Quorum finds “our US-based employees are much happier to engage in this dialogue and have these conversations than our team members in Moldova or Brazil,” the company’s chief people officer Brook Carlon tells the BBC.

Catering to such a range of perspectives demands a nuanced approach, especially in organizations with workforces spanning the globe.

Take in the view from the top

As any intrepid communicator knows, a good internal comms strategy only sticks when it’s modeled at the top, so spend time taking and shaping cues from the C-suite as you develop your political talk strategy.  

Keeping a finger on the global pulse can help.

Despite what public backlash might suggest, many workers and leaders still believe that companies have a part to play in social change – and a thing or two to say about it:

• In Global Strategy Group and SEC Newgate’s 2023 survey, 77% of respondents, representing 12 countries and territories, said that it’s important for corporations to take action on ESG issues.
• Two-thirds of nearly 900 corporate board members believe sustainability should be more fully integrated into their companies’ business strategies, according to a 2023 global survey by BCG, INSEAD, and Heidrick & Struggles.
• In a January 2024 Weber Shandwick survey of more than 100 senior execs from global companies, 59% agreed that companies “have a responsibility to speak up and act on societal issues even if sensitive or controversial.”

Civic responsibility aside, there’s a strong business case to be made for engaging in social good. Research shows companies that invest strategically in sustainability initiatives befitting their business can increase shareholder returns by up to 5%.

Of course, taking a stand comes with its own risks: 61% percent of U.S. companies surveyed by The Conference Board expect ESG backlash to continue or increase over the next two years.

As a result of such pushback, “CEOs have lowered their voices,” Russell Dubner, BCG’s chief communications officer, said in a recent article.

They’ve changed their tone, yes, but their tune? Not so much.

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The Conference Board found a mere 11% of companies who’ve faced backlash are changing the content of their ESG programs; instead, most are focused on reinforcing the link between ESG and core business strategy.

“The big question,” says BCG article author Pete Engardio, “is how long this measured approach can be sustained, especially with pivotal elections approaching in the U.S. and Europe.”

Help your leaders think through communication response plans to potential pre-election flareups, like misinformation campaigns or threats of violence.  

Weigh your options for discussing politics in the workplace

Given all the nuanced forces shaping the future of work, it may be tempting to rule out yet another hairy variable like politics. But it’s worth discussing lessons and drawbacks with leaders. For one: Prohibition can be hard to pull off.

“Banning political speech is fundamentally implausible because it is impossible to draw a clean, objective line between what counts as ‘politics’ and what doesn’t  –  or which issues are ‘acceptable’ to discuss because they relate to the company’s mission and which aren’t,” Reitz and Higgins note in their HBR piece.

In other words, politics may be inextricable from work (and life): Offering gender-affirming care benefits, supporting an environmental law, or publicly condemning a sexist comment from an industry insider may all be seen as political – and at the same time crucial to maintaining the confidence of employees, shareholders, and other parties.

Plus, being overly restrictive can cost you big.

In 2019, Basecamp caused a stir when CEO Jason Fried put a ban on discussing politics in the workplace, as well as societal issues, and a third of its workforce resigned within days. A year later, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, crypto­currency exchange Coinbase followed suit with rules for an apolitical ­culture and likewise shed employees.

Since then, other corporate heavy weights like Google, NPR, and The New York Times have come out swinging against political and social stands.

Although they’ve seized headlines, all-out bans are rare: about 10% of Raconteur survey participants have been forbidden to talk about politics or other contentious issues in the workplace. Lighter-touch restrictions – such as barring clothes or displays with political slogans, logos, or paraphernalia – are more common, respondents said.

While it’s possible to weather the fallout from a full-out prohibition, it’s likely not the best way to handle tough topics at work.

Experts argue bans can cause widespread disruption, driving some employees – likely those at opposite poles – to loudly dissent and others to suspend critical thought as they come to expect policies and arbitration to guide their every step. What’s more, as Basecamp learned, such a move can center you in the very political firestorm you were trying to evade.

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Instead, organizations may find success with a balanced approach. In 2020, as tensions flared over Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement, global fintech company Intuit introduced guardrails for how employees can talk about sticky topics on internal communications channels. “We want you to focus on how you’re feeling and how things are affecting you as a person, and less on using our internal channels as a platform for your political views,” the company’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer, Humera Shahid, told BBC.

Similarly, at Quorum, growing pressure over the Israel-Gaza war inspired new guidelines, including to be aware of how your statements could be viewed by someone who disagrees and to check in with HR about any language you’re unclear on.

Set the stage

As people bring more of themselves to work, they’re expecting more support in return. Thoughtful guidelines and resources to help in situations with high stakes – like elections, their leadups, and their aftermaths – can go a long way.

When curating these materials, ensure the contents comply with laws and regulations everywhere you conduct business. Also ensure they reflect or point to your relevant policies (e.g., on voting leave, ethics, anti-discrimination, anti-harassment), as well as company and employee values.

To promote buy in, use plain language, focus on the “why” behind decisions and stances around matters like discussing politics in the workplace, and ensure everything is easily accessible. You can use your employee experience software to create, organize, and promote a knowledge base of political resources through features like content creation tools, enterprise search, topic tags, and social functionality.

Also consider addressing the following topics:

• Overarching goals, which should center on creating a respectful, productive, and inclusive work environment  
• Expectations, guidance, and any prohibitions regarding political discussion or related activity, both on and off the clock
• Best practices for managing conflict
• Descriptions of acceptable forms of disagreement, as well as behaviors that may rise to the level of harassment or discrimination
• Consequences for violating terms of relevant policies

Work with representatives from people, legal, the C-suite, and key employee groups throughout the process of developing and sharing resources to ensure accuracy and resonance.

Craft smarter shows of support

When helping leaders craft communications on discussing politics in the workplace and sharing stances, ensure they’re tying positions to your organization’s purpose and strategy – and backing promises with real results.

As an example, corporations with DEI commitments can highlight “the tangible and measurable business opportunities for organizations that are diverse and where people feel included and psychologically safe,” Nadjia Yousif, BCG’s chief diversity officer says, citing the firm’s study affirming these outcomes.

To help leaders decide which issues to weigh in on, consider the following questions from BCG and the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program:

• Which issues might require a public stance because they affect company performance and reputation? What are the consequences of staying silent?
• Is political spending understood to be a kind of corporate voice?
• Are measures in place to ensure that leaders can speak in a timely, authentic way on topics relevant to business and employees?
• How do team members’ voices factor into decisions about when to speak up and what to say? Does leadership source and action input from across the organization (e.g., HR, public affairs, consumer research, operations, and risk management)?

To help answer these questions, ensure you have the right capabilities to continually analyze emerging issues and employee sentiment. Too often, leaders overlook this crucial step: In a recent survey by eLearning Industry, 72% of U.S. respondents said their employer didn’t ask for their opinion before taking public stances on political issues. And such an oversight can create an echo chamber: Reitz and Higgins’ research shows that “leaders often live in a self-assured bubble thinking that they know what matters to others even when they really don’t.”

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Employee listening can help bridge the divide. Make a practice of conducting individualized outreach (e.g., through focus groups and interviews) and broad-based efforts, such as pulse surveys and polls, facilitated by your EX or intranet software. One caveat: Don’t ask employees to share their specific political affiliations or stances, which are likely not actionable information, and instead focus on understanding how they’re feeling and what they may need from a wellbeing perspective.

Free your speech of foibles when discussing politics in the workplace

Once you’ve aligned on a political issue or policy that warrants communication, here are some tips on crafting a campaign or cascade that really resonates:

• Live your values: According to a 2023 survey from The Harris Poll, 84% of Americans believe companies must have a track record of acting on their values to be taken seriously. Conversely, companies that fail to speak up quickly on issues they profess to care about can take a big reputational hit.
• Go for the goal: Acknowledge that regardless of individuals’ beliefs on the issue at hand, emotions may be running high. Underscore that the goal isn’t to smother healthy dialogue but to reduce disruptions and maintain a culture where everyone feels safe, respected, and included.  
• Watch your words: Find alternatives for terms that may have fallen victim to political weaponization, even if they describe well-supported ideas. As an example, the terms “DEI” and “ESG” are considered much more divisive among Americans than equivalents like “sustainability,” “equity,” and “inclusion,” according to a February 2024 Harris poll.  Similarly, “ESG” resonates well with investors, but “sustainability” tends to be better understood by employees, customers, and policymakers, The Conference Board says.
• Use a personal touch: EX software features like recipient groups, custom delivery methods, and geofencing can help you tailor communications so everyone gets the parts of a broad-based message that resonate most with them and how they’re impacted by an issue or decision.

Support healthy debate

Cultivating a culture that’s strong enough to support political differences can lead to a more innovative, creative, and ultimately successful workplace.

Consider partnering with your L&D team to craft learning opportunities and information campaigns that help your people build this muscle. The following are expert-backed practices and principles you can incorporate into your efforts:

• Lead with humanity: “Our political values are shaped by our life experiences,” says leadership training executive Emily Gregory in an HBR article on managing a team with conflicting views. For conversations to be constructive, colleagues must “seek to understand others’ experiences and what led them to their beliefs,” she says. “Humanize the people they disagree with.” The capacity to do so can be built through simple things, like carving out a few minutes in standing meetings to share slices of life. “These conversations may seem small, but political empathy and respect grow through the day-to-day sharing of personal stories and vulnerabilities, when we can see past the habitual labels and judgements we apply to others.” Gregory says.
• Embed healthy disagreement: As an example, Reitz and Higgins work with a company where leaders explain how the existance and resolution of conflicts at the board level strengthen the organization.
• Teach emotional intelligence: According to Daniel Goleman, who popularized the concept, the five pillars of emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Cultivating EQ is especially vital among people leaders, who hold tremendous influence over their team members’ experiences and success at work – including where politics are concerned: Three in four U.S. workers surveyed by ResumeHelp in May 2024 believe their boss’s political views influence their management style and/or decisions; one in four have either left or wanted to leave their job because of these views.
• Create dedicated space: Forums, discussion boards, and communities on your intranet can giveemployees a place to find comradery, broaden their horizons, and enforce boundaries by opting in (or out) of political discourse. Encourage people to further modulate their exposure to potentially sensitive topics by reviewing their notification preferences (e.g., by email, by push, or in platform).

Discussing politics in the workplace: reach across the aisle

This historic year in global politics will no doubt test your mettle as an internal communicator. But as polarization and strife dominate the news cycle and perhaps your own company channels, don’t lose sight of the opportunity that’s also there: To support your people through a moment that truly matters, when more of them than ever are united in civic opportunity, if not how they’ll approach it.

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Whether frontline, hybrid, remote, or office-based, your team members should all have somewhere they can collectively call home.  

An employee mobile app such as a mobile intranet will enable your entire workforce – including members who are on the go far more often than they are at a desk – to instantly access the tools and information they need from a shared digital headquarters.

It’s about meeting your workers where they’re reliably spending their time and attention, regardless of where they’re clocking in from.

As of 2024, 4.88 billion people – more than 60% of the global population – own at least one smartphone; in the U.S., nine in 10 own one. And they’re not afraid to use it: recent research shows that people spend an average of 4.8 hours a day on their phone. In the U.S., that translates to checking their device close to 150 times.

Now’s the moment for mobile

As the future of work takes shape today, the moment’s especially ripe for mobile. Growing global and gig work means your messages must reach teams stretching across time zones, languages, and affiliation types. Digital natives, joining the workforce in droves, are bringing with them new communication norms. And the headwinds of the past few years – a global pandemic, civil rights reckonings, and geopolitical strife – are forcing purposeful work into focus.

In short, the need for transparent, timely, and inclusive communication has never been greater – or likelier to make or break your business: According to Gallup, employees who get enough information on goals and successes are 2.8 times more likely to be engaged, and business units with engaged employees are 23% more profitable.

But the vast majority of employers are failing to keep up: Just 7%  of workers strongly agree that communication in their workplace is open, accurate, and relevant (Gallup again).

Close the gap with an employee mobile app

Smartphone usage isn’t just for off-the-clock.

In a 2021 survey of 1,500 workers, 62% said mobile devices improved their productivity, and a 2020 study found that social media usage at work – like the kind enabled by company-created apps – contributes to positive two-way communication for 80% of workers.

In this way, employee mobile apps are a powerful extension of your intranet or EX software that can:  

• Help senior leaders and IC teams distribute business news, events, and policy updates through features like push notifications that alert staff to critical information in the moment of need (e.g., an upcoming open-enrollment deadline or ongoing developments in an emergency)
• Foster social interaction and cohesion through blogging, liking, sharing, and commenting 
• Create a one-stop shop for core tools, processes, policies, documents, and other information that your employees use the most, all quickly discoverable with built-in intelligence and enterprise search functionality
• Enable dispersed employees to find and connect with co-workers through search functionality and a comprehensive people directory
• Balance access and cybersecurity needs for the growing contingent of contract and gig workers who may not have a company email address or be able to get behind your firewall to access your intranet from their computer

Empower everyone – especially those on the frontlines

As hybrid and remote work remains in vogue, a mobile app can keep your employees connected to each other and your mission, no matter where they are.

It’s an urgent priority for leaders: According to Owl Labs, more than a third of managers (34%) who lead remote or hybrid teams cite maintaining cultural connection, team camaraderie, and communication as a top concern; almost as many (32%) say the same of employee engagement.

Fostering this cohesion is especially important for your deskless frontline.

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Although 80% of workers around the world are deskless – meaning they’re on the factory floor or hospital ward or open road delivering your services, making your products, and dealing with your customers – this group receives just 1% of enterprise software funding.

Failing to invest in the experiences of this critical contingent is a missed opportunity: Research suggests organizations with a more engaged frontline can see customer loyalty rates that are 12% higher than competitors’.

Mobile apps can help bring about this win. With workers always on the go, smartphones are the one device that’s readily on hand.

Seeing – and seizing – the possibility

Employee mobile apps can boost business-critical engagement among employees of all stripes by helping you face the forces shaping the future of work head on.

Radiate shared values

Because mobile apps bring about broader access to tools and resources, they can reinforce your organization’s commitment to inclusion and other top values of today’s workers – something that’s increasingly important to keeping them around.

According to Gallup, only 27% of U.S. employees strongly believe in their organization’s values, and less than half even know what those values are. This disconnect can lead to checking out: One in five employees feels disengaged from their work when they aren’t connected to the company or culture, Owl Lab says. 

In contrast, mobile app features like customizable content creation and notification tools can emphasize your commitment to connectivity and inclusivity by allowing you to translate your comms into the most appropriate language for each employee and ensuring they receive it at the right time of day (or night).

Foster in-the-moment learning and collaboration

According to Owl Labs, nearly half (48%) of hybrid workers believe they’re missing out on impromptu feedback and development that could hamper their career growth – and 68% of managers believe their teams are missing out on these career-defining opportunities. The antidote, according to the research, is adding or enhancing employee learning and development offerings.

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A mobile app can connect deskless and distributed employees to opportunities through features like a comprehensive knowledge base of courses and materials to help them learn on the fly, a searchable directory of in-house experts to call up at a moment’s notice, and lively discussion forums that allow them to crowdsource precise solutions to their queries.

Streamline and save on comms

In the U.S. alone, inefficient communications cost organizations $2 trillion per year in time and productivity, according to Axios HQ.

Potential culprits include:

• Arduous comms creation: Axios HQ saysleaders spend three to 10 hours per week preparing essential communications for employees.
• Disorganized internal systems: Research shows that employees spend 20% of their time on average searching for information they need to do their jobs.
• Unruly email: An employee spends up to 23% of their workday on email, sending and receiving an average of 112 emails throughout it.
• Compounding losses: All that fruitless searching and taming of email overgrowth can add up: Recent research suggests communication barriers lead to delays or failures in project completion (44%), missed goals (25%), and lost sales (18%).

Mobile apps with personalization features like user groups and Geofences can ensure the right messages reach the right people at the right time, without adding undue noise or development burden. For their part, customizable push notifications make sure that users are kept in the loop on the things that matter most.

Shaping your employee mobile app strategy

To realize the huge potential of an employee mobile app, you must ensure it’s an integrated, additive tool from day one. And that takes upfront planning.

Consider:

• Why do we need an app?
• Who will use the app?
• Where does the app fit in our digital workplace?
• How do we design winning app journeys and experiences?
• What’s our app intranet identity and brand?

Use your multichannel strategy as your North Star

To start, map out how a mobile app fits into your multichannel communication strategy. Depending on your circumstances, your channels may already include mobile, web, email, integrations, digital signage, and more.

Pay particular attention to how the app will fit together with any existing mobile elements, such as SMS, intranet access via web browser, and third-party messaging platforms. As an example, app-driven SMS and push notifications might fill a gap in reaching deskless workers who don’t use Teams or Slack.

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Consider plotting out the components of your strategy against your key employee groups or personas. It may look something like this:

Once you’ve defined which groups would most benefit from a mobile app, consider which messages are best conveyed there (e.g., routine updates, urgent broadcasts, or both) and when you’ll send notifications for workers in different countries or on divergent shift patterns.

Also consider which initiatives, campaigns, or other use cases – both current or prospective – might benefit from a mobile component. As an example, an internal communications campaign to unveil a refreshed brand identity might start with a Vlog video series from stakeholders leading the rebrand project, then branch out with:

• A company-wide newsletter that recaps updates in text and images
• App notifications encouraging deskless users to view new videos on their mobile devices
• Written blogs linked to videos to generate likes, comments, @mentions and other social activity
• Teams or Slack alerts when new videos are uploaded
• QR codes embedded in digital signage messages that take location-based workers to videos

Design with users in mind (and in the driver’s seat of your mobile employee app)

Based on your strategic mapping, identify your top personas for your employee mobile app, and start designing with their needs in mind.

Deskless workers, for example, might need features that allow them to:

• Take paid time off
• Access payroll and tax information
• Enroll in health insurance and other benefits
• Complete employee surveys and performance review processes
• Take learning courses
• Onboard to a new job
• Stay informed via company communications
• Access policy information and connect with HR
• Customize their own experience, including how, when, and about what they’re notified
• Complete managerial tasks for anyone they lead, such as conducting reviews, coordinating time and scheduling, and monitoring PTO and other essential HR approvals

During the app development process, build in lots of opportunities for workers to offer feedback through surveys, polls, conversations, and other avenues. It’s a win-win: You’ll ensure you’re meeting your people’s needs by getting input straight from the source, and they’ll be likelier to buy in to the thing they helped build. What’s more, you can play up that ‘designed by you, for you’ point in your internal marketing for the app.

Selecting the right partner

Once you’ve shaped your mobile app strategy, the next step is finding a partner to help you achieve your vision. Ahead, some enablers to keep in mind as you’re vetting vendors.

A delightful employee mobile app UX

Find a partner that can help you create a thing of beauty. It’s not a superficial consideration when 52% of users don’t return to an app because of its aesthetics.

Of course, you should consider both form and function, starting with a strong foundation.

A native app that’s created specifically for a mobile operating system (iOS or Android) is often optimal compared to web and hybrid options because it’s fast, reliable, secure, and able to make best use of a device’s features.

Beyond how the app is built, ask prospective partners for their perspective on the following UX considerations:

• Parity: Mobile users should have access to the same level of intranet functionality as those who are accessing it from computers. As an example, because Interact’s employee app is built natively, mobile-first users receive the same homepage experience as they would with the desktop platform.
• Mobile-responsive design: This optimizes your intranet to look great when accessed via a browser on an employee’s smartphone or tablet.
• Complementary digital signage: When an employee scans a QR code, it should direct them to in-app intranet content relating to the information that signage displays.

By delivering a seamless experience that transfers from web to app, your organization can communicate to remote, in-office, and on-location staff alike that their app will be an artful blend of form and function. 

Social savvy

In 2016, Pew found that nearly one in four workers uses social media while on the clock to make or support personal connections. Almost as many use it to get information that helps them solve problems at work (20%), build or strengthen personal relationships with coworkers (17%), and/or ask work-related questions of people within or outside of their organization (12%).

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Since Pew published this seminal research, social platforms and usage has only proliferated, meaning your workers are both better versed and more expectant when it comes to workplace offerings that foster connection to your mission and each other.

To put social and your superfans to work for you, ensure your app development partner prioritizes in-app features like the following:

• An in-house expert directory that brings your people together, no matter where and how they work. Ideally, users should be able to search a variety of criteria, including expertise, location, and role, then call or message their chosen SME directly using the app. 

• Content creation toolsthat allow your people to create on the go and at the precise moment inspiration strikes.
• Social advocacy features that make it easy for employees to share insights, job openings, and other brand-building content to their external networks. 
• An employee recognition program that rewards good behavior, like championing company values, with points that can be redeemed for gifts and distinctions.
• Forums, discussion boards, and communities of practice that giveemployees a place to connect over specific themes, challenges, or interests – and surface internal influencers who are answering questions and generating more discussions.
• Social intranet functionality that makes your platform sticky and keeps your people coming back. Think @mentioning, #hashtagging, image-friendly newsfeeds, forums, commenting, sharing, and gamification.

Powerful workplace search

An ‘everywhere’ mobile intranet that truly serves your employees’ needs should be more than a communications platform. It should also serve as a knowledge base containing everything from policies and procedures to people directories, support, FAQs, and access to tools for everyday tasks.

An intelligent enterprise search tool should be there to tie it all together and help your people find what they need fast.

Your mobile-first users should enjoy this same functionality.

As an example, Interact allows users, regardless of where they’re logging in from, to refine searches by author, content type, associated topics, classifications, confidentiality ratings, and even file type of any attachments included on a page.

Domino’s Interact-powered PieNet intranet enables team members spanning more than 18,000 stores to find vital resources, guides, documents, and operating procedures on the fly as they’re flipping pies and taking names. That’s largely thanks to the accompanying mobile app’s powerful enterprise search, which mirrors the web experience.

Today, PieNet is attracting 5,000 active users – including 75% of U.S. franchisees and 60% of corporate above-store team members – every week.

More heavy hitters

Other capabilities to discuss with prospective vendors include:

• Personalization tools, such as custom homepages and workplace tools, targeted content, location-based information and updates through geofencing, employee groups based on persona criteria, and topic tags that allow employees to discover and subscribe to relevant information
• Targeted communications and notifications, such as options to tailor broadcasts by persona, delivery time, and channel, and to let workers further refine things according to their preferences
• Enterprise-ready control and access. Interact’s mobile app, for example, is designed to work with mobile device management providers including VMWare Workspace One, IBM MaaS360, and MobileIron
• Biometric authentication options, such as Touch and FaceID to improve speed, security, and ease of use
• Custom branding options to reinforce your identity

Sticking the launch of your employee mobile app

Once you’ve landed on a strategy and partner in crime, set your employee mobile app up for success with a dedicated launch plan. Be sure to include a combination of fun and informative elements.

To build excitement, consider a teaser campaign that outlines benefits and how to register in advance. Follow up with a launch event when the app goes live.

Multichannel communications: How to plan and execute a strategy

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According to research from Microsoft, 55% of frontline workers say they’ve had to learn new tech without formal training or practice. To ensure people know what to do when it’s showtime, provide dedicated training opportunities.

Examples include:

• Virtual app tours and pre-recorded tutorials on features and functionality
• Specific app download instructions
• In-person or virtual workshops
• New or updated policies outlining expectations for productivity, privacy, security precautions, and other appropriate app uses

Drive up engagement with gamified learning opportunities, such as a treasure hunt that challenges employees to find images hidden within the intranet and familiarizes them with the menus, sections, and content areas in the process.

Interact customer Edinburgh Airport made their employee mobile app a core part of the launch plan for their intranet, called Gate 8. Before takeoff, the team drummed up awareness and excitement by debuting plans in an organization-wide town hall. They followed the announcement with 2 all-staff emails and 18 roadshows across eight office areas.

Airport-themed materials, distributed digitally and IRL, included screensavers, posters, a selfie board, pop-up banners, and boarding cards, all complete with QR codes that allowed employees to easily download the mobile app.

The campaign was a rousing success. By the end of its first month, the new platform amassed 38,000 page views, with 40% of early adopters boarding from the mobile app.

Following launch, keep excitement high with continued awareness and learning initiatives, such as nudge campaigns, leadership endorsements, and showcases embedded in high-profile meetings or events. Pro tip: Push notifications can boost app engagement by 88%, and increase app retention rates by 3-10x, so bring those into the mix.

Don’t forget to measure and build on success using metrics like visitors and traffic sources, network size, and social engagement.

Making your employee mobile app mint

With today’s workforce more distributed, purpose-driven, and digitally native than ever before, an employee mobile app can be critical to ensuring all your people feel connected, capable, and heard – no matter where they might be or go next.  

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The post Employee mobile apps: taking your intranet from desktop to pocket appeared first on Interact software.

When my manager approached me with an opportunity to take on a fractional Chief of Staff (CoS) role for the Chief Learning Officer (CLO) of our global consulting firm, the thought of Selina Meyer skewering a hapless Ben Cafferty flashed through my mind.

Luckily, this gig—which I’d hold for a year before stepping into an expanded IC role and, later, making the leap to solopreneurship—would prove far more constructive (and less profane) than the one held by my Veep counterpart.

Make the unlikely connection

The role of Chief of Staff, though rooted in government, has been gaining ground in business over the past decade. Among the corporate set, CoSs support CEOs and, increasingly, other members of the C-suite. 

In my case, the firm’s CLO was looking for someone to help wrestle shape into a weekly strategy meeting for her team of more than 20 leaders who lived around the world, and my manager had pitched me based on my skill in project management and desire for career growth.

A CoS role isn’t the most intuitive next step for an internal communicator. But it’s a smart one.

Though the role itself can vary widely, its mandate is clear: to enable success for the supported executive and the broader organization. Often, that means transforming approaches to communications, operations, and decision making. 

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In short, it’s all about building people power. That’s why we, as internal communicators, with our penchant for wrangling rangy relationships and messages, can excel in it.

We can also see big wins: The average CoS salary globally is $158,500, according to The Chief of Staff Association’s (CSA) 2023 industry report. Nearly one in four respondents earn at least $250,000.

Dollars aside, the position can be a stepping stone to the C-suite: Facebook’s former COO Sheryl Sandberg is one of many high-profile company leaders who’s taken a turn as CoS. 

But even if your sights aren’t set C-ward—I can’t be the only ICer who’s comfier behind the scenes than on a corporate masthead—a CoS role offers valuable facetime with leaders and mentors who can help you level up however you want.  

So here’s how to make the leap—or pivot or toe-dip. The force of motion, much like the spectrum of duties, is up to you.

See the big picture

Today, some 5,000 people in the U.S. hold a CoS title, according to Zippia, though others have estimated as many as 68,000 are employed in this capacity, a testament to the flexible nature of the role.

“No two chiefs of staff have the same journey,” according to McKinsey & Company, which convenes 200 CoSs annually to discuss the profession’s state of play. “The responsibilities can range in scope from the administrative to the strategic depending on the organization’s needs and the relationship between the COS and the principal.”

Similarly, in his HBR article, “The Case for a Chief of Staff,”  leadership author and former CEO Dan Ciampa defines three CoS levels, progressing from tactical (level 1) to strategic (level 3).

Tenures are similarly fluid. CoS positions, which can be full-time or, like mine, fractional, are often designed as 1-2–year rotations, and those tapped are high-potential individuals in their second or third role at the company, McKinsey has found. At some organizations, particularly larger ones, the role is more senior, pulling a title of vice president or higher, according to BCG’s research.

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Draw the IC-CoS parallels

Don’t let the archetype of a corporate Chief of Staff—someone with an MBA and a finance or economics bent—deter you. The six modalities that CSA says drive success in the role look a lot like the qualities of powerhouse internal communications professionals:

1. Strategy architect
2. Network enabler
3. Operations focused
4. Alignment driven
5. Outcome oriented
6. Communication centric

Ditto the common responsibilities of a CoS, which BCG and talent acquisition company HuntClub say include:

• Liaising between leaders and employees, including by acting as a proxy or extension for their executive in meetings with strategic partners, community members, industry stakeholders, and more.
• Defining and driving strategic priorities, such as new product development, data analysis, and go-to-market plans, through cross-functional workstream and meeting management. 
• Managing day-to-day operations and administrative systems.
• Cascading strong, consistent messages throughout the organization using smart communication strategies and tools.
• Shaping key aspects of employee performance and experience, such as hiring, capability building, organizational structuring, business reporting, and budgeting.

Envision your dream job

Based on these competencies and responsibilities, chart what your dream CoS job description would look like. My stint, for example, involved:

• Convening firm leaders for ad hoc and standing meetings, including that fast-paced weekly strategy session. I gave these gatherings momentum by setting agendas, taking notes, and keeping people synced on decisions and next steps.
• Shaping and shepherding core operations, including a quarterly OKR process and function-wide event calendar.
• Distilling learning strategy into multichannel communications and talking points for the CLO and other executives to deliver to broad and influential audiences.
• Driving special projects by, for example, designing curated in-person and virtual experiences and synthesizing insights for pitch decks and presentations.

In each of these duties, I relied on my internal communications instincts and training. My knowledge of how information flows helped me trim down complex processes, while my empathy and relationship management skills helped me manage up to get timely data and RSVPs.

Flex your muscles

To home in on what makes you a sure CoS bet, map your current skills and interests against the responsibilities in your dream job. I have a hunch that you’ll see significant overlap. Also note any areas where you could use some upskilling.

This will help you identify fractional or project-based opportunities to start flexing and growing your CoS muscles even if there aren’t any openings or the role doesn’t yet exist at your organization. Ask for your manager’s support here. Come with specific ideas about who and how you can help, emphasizing how your current skill sets make you the right person for the job.

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If, for example, you’ve identified relationship management and strategic planning as your strong suits, check your calendar for the next big cross-functional meeting and raise your hand to facilitate presentation development. Is there a recurring team or department reporting activity that always causes confusion? Offer to refine the communications plan, template, or process flow.

Also look to partner with leaders you’ve built rapport with. There’s a reason CoSs are likeliest to come from within the organization: They’re trusted entities with proven chops and deep institutional knowledge. This goes double for many ICers, who have a skybox view of teams and strategies.

Evolve your role

Once you have some CoS project work under your belt, think about how you’d like to grow, shrink, or replicate your role within or beyond your organization.

Just like the position itself, your options for what comes next are open ended. According to McKinsey, some people become serial CoSs, while others branch out into P&L ownership or line management, and still others pursue an entirely new discipline, such as executive coaching or academia.

For my part, as my responsibilities expanded, I guided the evolution of my fractional role into a rotation for early career consultants, who were thrilled at the prospect of engaging senior leaders.

To make the role right sized, I narrowed and systematized processes and coached my successors on essential skills like cross-functional management and strategic note taking.

After his rotation ended, one consultant gave me a hand-written note to thank me for helping him “grow as a professional and as a person.”

I’m just as grateful. 

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The post From internal comms to Chief of Staff: How to make the jump appeared first on Interact software.