The Five Fundamentals of Delivering Effective Internal Communications
Sunday, 19 April 2020 / Vaughan Reed
Sunday, 19 April 2020 / Vaughan Reed
I'm a firm believer that communication is the lifeblood of every organisation and the Internal Communications role is one of the most vital roles within medium to large organisations.
Globally, according to Gallup's latest State of the Global Workplace, only 15% of employees are engaged at work. By and large, we put this down to key business units (i.e. Internal Communications, People & Culture, Health and Safety, Workplace Wellbeing and more) not having an effective communication channel to reach and positively influence behaviours within todays workforce. Businesses are still heavily reliant on text heavy, static methods of communicating business critical information, which are simply ineffective.
We live in an age where people are increasingly time poor and are constantly bombarded with information. On top of this, communication teams have the challenge of an age & culturally diverse workforce, non-deskbound workers and the trend towards flexible ‘at home’ working.
Businesses are now seeing Gen Zs entering the workforce and millennials make up roughly half of the current workforce. These are the digital generation, they are not wired to absorb text heavy, static information, and to be honest, who really is!
If businesses do not adapt the way they are communicating business critical information to match the habits and demographics of their workforce, their ability to influence positive behaviours will continue to diminish.
With 19+ years, helping clients with their digital strategies and more recently with 5 years specialising in internal communication, I've discovered that there are 5 fundamentals for delivering business critical information, if you want it to be seen, understood and remembered:
All 5 fundamentals are essential for the delivery of effective communication. As you can imagine, ticking all 5 boxes has a big impact on the type of communication channels available to organisations.
Vibe.fyi is a strong advocate for leveraging digital screens placed in common areas, such as lunchrooms and breakout areas. With the businesses we have worked with, this has been by far the most effective communication medium for getting vibrant messaging out to their workforce and displayed with a high level of frequency, without being intrusive or disruptive.
Just imagine pushing out a message via email or using collaboration software, such as; Teams, Workplace or Slack and sending out the same message 7 or 8 times. It would not only infuriate everyone, but repetitive messaging in this medium clutters the tool and becomes ineffective for what it was designed for.
For home and remote workers, I recommend leveraging a desktop screensaver and the ‘home’ page on your Web Browser. These two effective communication channels are simple but ideal for keeping the remote worker informed and connected with the office. Additionally, these two channels can be utilised within the office to reach desk-bound workers that may not frequent commons areas through-out their day.
Article By Vaughan Reed [LinkedIn]
Vaughan is the Managing Director @ Vibe.fyi. Making it easy for organisations to
communicate business critical information in a way that will inspire today’s workforce.
This software has helped stop geographical office separation and team silos.
Meetings are shorter. We get immediate reporting to the whole business on performance without having to send more emails to get the data required.
Vibe is a great tool for bringing staff together and sharing news and event footage internally.
Vibe is a great internal communications tool that is user-friendly and customised to our business.
Their customer service team is friendly and quick to get in touch if you have a query or issue.
It saves us time, plus it's a very modern solution and it helps engage and inspire our people.
It's very cool and a great way to communicate with and engage my non-wired employees.
The digital templates are extensive and the Vibe team support is outstanding. The feedback I get from my team tells me we're on the right track.
Really great for providing snackable and understandable content, it’s visually a great way to communicate.
The impact when people see our big digital wall at reception is great.
People love Vibe. I would say using Vibe.fyi has been 100% effective!
Employees stop and look at the screens. Our deskless workforce say they feel more informed, as they saw something before their team leader told them.
Vibe has been a hit from the beginning! Better collaboration, visibility, sharing and accountability.
We’ve also experienced a 60% increase in awareness of upcoming events in the business calendar and were able to celebrate at least five times more staff achievements than we could have using email.
One of our favourite features is the ability to show social media feeds - with Yammer.
Our people can keep their finger on the pulse of what's happening and they don't have to be stuck behind their desks all day.
If we took it away now, there would be a riot!
Being able to set all the screens up differently is fantastic. It provides a real 'feel-good' factor for residents.
Vibe helps us drive engagement. Definitely a very positive tool!
It has enabled us to display life-saving rules, incentive tracking and information that hasn't been available to non-wired staff previously.
The results have surpassed our own expectations.
Our key stakeholders have wanted to know how we implemented such a stunning platform. Our CEO has been raving about it!
We started with COVID messages, but after 6 months, we were communicating other business events on site.
We're using Vibe for EVERYTHING. Facebook groups, café menus, surveys (with a QR code), internal videos, welcoming our summer interns, Christmas messaging from our CEO + more!
We originally needed a mechanism to push out health and safety information to all of our people.
After a few years, we now use Vibe for H&S, general notices, reporting dashboards, news, financial and wellness programs.
Great way to engage with our team. Different to standard notice boards where the team don't look at it.
Keeps areas noise-free and are able to just have a tv screen with rolling information.
When choosing a product, Vibe.fyi ticked all the boxes.
Vibe was head and shoulders above the rest, because it offered the best and simplest application.
It has helped raise awareness around services we offer.
The screens have not only been a great visual aid for residents, they have also been an excellent marketing and sales tool.
Vibe provides a way of supporting the key messages around safety, wellbeing, operational updates and employee recognition.
It's a really simple and effective way to help communicate key messages to all workers on our construction sites.
Rather than settling for basic posters that don't get updated often, Vibe's moving imagery and fun colors catches the eye.
Vibe gets cut-through
Vibe is now officially part of our channel mix and is becoming one of our main channels of communication (and has the potential to become the main channel).
The Vibe team are great to work with - super proactive, super helpful.
Infact we haven't needed them too much because it's really easy to use and very simple and effective.
We’ve experienced a 20% reduction in volume of emails.
With an obviously more positive, interactive, connected and engaged workforce, who appear a lot happier!
Vibe.fyi has helped the team improve resident engagement
The MATV feed is hugely popular with residents who don't have to leave the comfort of their own room to access information about what's going on in the village.
Their customer service is exceptional.
From our very first introductory meeting, they have always been on hand to offer information and support. They proactively step-in to find ways to make things work. Friendly, knowledgeable and very responsive!
I like having the ability to control what content is displayed on each screen with playlists.
We have screens across two different locations with a different audience requirement for each one.
I haven't seen a solution this powerful before!
Our people absolutely love it and it's helped us transform how we communicate.
It's been the solution we needed to reach all of our staff in a timely manner.
We needed Vibe during COVID in all Distribution Centres during the first lockdown to provide H&S information.
We have found Vibe very effective as an implementation model for dashboard content.
It helps us visualise data. It’s a great system and I would definitely recommend it.
The flexibility of the Vibe.fyi solution impressed our project team
Some screens show events; others display news, weather and quizzes; and others a ‘personal touch’, with birthdays and anniversaries.
Before Vibe there was a lot of 'printed flyers' which is both costly and environmentally unfriendly.
With Vibe's on-screen format it’s easy to make changes instantly on the fly without the need for a reprint. No more excuses from staff not reading internal emails. Messaging is right there, on the screen.
Being a construction project we also use Vibe to show our office-bound staff what’s happening out on site.
This helps promote a greater understanding of progress and gives a feel of inclusion.
We are now able to share general company information and specific site information to large groups of people.
It suits our teams and contractors in different locations, which in the past has been difficult to communicate with.
Our people love the wellbeing program content!
Our people are impressed that we are providing them with communication that is timely and will help improve their safety, health and wellbeing.
I'm not an IT person at all, but the Vibe system is super easy to use, requiring minimal input.
The screens are fabulous and have been a great tool for improving the accuracy of information, removing a lot of frustration around the village.
Vibe helps us get internal messaging to staff in a fun, graphic format.
As well as the serious stuff, slideshows of staff events are very popular. Plus, promote our outward-facing social media content inwardly to staff and visitors.
We're saving time and increasing team efficiency!
Vibe.fyi has had a positive impact on team meetings – the duration of meetings has reduced by approximately 30% because of not needing to cover the tracking of core services.
We easily share information to staff in all locations that isn't always available to them.
The different templates are a bonus - there's always a layout that works.
You can just have it all on Vibe.
Even when you’re at home, you can have these snackable bits of content you can retain, instead of having to check an email, look at an announcement, go from one platform to another.
It's transformed our communications for our non-wired staff.
The comm's tools we used previously for our non-wired employees weren’t up to the same level as those for wired.
