Category: Change Communications

UX design meets internal communications

What if we could lessen the burden of consuming communication to improve the experience of employees at work? That’s what led me to start a mission to reduce and simplify comms in organisations.

In 2016 I took a short career break and did a course in UX design. It had always been something that has interested me in view of the work I’ve done with intranets and websites throughout my career.

The course with General Assembly in London was a brilliant introduction covering user research techniques, analysing user journeys and interface design, prototyping and user testing. It culminated in a portfolio project to put all of it together.

It led very quickly to a piece of contract work helping a client overhaul their intranet. (We completed the 12 month project in around 5 months and using only around 75% of the planned budget …in case you were wondering)

But this fanatastic grounding in UX design got me thinking about the user experience of the Internal Communications we produce.

How much do staff welcome the email we write and the videos we make, and the intranets they have to wade through to find what they want?

What if we could lessen the burden of consuming communication to improve the experience of employees at work?

And that’s what led me to start a mission to reduce and simplify comms in organisations.

Now, I always start of by working out:

  • “what would happen if we didn’t communicate that?”
  • “do staff want to know this?”
  • “do they need to know?”
  • “how can we minimise worry and tell people just in time, not too early, and not too late?”

I think going through this process leads to much simpler, easier project communications and perhaps even more successful change programmes.

Imagine how much happier and more productive people could be if we could reduce the overwhelm for them.

Eliminating overwhelm by paring back

I’ve often eliminated comms activities by asking the question “What would happen if we didn’t do that or communicate that?”. In change comms I think you’d be surprised how often the answer is “not much” or “nothing at all”.

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My thoughts on modern employee communication…

I’ve never been a fan of employee newsletters. I think they are sometimes just communication for the sake of communication.

I studied UX design back in 2016 and my focus on comms in recent years has been about minimising overwhelm for staff and looking closely at the user experience of the Comms we push out or that employees consume.

And so I’ve often eliminated comms activities by asking the question “What would happen if we didn’t do that or communicate that?”

In change comms I think you’d be surprised how often the answer is “not much” or “nothing at all”.

I think our job as communicators of change is to make the complex feel easy and pumping out loads of push-comms on a topic tends to do the opposite. But it’s vital that anxious employees can find information if they want it.

I like to publish non urgent news on the intranet —as it happens— and then, as needed, send around an email pointing to recent intranet stories which has the dual effect of encouraging people to make good use of the intranet where invariably they’ll stumble across other things I want them to see or be aware of.

If I can help you reduce the overwhelm in your organisation and set your employees free to do their best work, then please get in touch with me.

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Perspective in Communications

As a a communicator, I am fascinated by information flows in the world today.

I’ve always been interested in sensemaking; understanding how different people make sense of what we do and say, based on their own life experiences, upbringing, social standing, wealth or health.

One theme that keeps coming up for me is that of “PERSPECTIVE”.  

After a 2-3 years of working in isolation due to the pandemic, and in my case, a little longer as I’ve been working remotely and across international borders since pre-pandemic days, I realised that what we lack these days in communications can be perspective, especially when audiences are remote.  They don’t benefit from company “vibe” that you get in an office or by sitting in the canteen at lunchtime. They might not even get out of the house much or spend much time in the city anymore.

By perspective I mean the ability to frame what we see/hear/understand in the context of what’s normal or what’s commonplace. Algorithms in social media feed us more of what we like (or more accurately, what keeps the ad revenues of the social media platforms healthy), but we lose perspective.

For example if you always click on funny videos, you’ll get fed more funny videos, and you might think all everyone does these days is make and share funny videos. But if you could actually see every single post or comment that every one of your contacts posted for the next hour, you’d find it’s not all funny videos. Likewise, if you walked down the street, you’d find lots of people neither watching nor posting videos at all!

For internal comms, remote staff are going to be very dependent on the communication we send them.

Have you thought about the impact of perspective in communications? How can we help staff in organisations maintain perspective and avoid getting a distorted view of reality?

When you don’t know…. communicate uncertainty

If you don’t say something, then people will start to fill in the gaps themselves. Stay in control of your story by learning to communicate uncertainty when there’s nothing to say yet.

Continue reading “When you don’t know…. communicate uncertainty”

Finding the internal communications rainmakers

Every organisation has internal communications “rainmakers”. These are the magical unicorn employees who just seem to know everything and everyone. Here are 5 ways you can work out who they are and how you can persuade them to spread their magic dust over your messages.

Continue reading “Finding the internal communications rainmakers”