Feature
Despite the advent of communication channels such as Slack, Messenger and intranets, the number one channel for communicating with employees among internal communication teams is ... email. Granted, the finding comes from Workshop, which provides an email platform for internal communications, but it appears to have some merit.
“If you survey employees, they always say, ‘oh, we get so much email,’ but then they always say email is the best way to get to me,” said Chris Harrer, former vice president of internal communications at Comcast.
Email also has the advantage of being familiar to everyone in the workplace, regardless of age or background, said Kosi Harris, CEO and founder of KH PR, which handles internal communications for IMPACCT Brooklyn, a community development organization.
Despite email’s versatility and reach, it’s important not to overuse the medium.
“There is definitely a purpose for email, but I think it has to be used sparingly,” said Jamie Stokes, director of digital communications at Cox Enterprises.
Company leaders need to understand that not every single announcement warrants an all-staff email, Stokes said. Instead, it’s a wise strategy to send collective messages in a weekly or biweekly newsletter. In addition, make sure you are only sending information when there is important, relevant content to share, said Jeanne Jennings, founder and CEO of Email Optimization Shop.
Getting Your Message Heard
Many factors can make it difficult for an email to pierce through to the intended recipient. But quantity and quality are typically the most important to address. Here are four ways to make your internal emails more engaging.
1. Tailor the Message
For larger companies with a mix of teams and departments, one single newsletter that goes to everyone in the company likely won’t provide value for everyone.
Comcast, for instance, has more than 100,000 employees across different departments, so it’s essential to have different distribution lists to push out different content to different departments.
“Maybe the two top items of the newsletter are the same for all employees, but then the rest of the content is tailored to the distribution list or department,” Harrer said.
The goal should be to give employees a “weekend experience” during the week, he added. “On the weekend, your feed on your phone is all geared toward you but when you’re in the office, it's just a hodgepodge of generic content, not specific to you.”
The goal, Harrer said, is to make the content you see in the office personalized to your interests and needs.
Internal comms teams also need to provide the right balance of content. Stokes summed this up as providing vegetables and candy. The vegetables are what you need to know — how the company is performing, information about employee benefits or upcoming reviews. The candy is a feel-good story about an employee or a pop culture quiz that draws the reader in. “You might read some vegetable content while you’re there consuming the candy content,” she said.
However, not every message belongs in the newsletter. For instance, staff members will send Harris information about a workshop or an event that isn’t relevant to the entire staff and instead of putting it in the newsletter, she will share it as a LinkedIn post.
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2. Make Employees a Focal Point
Don’t underestimate the importance of content that puts employees in the spotlight. Use your employees to drive the storytelling in your newsletter and to get more eyeballs on your content, Harrer said.
“When you highlight an employee, it makes them feel good and engaged, and they will ask their colleagues, ‘Did you see the newsletter? I was in it,’” he said.
With so many workplaces adopting hybrid work schedules, it’s become even more important to include content that features employees because it helps workers to learn about their colleagues, Harris said.
“They often see photos of their coworkers in the newsletter that they may not ever meet in person,” she said.
3. Preview Content With a Strong Subject Line
Intriguing subject lines will entice employees to read your newsletter.
“Make sure your subject lines are reflective of what the content actually is but also give the recipient a reason to open and read it,” Harris said.
The subject line should tell the recipient whether this email is urgent and they should stop and read it, or if they can read it during their lunch hour.
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Internal communication teams can also signal the content of the email using the pretext that appears to the right of the subject line.
Most emails show the first 25 characters of text in the email before the email is even opened. Use those characters to preview what topics will be covered in the newsletter, Jennings said. So, rather than having the first line of the email state, “Open this email to learn about the new holiday hours,” use text that says, “Summer hours, meet our new president,” to preview more than one topic in the newsletter, Jennings said.
Related Article: Having a Single Source of Truth for Internal Communications Helps, But Don't Stop There
4. Develop a Strong Communications Strategy
Although Cox uses email for internal comms, Stokes said the company’s intranet is Cox’s main channel for communicating with employees. Email and Viva Engage (formerly Yammer) all drive employees to the company’s intranet site.
“Our company newsletters are a roundup of what’s on the intranet,” Stokes said. “That’s how we positioned it.” If it's a message that needs to go out to the entire company, it goes on the intranet first, and then it’s included in the email roundup at the end of the week, she said.
This habit, she said, isn’t likely to happen overnight. It took the company years to get to this point. The team had to train people to go to the intranet for news and updates and had to push back when leadership wanted to hit send on multiple all-employee emails.
To achieve the desired outcome, Cox’s internal comms team developed a strong communication strategy that clearly spelled out the type of communication sent in newsletters, the type sent through Viva Engage and the type of message that warrants an all-employee email.
“It takes practice to get people to understand what a Viva Engage message is and why it would go there versus the intranet,” she said.
