Alyssa Zeff:
Hi everyone. Alyssa here. You might notice that our sound quality is a little bit different than our usual podcast. That's because we are practicing social distancing and we are recording this virtually. I am here with Alison Davis. Hello Alison.

Alison Davis:
Hello, Alyssa.

Alyssa Zeff:
Alison is CEO of Davis & Company. We are interrupting our regularly scheduled podcast to talk to you about a very important topic, how COVID-19 is disrupting employee communication and what we can learn from this moment in time. So Alison, let's start there. We use the word disrupting very intentionally, and that's not necessarily a negative thing. What changes are happening right now in internal communication and what that means?

Alison Davis:
Yeah, it's certainly is an interesting time. I think, what communication teams have been doing really well is getting a lot of information out to their organizations. And in some ways, they've improved communication because the information is more timely, fresher, more relevant than ever before. So, that's maybe one example of how something which has been a little hard to live through has turned out to be a positive for internal communication.

Alyssa Zeff:
Certainly here in New Jersey for example, we've been remote for about two weeks, and that is completely remote and a lot of organizations in this area are in the same boat, but I think that's true worldwide. We're learned to adjust I think pretty well. What do you think that means for when we go back to the office?

Alison Davis:
There's some interesting studies out that even ask the question, "Will we go back to the office the same way that we did before?" Organizations, we work, for example, for a financial institution that didn't really allow remote work until they had to. And so suddenly remote work may turn out to be a lot more common than it had been before this, but I think that from a communication point of view, I actually hope that this changes this assumption that has bothered me a long time, which is the assumption is that everyone is having the same experience.

Alison Davis:
There's been a little bit of a thinking, well…for example, one of my favorite topics, town halls. Many town halls have been run, where there's in headquarters, will get kind of the full town hall experience versus the people who are in other locations who have to join remotely and that's not as good an experience. Well now our clients, for example, next week one of our clients is going to have 100% remote town hall. So I think it's interesting because this is forcing organizations to remake very quickly transform some of their channels and it allows us to think differently about what we do.

Alyssa Zeff:
I completely agree and I just want to build on that a little bit, especially as it relates to the remote work. We've heard a lot leading up to this about work/life balance. And now, work/life balance is literally from minute to minute. So many working parents are homeschooling at the exact same time and learning how to navigate it. And I think, still getting work done very productively in fact, and I think employers, we'll start thinking about the employee experience and what that means in helping people get their work done and meet the needs of what they have to get done outside of work as well.

Alison Davis:
Yeah, I mean it is interesting because we're talking mostly right now about the remote workforce. Of course, there's a big group of people who can't work remotely.

Alyssa Zeff:
Right.

Alison Davis:
I think that's the other part of this is, as we think going forward, how do we make sure that everyone in the organization has the same access to information, has the same ability to participate, all those good things.

Alyssa Zeff:
When we think about employee communication, we can break that down into a bunch of different buckets that I think are important to talk about. You touched a little bit on content and let's go there for a second. I think what I’m seeing happen is that because internal communication is so front and center, our clients who are responsible for communicating to employees are really being forced to prioritize and as a result what's happening is, they're really focusing on what employees need the most right now. How do you respond to that? What does that mean moving forward?

Alison Davis:
I think they have been responding to what is most needed. The interesting thing is I've had a couple of conversations, just over the past couple of days about what has been needed so far from employees, has been information specifically to COVID-19. What the organization is doing, how the organization is responding, what needs to change, all that good stuff. I feel like we're at a pivot point and we'll be over the next X number of weeks where the balance of information needs to change.

Alison Davis:
Right now, for example, we're hearing a lot from employees that they really need to understand what are our priorities as an organization. In other words, what should we be focused on? How should we be doing our jobs? That kind of thing. So to your point about content, I think it's going to be very interesting because communicators really need to think a lot about what is the right mix of content for us is going forward and it's going to change all year, probably that mix.

Alison Davis:
What is the right mix? It's, I feel like it's almost changing day to day right now and it's certainly going to change, but it's all good in this way. I think we're really thinking more about what employees need in terms of content and maybe a little less about what leaders want to talk about.

Alyssa Zeff:
That's a great transition to the next bucket that I would think about, which are leaders and managers who play an important role no matter what's going on as it relates to communication, but again, right now as you're prioritizing and divvying up what role should leaders, let's start there. What role should senior leaders be playing right now, do you think?

Alison Davis:
Well, I think it's not that different in some ways from the role that they should have been playing all along, but maybe they haven't. Certainly for leaders, it's always about what we're trying to do big picture, so what's, I mean we talked about things like vision and objectives.

Alison Davis:
I think now more than ever, people... employees want leaders to be reassuring. They want them to be human and accessible and just really provide some, I guess I'm going to use the word reassurance again because that's the best word. And then I really feel like this is an important point for leaders to give recognition.

Alyssa Zeff:
Yeah.

Alison Davis:
Everybody's going through this. It's not easy. People are doing extraordinary things, and it's really important for leaders to say, "Hey, good job. Thank you. That was amazing. Couldn't do without you," all those kinds of things.

Alyssa Zeff:
And I really hope that this provides a platform for moving past this particular crisis for leaders to realize this role. I know a lot of in-house communicators struggle with managing leaders, each one who has their own priority of things that they want to talk about. And I hope that this emergency sort of situation, level sets leaders to make them realize how to prioritize. And that's based on employee needs.

Alison Davis:
Yeah and I mean the other thing that we were talking about a few days ago, Alyssa is great opportunity for manager communication as well, and I know you were thinking about, what is the role of managers today or going forward?

Alyssa Zeff:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think we know that employees, you said this a few minutes ago, employees are wondering, okay, "What do I need to do now? What does this mean for my job? What should I be working on? What's priorities? What's not?" That day to day comes down to managers and teams specific. Senior leader can't lay that out for every employee. A manager has to lay that out for their teams, and managers need to recognize this, I think as part of their role.

Alison Davis:
Yeah, and managers will probably need help, they can't do it alone.

Alyssa Zeff:
Yeah.

Alison Davis:
Important role for communicators to figure out, do managers need information? Do they need advice? But it's really important for managers to be in front of virtually in some cases in front of their people engaging with them.

Alyssa Zeff:
And communicators cannot only help with tools, but absolutely just help remind them that this is their role that they have to.

Alison Davis:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Alyssa Zeff:
Another bucket that I would like to talk about are channels. We've touched on the fact that everybody's remote now or a lot of people full workforces are remote or certainly a large percentage, which has a huge impact on the channels that people are using, so what do you think are priorities as it relates to channels right now?

Alison Davis:
I think one priority is to figure out if you have the right mix of channels and to figure out also whether you're using the right channel for the right purpose. But I also think there's an opportunity to, is it time to actually introduce something new? Weirdly enough, it may be. Weirdly enough, if you've been thinking for a long time about an app, it's an interesting thing to bring up right now, especially if you have a lot of people who are desk-less and have difficulty logging in because of their role.

Alison Davis:
One of the things that we've been talking a lot to clients who are on a Microsoft platform is, what's the role for example of teams? What's the role of virtual meetings? Which the role of email? What's the role of social platforms like Yammer? Weirdly enough, I think many organizations, some of these things have been underutilized.

Alyssa Zeff:
Absolutely.

Alison Davis:
So, it's a really good opportunity to say what can we activate.

Alyssa Zeff:
Not only am I working with clients and helping them do that, but I was really proud of us at Davis & Company that we did that very quickly. In one of our very first staff meetings, when we were all working remotely, we laid out the different channels that we were using. We laid out the purpose of the channel, what you should go there for, and something else, which is really important. The expectations for that channel.

Alyssa Zeff:
So, for example, if I email you, that means I'm expecting a response within a couple of hours. If I Zoom you, I'm expecting response within a couple of minutes and if I call you, it's urgent. Those types of things and they sound simple and it's different for every organization or every team even, but to understand those expectations so everyone's on the same page is really valuable.

Alison Davis:
Yeah, and it's not easy to suddenly change the way you're working. We are a very face-to-face firm. We spend a lot of time in the same office, not all the time, but a lot of time. We rely on person-to-person communication and going 100% virtually has been a big change for us. Certainly it's a big change. It's even bigger change for larger organizations. So in communication often at defining how the kind of rules work is very valuable and that's what we did. And I think that's what a lot of organizations are having to do.

Alyssa Zeff:
So the last thing I want to touch base on is we've talked about the different buckets and channels, leaders and managers and content. But if we step back and think about the employee communication, internal communication function overall, I think we're seeing impacts that could change the role within an organization that internal communication plays. What are some things that are happening that you think will have a long-term impact?

Alison Davis:
You use the word disruption, which I think is a really good word for us to think about. And one of my clients said to me the other day, "Wow, this is a great opportunity for us because we've been wanting to make changes for a long time and really haven't been able to do so. But now we have to and now we want to keep it going." So it's, "Wow, that's interesting."

Alison Davis:
And I think for me, what I've been thinking about a lot is, what is the mission of employee communication? Why are we valuable to an organization? And what I'm really feeling these days, and I think it's going to be really a factor going forward, is one of our, the key things that we do is we help create community within our organizations.

Alison Davis:
We help bring people together, make them feel like they're a part of something, and help them understand the common mission. And it helps them collaborate with each other. So that's a lot different than being a news agency within an organization and it's a lot more important. So I mean, I think that's really cool.

Alyssa Zeff:
I think that's great. And one of the things that I think, really requires is a little bit of letting go and being okay with that. When you're a news organization, you write, you create, you edit, you push, it doesn't change. But now it's about facilitating communication, facilitating conversation, enabling it.

Alyssa Zeff:
You mentioned social channels like Yammer, that is, you create the channel, you can sort of pose questions and get the conversation started. But it's being okay letting that conversation grow on its own because that's where the value comes from, where people feel connected to their colleagues and feel like they're part of something.

Alison Davis:
Yeah, and letting go is, I won't sing it, but here you go, is difficult. And for a very long time, communication has been in this model. You've mentioned packaging has been in this model where everything has to be checked, double-checked, approved, approved again, approved the 15th time, then packaged, nice ribbon, the whole thing bow. And that right now, that's really feeling very old fashioned to me, and I think it's not very useful to people.

Alyssa Zeff:
Right.

Alison Davis:
I mean people need, and I had mentioned earlier, sort of this, we're creating this content that's very immediate and fresh and relevant and I think we have to really think about how we let go of that packaging and move forward toward a communication that's much more, much more like communicate the verb and less like communication the noun.

Alyssa Zeff:
Oh, yeah. That's a great way of putting it. I completely agree. Well, that was everything I wanted to cover. Is there anything else that we haven't discussed that you would want to add?

Alison Davis:
Well, I think that would probably, if someone's listened to this podcast, they're a little bit, "Whoa, this is a lot," and it's not going to happen immediately and it's not necessarily going to be easy, but I think that this is just a really great opportunity for us. I mean, I think the good news right now is, everyone in an organization is understanding how important communication is, how vital it is, and so now where do we take it? Where can we go from here?

Alyssa Zeff:
I used to have conversations with communicators who would constantly say, "We need a seat at the table. We need to see that the table," while the spotlight is on us right now..we have that seat at the table and it's a missed opportunity if we don't do something with it in my opinion.

Alison Davis:
Yeah. I agree.

Alyssa Zeff:
Well, thank you again for being here. For those of you who have listened to our podcast before, you would know that at this moment in time we would spin a big wheel and we would play a game. But we're not going to do that today. But instead I thought Alison, we can just reflect on our last two weeks in quarantine and maybe answer a couple of questions about that.

Alison Davis:
It's a great idea.

Alyssa Zeff:
So what is one thing you miss the most about being in the office?

Alison Davis:
The food. We always have a lot of food. People bake. That's my fun answer. More seriously, I miss just the informal interaction that we have in the pop-up conversations and all that. Just kind of in between the line stuff, which is really so much harder to do. You have to ... Yes, you can chat virtually and all that, but I missed that a lot. And Alyssa, how about you? What do you miss?

Alyssa Zeff:
I mean, similarly, I miss the people. I can talk to people on Zoom all the time, but it's not, it's not the same as we know. It's not as informal. It's more forced. I have to consciously think, "Oh, I want to talk to this person. I have to set up a Zoom meeting," so I miss just being able to walk around and talk to people and see what's going on, and laugh about stuff.

Alison Davis:
Yeah. How about something that you like about working from home?

Alyssa Zeff:
Well, the biggest one for me is that I can control the temperature in my house.

Alison Davis:
That's funny, but true.

Alyssa Zeff:
My office at Davis & Company is either like 40 billion degrees or 40 billion below.

Alison Davis:
It's either the sun or Pluto.

Alyssa Zeff:
Right.

Alison Davis:
Right.

Alyssa Zeff:
That's a big one. Aside from that, not ... And I do love being able to be with my son all day, even though I have to ignore him a lot. He being able to just quickly say hi to him all the time has been a lot of fun.

Alison Davis:
Yeah, that's good. That's good.

Alyssa Zeff:
How about you?

Alison Davis:
I think that my favorite thing working from home is the expectations, the grooming expectations are a lot less.

Alyssa Zeff:
We have pretty low grooming expectations.

Alison Davis:
They weren't big, they weren't high before, right?

Alyssa Zeff:
Well, thank you again for being here. This was great to our listeners. I encourage you to visit our website because a lot of the topics that we talked about today, we have resources available there that expand on it even more.

Alison Davis:
Thank you very much.

Alyssa Zeff:
Thank you.