Alyssa Zeff:
Hey everybody. Welcome back to Employee Buzz. I am Alyssa Zeff, your live music fan, lake life lover and amateur hiker. I say amateur because I only started a few years ago really getting into hiking. But all of these things are things that I’m really missing while we’re still under quarantine. I’m here with Eric Goodman, an associate director here at Davis & Company. Eric is a video game enthusiast, a self-proclaimed Grateful Deadhead and an avid hiker. He’s not in amateur status with me. Welcome, Eric.

Eric Goodman:
Thank you.

Alyssa Zeff:
So today, we’re going to talk about employee-centric communication. Right off the bat, I think we need to help our listeners understand what we mean here. So let’s start with a quick definition. When we say employee-centric communication, what does that mean?

Eric Goodman:
Absolutely. So for me, employee-centric communication means focusing your messages on what employees want or need. So essentially, you’re helping them keep up with information that’s necessary for their work or that builds upon the culture.

Alyssa Zeff:
I think that’s right on. I think it really is about understanding what and how they need to succeed. And it’s about messaging, it’s about the right channels, and it’s really about knowing your employees and each employee is different. Each organization’s employees are different. So it’s really understanding the mix of employees in your organization and customizing your communication to them.

Eric Goodman:
Exactly. Well said.

Alyssa Zeff:
So, Eric, why do you think it’s important to have this employee-centric mentality for internal communications?

Eric Goodman:
Well, when you’re talking about internal communications, employees are your most important audience, right? They’re the ones very busy getting the work done. So anything on top of that

day-to-day work is extra. So as a communicator, you want to think about employees’ wants and needs, then create a communication to support them and make things easier. You don’t want to start sending them anything that will take too much time away from their day because, again, as I said, they have a day job.

Alyssa Zeff:
That makes a lot of sense. So this seems kind of obvious. If you’re in employee communications and that’s part of your role, you need to focus on employees when you’re communicating with them. So what are people struggling with when it comes to this?

Eric Goodman:
I think that often communicators work with a lot of different stakeholders, and each has their own unique needs, whether they’re leaders or heads of departments, you can get very wrapped up in the day to day that you forget the people on the other end of your communication. So what I mean by this is, let’s say the head of HR contacts you and has a message that needs to go out immediately. That urgency doesn’t give you the proper time to consider your audience factors, like, “Does this have the right focus? Are action items clear? Is this going out through the right channel at the right time?” So you can easily lose your audience if the communication doesn’t focus on them. If it’s not relevant or easy to follow, employees won’t pay attention. And worse yet, you lose credibility, and they won’t pay attention to your messages moving forward either.

Alyssa Zeff:
I think that’s a great point. To build on that, I think another big struggle is that people in these roles aren’t taking the time to get to know their audiences. And the way to do that is through really good measurement. To understand what works, what doesn’t, what’s on their minds, what’s important, how they access information, all of that is just vital data that’s going to help you create communication that resonates. So I think the struggle that I see the most is people prioritizing understanding their audiences in real, meaningful ways.

Eric Goodman:
Right. You have to move away from, “I have to get this out,” and have to start moving towards, “Is this helpful for them?”

Alyssa Zeff:
Right. Let’s bring this to life. I mean, what does it really look like in practice? What can you do to focus on what employees want and need?

Eric Goodman:
At Davis & Company, we talk about this all the time. We say, “Be an expert not, an order taker.” So there’s always going to be topics that you have to communicate, but how they’re communicated is up to you. So, you know the communication system at your disposal, and you can determine the best channel to use. And I think you really need to use your expertise paired with data to make your case. Let me give an example. For instance, a leader may ask you to prepare an email, but maybe you don’t think an email is the best method because, in the past, these messages only received a 40% open rate and 20% click-through rates. So instead, you can use that data and suggest back to the leader, maybe post a short video message because we’ve seen that those typically get about 80% of the users on the intranet. So they really can't argue with the data.

Alyssa Zeff:
That’s great. The last time you were here, our topic was storytelling. And I think that really connects to what we’re talking about today because employee-centric communication needs to be engaging. And one of the key elements of that is telling a story. Stories really help people embrace and understand and connect with content. Things like examples and interviews and really bringing those to life really help people see themselves in the communication. Which is the key to employee-centric communication. Which is they feel it, they connect with it, they understand it.

Eric Goodman:
Yeah, absolutely.

Alyssa Zeff:
So what do you think are some of the most common mistakes when communicating to employees, and what can be done to fix them?

Eric Goodman:
You mentioned our last storytelling podcast that we did together. And I think we talked about this then as well. One of the biggest mistakes is using dry and formal language, which automatically puts your audience at arms distance. I would say do the flip side of that. Use simple casual language and help them understand. Never use jargon, really explain things in the most simplest way possible because you shouldn’t need a glossary to understand an email.

Alyssa Zeff:
I think that’s such a great point, and building on that, lengthy content just needs to go away. I mean it’s got to be short, clearly call-out action items, nothing that takes too much time as you mentioned out of their regular day. It’s got to be something that they can easily scan and digest and find out the important information.

Eric Goodman:
Definitely. I think another challenge is when communicators try to use a blanket approach to reach all employees. Like you said earlier, you need to do the research and figure out who your employees are and what are their wants and what are their needs. So if you have employees that are working in sales, they might not get the same messages from the employees that are in manufacturing. They’ve very different needs. So you don’t want to send them the same exact message. And just to reiterate, the less that pertains to them the less they’re going to pay attention.

Alyssa Zeff:
Such a great point. One of the things that I think is a big mistake is communicators seeing themselves as sort of the pusher of news. That was a long time ago when it was the role of the communicator to share news. But by the time the communicator shares it, news is old already. In fact, it’s not relevant. So what I really think communicators should be focusing on is, "What does this mean? What does it mean for their role? What does it mean to the organization? What does it mean for the company overall?" And I think one of the things that’s been very interesting as we have gone through the COVID-19 pandemic this year is this shift has already happened or needed to happen by urgency for internal communications. And I hope it’s something that really sticks. Communicators seeing themselves as not needing to share news but share relevant, “What does this mean? What's going on?”

Eric Goodman:
Yeah. And just to build upon that, you kind of mentioned that old news approach is really an old mentality for internal communications. I think that also kind of speaks to how technology changes. It used to be very one-way communication. So it would be top-down or pushing communications out, but as different tools become available to make it more of a dialogue, people have adapted their communication strategies to hear back from their employees as well.

Alyssa Zeff:
That's such a great point. I like to say, "Don’t think of yourself as a distributor of information, think of yourself as a facilitator of conversations." You can share information that starts dialogues, that starts conversations. It’s about letting go of control a little bit. But employees want to talk to each other, they want to be heard and listened to as much as they want to receive information.

Eric Goodman:
And looping that back to storytelling, that face-to-face interaction is going to get them to remember the content more than if they had read it in an email.

Alyssa Zeff:
Absolutely. So, last question. If you could give just one piece of advice to our listeners to help them have more of employee-centric mentality, what would it be?

Eric Goodman:
Well, I think the key takeaway is before you create any communications, before you put pen to paper, think carefully about your audiences. Break them down into groups, consider what each needs to know, believe and do. And then, once you do create communications, make sure it supports those objectives.

Alyssa Zeff:
That’s great advice. I think being objective based is so critical. Eric, thank you for taking the time to join us again here on Employee Buzz.

Eric Goodman:
Always a pleasure.

Alyssa Zeff:
Thanks again.