Comms Minute: Recent Episodes
Smarp
Tune in as we interview leading industry experts on how to elevate communications within companies. A collection of insightful conversations about shifting communications into strategic business advisors.
The rapid shift to a hybrid and remote workforce, and the rise of Employee Experience, have put internal communicators in the spotlight.
But what is the employee experience exactly? And what role should communicators play in creating a successful one?
Join Mike Klein in this episode of the Comms Minute, as he interviews Lithuanian author and comms consultant Vija Valentukonytė Urbanavičienė.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/.
Hey Comms Minute listeners, Aleks here. I wanted to take a moment to thank you all for being with us throughout this season. Thank you for tuning in for those 31 Comms Minute episodes over the last half-year or so. We hope you enjoyed listening to them as much as we did making them. It’s been a blast!
Thank you to our hosts, Brad Whitworth and Mike Klein, and to our amazing guests who shared their time, wisdom, and experiences with us.
Now, the Comms Minute will be taking a break while we cook up something new. But we’ll be back before you know it, with more news, interviews and other great content focusing on the fascinating world of internal communication.
In the meantime, if you’ve missed any episodes from our first two seasons, now is the perfect time to catch up! They’re all available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else you get your podcasts.
We would also like to know how YOU felt about season 2 of Comms Minute. For any and all feedback, feel free to shoot us an email at marketing@smarp.com … and of course we would love it if you dropped us a rating on Apple Podcasts.
And in case you didn’t know, The Comms Minute is presented by Smarp, the leading employee communications & advocacy platform. Join our community and stay posted on future podcast episodes by visiting our website at www.smarp.com
Anyway, that’s all for now! Stay tuned, and we’ll see you again soon!
Thank you to our hosts, Brad Whitworth and Mike Klein, and to our amazing guests who shared their time, wisdom, and experiences with us.
Now, the Comms Minute will be taking a quick breather while we cook up more episodes. But we’ll be back before you know it, with more interviews focusing on the fascinating world of internal communication.
In the meantime, if you’ve missed any episodes from our first two seasons, now is the perfect time to catch up! They’re all available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else you get your podcasts.
And in case you didn’t know, The Comms Minute is presented by Smarp, the leading employee communications & advocacy platform.
To learn more, feel free to reach out to us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram… or you can always visit our website at www.smarp.com
Anyway, that’s all for now! Stay tuned, and we’ll see you again soon!
Want to network effectively? Here's a tip: it's not so much what your network can do for you, but what you can do for your network.
In this episode, networking expert Lin McDevitt-Pugh explains why generosity and curiosity can help us build stronger connections, and how we can approach networking the same way Bill Gates approaches money these days: as something to give away more than to collect.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/.
No man (or woman) is an island. At one point or another, we all need help from other people, and having a solid personal and professional network can help make things easier. But what if we don’t have a strong network to lean on? How do we start to build one?
In this episode, networking expert Lin McDevitt-Pugh explains the three main values of a network and shares some tips on what we can do to grow them.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/.
Who defines what an organization's purpose is? According to Abhijit Shanker (board member at SimplyCommunicate and former Chief of Comms at UNICEF), that's the role of the Internal Communicator.
In this episode, Mike and Abhijit talk about how internal communicators can make a fundamental difference in their organization by defining and communicating its true purpose.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/.
It's no secret: Technology has tremendous power to transform how bureaucratic organizations communicate with their employees. But how to do it properly?
In this episode, Abhijit Shanker shares his experience bringing comms technology to UNICEF for the first time and talks about the key role senior executives played to help accelerate the process.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/.
"As a communications professional, do you want to be seen as someone who sits and writes emails, or do you want to be seen as a strategic advisor on how to address your employees?"
In this episode, Abhijit Shanker, former Chief of Communicators at UNICEF, talks about why it's important to challenge bureaucracy in an organization and sheds some light on one of the most frequently asked questions for Internal Communicators: how to get a seat at the table.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/.
What are the key factors to consider when segmenting employee audiences in large, complex organizations?
In this episode, Mike Klein is hosting New York-based consultant and author Abhijit Shanker. Abhijit was Chief of Communications at UNICEF from 2008 to 2019, and today he shares how he managed to communicate effectively to an audience of more than 50.000 employees, based out of 192 countries.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/.
Can communicators exercise creativity and humor to engage with their audiences? According to comms all-star Steve Crescenzo, there's just no other choice. In this episode of Comms Minute, Brad Whitworth continues his conversation with Steve, examining why it's essential to take the "corporate" out of "corporate communications."
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
What are CEO's telling consultants that they won't tell their own communicators?
In today's episode, we continue talking with Steve Crescenzo, CEO of consultancy firm Crescenzo Communications, as he shares his experience advising top leaders and CEO's from all over the world.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
In this episode, Brad Whitworth sits down with comms guru Steve Crescenzo to talk about the written word's role in today's fast-paced business communications world.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
With the information overload that the internet has brought, now it's more complicated than ever to capture the reader's attention. So, is there a way to rise above all the noise?
In today's episode, Brad Whitworth hosts Steve Crescenzo, one of the leading speakers in the Corporate Communications industry. Steve has been named the #1 speaker five times (three of those in a row) at the International Association of Business Communicators World Conference.
Tune in as Steve shares his knowledge and some practical tips on capturing the readers' attention and enticing them to continue reading.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
Mike Klein continues his conversation with Monique Zytnik, Senior Communication Advisor at Open Communication.
In today's episode, Monique shares her view on the concept of 'Noisebreaking': the ability to cut down the noise in an organization, focus on the essential and produce internal communications that are valuable, meaningful, and effective.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
In this episode of the Comms Minute, Monique Zytnik, Senior Communication Advisor at Open Communication, talks about a brand new concept coming to the IC world: Immersive Communication.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
In the post-pandemic future of work, more and more companies are considering transitioning into a hybrid work model. But is this a good move for every organization? Is hybrid a sustainable model?
In today's Comms Minute, Mike Klein and Monique Zytnik, Senior Communication Advisor at Open Communication, discuss the challenges of embracing a hybrid working model and finding the right balance between flexibility and cost-efficiency.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
Over the years IABC has looked at gender equality in the communication profession, starting with a cutting-edge study called “The Velvet Ghetto.” Natasha Nicholson had a chance to interview lots of women in communication leadership roles during your time at the global association. In today's Comms Minute, Natasha reflects on the role of women in comms and how it's changed throughout these years.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
In today's Comms Minute, you’re going to hear how to take some of the stress out of your day. Natasha Nicholson who led the content and communication team at the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) reflects on how yoga can help you become a better communicator, a better manager, and a better person.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
Are your audiences fickle? Want to know how you can grab their attention? Join Brad Whitworth and Natasha Nicholson for today's episode of Comms Minute to learn one simple question that can help you find the key to a picky audience.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
Internal Communications is a field that’s changing all the time. But what’s the most important trend impacting the profession today?
Brad Whitworth continues his conversation with Natasha Nicholson, content strategy and production lead at Kantola Training Solutions. What's the new trend in internal communication today? The pandemic and technology have created a new paradigm — Hybrid Workplace — and comms professionals need to be at the forefront of that trend.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
Content and channels: you can’t really have one without the other, but which is more important in the communications process today? In today's Comms Minute we look at this balance between content and channels and how to make sure they support each other.
Our guest today is Natasha Nicholson, who led the content and communication team at the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), and is now a content strategy and production lead at Kantola Training Solutions.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
In today's episode of Comms Minute, Diana Bonczar, Co-Founder of Inko Club, reflects on the nature of internal communications as a global profession.
To be good at employee communications, you've got to master the cultural lens and apply the right perspective to the right audience. Diana shares a real case example from her career where she needed to translate local context for a global corporation.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
Mike Klein continues his conversation with Diana Bonczar, Co-Founder of Inko Club.
In today's episode, Diana shares her view on entrepreneurial opportunities for internal comms professionals today. One of those opportunities is scale-up companies that grew out of the startup phase. These fast-growing companies quickly start to feel the need for internal communications. There is one challenge, however. The role of internal communication in those companies is often substituted by people in marketing or HR that cannot provide quality and strategic communication support.
Diana Bonczar, Co-Founder of Inko Club, shares a piece of advice for all young professionals looking into communication career opportunities.
First of all, start with basics: join webinars, read free resources, connect with other comms professionals to get a sense of breadth and learn the vocabulary.
Then look for a junior role or internship in an international company that has an established internal comms function that you can learn from. That would allow you to see what good looks like and take that knowledge to the next level when you eventually change your career.
What’s the most important thing that a CEO needs to know about communication?
The comms industry guru Shel Holtz shares his number one thing every CEO should understand about communications. Internal comms is not a one-way stream of messaging, it's not a distribution of content. To get internal comms, you need to think in a multi-directional dimension.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
Brad Whitworth continues his conversation with Shel Holtz, the communications industry guru on technology, an author, a lecturer, an IABC Fellow, and director of internal communications at Webcor in San Francisco.
In today's episode, Shel shares the very best communications advice he ever received in his career — spend more time listening than talking. He also shares some practical tips on how to improve your listening skills and become a better communicator.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
How to get employees to embrace technology and become regular users of a new platform or application?
Tune in to today's episode of the Comms Minute to learn two tactical approaches that will help your employees adopt a new comms platform or app.
Our guest today is Shel Holtz, the communications industry guru on technology, an author, a lecturer, an IABC Fellow, and director of internal communications at Webcor in San Francisco.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
Communicators can’t do everything themselves, and we’re all looking for ways to embrace user-generated content. But how to get it done right?
In today's Comms Minute, the communications industry guru on technology Shel HoltzShel Holtz shares his three practical tips for getting user-generated content right.
Tune in and share this episode with your comms friends. Visit https://smarp.com/ for more unique insights on employee communication and advocacy.
You need new communication technology and you've got to sell it internally to your leadership team, but how?
In today's episode, Brad Whitworth is hosting the communications industry guru on technology Shel Holtz. Shel is an author, a lecturer, an IABC Fellow, and director of internal communications at Webcor in San Francisco.
Tune in as Shel shares some practical tips on how to build a relationship with the IT department and sell internally the software you need to do your best job.
If you are looking for a reliable communication platform to help you reach all your employees with targeted communications, check out Smarp: https://smarp.com/
Mike Klein continues his conversation with Aniisu K Verghese who currently heads Communications at a leading travel technology firm and is one of the leading Internal Communication (IC) personalities outside of the “Anglo-Saxon” world.
In today's episode, Aniisu reflects on what needs to happen in order to transform internal communication into a truly global profession with common traits. He shares 4 key aspects to consider: 1) investing in standardized capabilities and skills, 2) providing opportunities for global learning, 3) encouraging mentorship, 4) making resources more available & affordable.
In today's Comms Minute, Aniisu Verghese, Director of Corporate Communications at a leading travel technology firm, shares his three key lessons that India, as a country, as a market, as a culture, has to share with the world of Internal Communications. Tune in to learn more about the three Rs: Resilience, Rigor, Respect, and how they can inspire Internal Comms in your organization.
In today's episode, we continue talking to Rebecca Sangster-Kelly. She shares a little trick on how to get senior leaders to understand and follow your advice as an internal comms professional.
In this episode, an emerging internal comms thought leader Rebecca Sangster-Kelly talks about the gap in the practical side of comms and the way the IC profession is perceived. That gap was one of the reasons Rebecca started her series of videos for leaders and communication professionals.
Season 2 of the Comms Minute podcast is coming next week, and we’ve made some major changes! 👇
- Comms Shift is now Comms Minute
The podcast was initially a monthly interview, 30-45 min long.
In season one, we introduced the concept of short 2-5 min long episodes focused on one actionable insight delivered 2-3 times a week.
Our listeners seemed to like it. We heard your feedback and we are doubling down on this.
- The experts become the hosts
It's been an amazing learning journey for us as we had the chance to interview some brilliant communication consultants, in-house professionals, authors, and thought-leaders.
And today we're excited to announce that two of those experts are becoming the co-hosts of the Comms Minute podcast.
Smarp senior strategic advisors, well-known internal comms experts with over eighty years of combined experience, Mike Klein and Brad Whitworth will take on the hosting duty in season two.
We’re super excited about the new season and hope you are looking forward to it too.
New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. 🎧
If you got a minute — tune in! 😉
Thank you for being with us this year. It has been a challenge, but together we came out of it stronger. Thanks for tuning in to those 55 Comms Shift podcast episodes that went live in 2020. 🎧 Thanks for being among those 6000 attendees who joined our live sessions this year. 📺 Thanks for those 1200 questions that you asked. 💬 And thank you for the countless pieces of advice that you shared with us and other peers in the community. 🧡 Comms Shift season 2 is coming in January. In different frequency, new formats but with the same goal — to support all of you who care about employee communications, engagement & advocacy. From all of us here at Smarp, we wish you a peaceful, safe & positive new year. May it bring you joy and success! Happy New Year and we'll meet again in season 2 in 2021!
The 2020 crisis has accelerated digital transformation in most organizations. However, this process is far from being over. Brad Whitworth shares the two main priorities to focus on in early 2021 regarding digital transformation. ✅ Firstly, we'll have to critically evaluate what has been done in 2020: what works, what doesn't, and what needs to change. ✅ Secondly, we need to approach digital transformation as an ongoing process, not a single project. We need to continually keep re-evaluating our digital stack to keep up with a fast-paced reality.
According to Gatehouse, communicating strategy, values, and purposes is a key priority for most communicators. At the same time, IBM reports that 72% of employees don't fully understand the company's strategy. So what are we doing wrong?
"The first mistake we often make when trying to communicate company strategy and value is to let the executives, who have developed this, use corporate jargon — those general words that have no meaning and can be applied to any organization, says Brad Whitworth.
The book Brad recommends for everyone who wants to tackle this mistake is called "The Cluetrain Manifesto" by David Weinberger.
The second mistake is that we don't do a good enough job in tying down that high-level strategy to the local levels of the organization. We need to help leaders at all those levels interpret that strategy and give employees tangible guidelines off the back of it.
2020 has been a tough year to say the least. A global pandemic and the subsequent shift in how we go about our lives, both at home and at work, has really shaken things up. It’s given us a reminder that the world is constantly evolving.
A silver lining in all this is that 2020 has brought employee communications to the forefront of many organizations. It’s become a more celebrated function as now, more than ever, it’s crucial to keep employees connected to the company. Whether this is about company news and updates, the materials that employees need to stay productive wherever they work, or something like health and safety guidelines, making sure these reach the right audience has never been more important. And with that, the role of the communicator has evolved as well.
To chat about this, I caught up with someone who is no stranger to what employee communications looks like in the enterprise – Kerri Warner.
Kerri is senior vice president and global head of employee communications at Mastercard. She heads the passionate (and award-winning!) team of story miners, makers, tellers and sellers responsible for everything employee communications, and has a great deal of experience when it comes to innovation in the communications space.
During the chat, we talked about:
- The role of the communicator in the enterprise
- How the role of the communicator is changing
- Breaking down the roles of employee communications in the enterprise through 4Cs:
- The Convener
- The Connector
- The Caretaker
- The Creative
This episode had a bunch of great takeaways and detailed insight into what all of this looks like at an organization like Mastercard, so I’m sure you’ll enjoy.
So sit back and enjoy the last Comms Shift episode of 2020 with Kerri Warner.
Traditional onboarding tends to consist of an onsite intro to the company, a more detailed intro to the actual job role and tools, and maybe some introduction to peers, colleagues, and the key people the new hire interacts with.
Remote onboarding is different, says Mike Klein. The introduction to the role itself has to factor in whether the new hire has access to the work tools. Even if yes, the introduction to the company needs to have more depth - and this is one place where internal comms could play a much more significant role. And even more important, introducing new people to people with knowledge and influence can play a major role in getting a newcomer up to speed.
Read the full article if you want to learn more: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ic-beyond-onboarding-goes-remote-changing-game-mike-klein
Brad Whitworth shares his checklist for everyone who wants to launch a podcast for internal communications: 👉 Start with why. Define your audience and goals. For example, if you need to reach and engage an audience without regular access to screens - what information do you want to share with them? 👉 Define style for your podcast. Conversational, people-focused for building culture or maybe more tactical, more informative for regular updates, or perhaps mixed as a part of your remote onboarding process? 👉 Make sure you have resources and commitment. Consistency is key when it comes to podcasting. So make sure to build a content plan and stick to it. 👉 Promote the podcast to your audience. Make sure your employees are equipped to listen to it and hungry for new episodes. Listen to their feedback and improve with each new episode.
In most organizations, the transition to a new working model will be gradual as vaccination runs its course around the world.
Business continuity flowing into an orderly transition will be key in 2021. And recognizing that the world may make "orderly" quite tricky.
A key piece will be Organizational Due Diligence - understanding how influence and connections still remain important and where there are gaps from departures or disposals, like selling off parts of your organization for M&A.
Another key will be the quality and seamlessness of your communication platform. 2020 confirmed your internal communication platform as your organization's de facto HQ. The extent to which it is complete, effective, and easy-to-use reflects how you want your employees to think of you.
For those of you looking for a comms platform like that — here's a shortcut 👉 go to https://smarp.com/ and learn how companies like Amazon, Salesforce and KPMG reach and engage all their employees with targeted communications.
"If we learned something this year, it's that a singular communications plan isn't going to cut it," says Brad Whitworth. In the year to come, we need to be even more flexible and scalable. We need the 'plan for the worst and hope for the best' kind of mindset. Branch out your communications plan with ifs: if this happens — x,y,z will be my main priorities, and so on.
📣 Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms.
Read more about the Do-Say-Know-Feel Framework in Internal Communications: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/do-say-know-feel-finding-point-internal-communication-mike-klein/
📣 Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms.
Brad Whitworth shares his three key questions that every communications leader needs to ask themselves when planning a comms audit: 👉 Why is it that I'm tackling a communications audit? 👉 Who am I going to be auditing — the whole company or specific departments or divisions? 👉 How will I execute the audit — what methods will I use?
📣 Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms.
One of the positive - but often also frustrating - things about internal communication is that it can provide value in many different ways.
👉Financial value: the value that can be assessed in one of two ways Direct return on investment and "agreed return on investment." — we talk more about these in ep. 30 of Comms Minute. 👉Organizational alignment - Are we making the organization work better? 👉Visibility - Do people see things happening/changing? 👉Positivity - Does this increase confidence or enthusiasm? 👉Credibility - Does this make the organization more believable? 👉Infrastructure development - Does this increase the resilience of or dependence on communication infrastructure? 👉Network effectiveness - Does this make our informal communication network stronger or better informed?
Trying to reach your frontline employees?
Stop developing your internal comms tech setups and building the strategy in a vacuum, says Brad Whitworth.
Go where your employees are, learn how they consume information, which mediums, what channels work best for them, and what timing is optimal for them.
Don't make assumptions. Make evidence-based decisions and create personas for different employee audiences.
If you cannot travel on-site — schedule a call and ask employees how they want to receive information and why?
📣 Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms.
CEO doesn't care about employee comms function? No worries. Mike Klein shares three tangible steps that can help you win them over: 👉 Engage with other senior leaders. Creating happy stakeholders who are well placed can be useful in bringing the CEO on board. 👉 CEO profiling is a great way to build rapport. Work with them on their own communication, identify opportunities to support them in a strategic way. 👉 Bring data to the conversation, so the CEO understands the strategic and financial value of your function.
📣 Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms.
Humour can be a powerful tool in employee comms arsenal. But as with any kind of tool, you've got to know how to use it, or it may backfire. Humour can help you break through the white noise, capture your employees' attention, lighten their workday with a smile. Brad Whitworth reminds us to keep our antennas up and be mindful of our audience. He shares an example from stand-up comedy that can be useful for all comms professionals out there.
📣 Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms.
The more we talk to communications professionals from around the world, the more we’re hearing the same concept being echoed:
The role of IT in communication is immense.
The larger the company, the tricker it becomes to enable effective communication to each and every employee. When your employee count is in the thousands, or tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands – being able to reach the right person at the right time with the right message becomes a daunting task. For this you typically need to have the right set of technology in place. Not just your communications platform – systems like your human capital management platform, single sign-on tools, file hosting, content management… the list goes on and on.
That is where IT comes in. In most cases, the technology organization owns the technology infrastructure and is responsible for having the systems in it work together in harmony.
So to enable those aforementioned effective communications often requires the relationship between IT and communications to be tight. But how do communications pros convince their IT departments that it's worthwhile to invest time and resources into a communications program? What is in it for IT?
For episode 14 of the Comms Shift, I had the chance to chat with Yogesh Malik, former Group CTO at VEON about just that.
Yogesh has spent the past 15 years in senior roles including CEO, COO and CTO at major multinational organizations. Throughout his work, he has remained convinced how people, innovation and technology can make a sustainable and positive impact.
A firm believer in digital transformation, Yogesh also understands the role of communications and how important it is to have the right technology and processes in place to succeed.
During the episode, we cover topics such as:
- The role of Communications in an enterprise organization, from the perspective of the CTO
- How IT and Communications collaborate and contribute to each other's efforts
- The importance of clear and consistent communication in making IT plans a reality
- What Communications teams can do to get IT buy-in and support bringing in new communications technology
ROI in internal communications is like combing a beach with a metal detector looking for coins after a concert for your employees. If only represents a fraction of the real value that the comms team brings to the table. It doesn't mean we shouldn't be using ROI, but we don't have to limit yourself to ROI only. In this episode, Mike Klein shares two consistent, company-specific comms measurements that can be game-changers for proving the value of your function.
📣 Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms.
"Messages create a structure for your communications. Stories are what makes your messages stick," says Brad Whitworth. When you attach concrete examples, real people to your messages, they become less abstract and much more memorable.
📣 Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms.
There are over 20 different definitions of employee engagement. If your employee engagement score is low, look first at what it measures and whether it's really relevant to your business. If they're relevant, look hard at what's in the way. If they're not, look at finding new measurements that resonate with your people and remove friction and distraction.
📣 Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms.
6 concrete steps to establish a single source of truth in your organization: 1. Set up an employee communications platform. 2. Make sure there is centralized publishing in place to keep your messages consistent. 3. Organize proper audience segmentation and targeting of your crisis comms. 4. Make sure you can reach the frontline with your comms. 5. Leverage your line managers as interpreters of internal communication. 6. Build your crisis comms strategy around the first 5 steps
📣 Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms.
With the current wave of the COVID pandemic, many organizations may be tempted to dip into the old playbook from March when this all started. But we need to realize that organizations have changed a lot since March. So, hitting the rewind button might be more costly than it sounds. We need a more sustainable approach.
Very few if any companies reinforced or adjusted their operating principles and standards. How they would make decisions and frame behavior.
We need to reorient our messaging about the timespan of this situation. This is the new normal for the foreseeable future. Organizations that refuse to do this may find their employees continually unsettled, increasingly cynical, or perhaps even fatalistic.
Read the full piece on this topic by Mike Klein here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-wave-covid-19-rules-change-again-internal-mike-klein/
📣 Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms.
Brad Whitworth suggests that it's time for an equal relationship between employee communications and IT functions. Comms folks are increasingly reliant on information technology infrastructure. And they need to be vocal about what kind of technology they need to achieve their business goals. IT should not 'feed' comms function with random tech solutions. Comms function should work closely with the CIO to define and implement the comms tech that can serve employees in the best way possible. Remember that your employee comms platform is your new corporate HQ.
📣 Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms.
An Employee Advocacy program without a connection to a real Internal Communication function is like a train without an engine.
A linked effort delivers some serious benefits and traction.
👉 Internal Communication drives the quality of information and frequency of flow to Employee Advocacy participants (namely employees). 👉 Internal Communication supports Employee Advocacy to a diversity of stakeholders - Employee Advocacy is not a one size fits all thing.- different employees will want to share different info with different customers and stakeholders, and robust Internal Communication will educate and involve them so they share the right info 👉 Employee Advocacy, in turn, can feed into Internal Communication, so the business is more aware of what’s on customer and stakeholder agendas (especially where Employee Advocacy isn’t just about distributing content but improving the way employees engage with customers. 👉 Appropriate content shared externally will reinforce key messages with word of mouth, driving commercial and internal benefits. 👉 Employee advocacy can serve so much more than just marketing goals. It can be HR-driven in terms of employer brand recruitment. It can amplify your public affairs agenda too. So there is a significant impact potential for employee advocacy programs. Good comms are the glue that consolidates all those impact areas.
Join the Great Comms Debate 5: https://app.livestorm.co/smarp-1/the-great-comms-debate-5
Efficiency vs. inclusivity — sometimes, we communicators have to make that choice, and often, we get tricked by it. In this episode, Brad Whitworth reminds us to be extra cautious when using technical terminology, acronyms, and jargon in our comms. We can quickly turn off our audience for the price of efficiency.
Let's debate everything employee communications! Join 500 of your peers for the final Great Comms Debate of the year. Registrations are open: https://app.livestorm.co/smarp-1/the-great-comms-debate-5
The Great Comms Debate is coming back on November 18. The format is simple: a live session where the greatest minds in internal communications debate over today's biggest questions in the field — and YOU get to discuss with them!
3 in-house comms leaders. 3 huge brands. 3 unique perspectives on employee comms practices.
Kerri Warner, Global Head of Employee Communications @ Mastercard Liliana Biro, Head of Internal Communications @ Iron Mountain Guilherme Santana, Head of Digital Transformation Change Management & Communications @ DHL
Registrations are open: https://app.livestorm.co/smarp-1/the-great-comms-debate-5
If you can't participate live, go register anyway, and we'll send you the on-demand recording right after the session. 😉
Storytelling is at the core of what employee comms do. A good story is arguably the most powerful tool in a communicator's arsenal. Mike Klein shares his four tips for creating a strong, compelling story:
- Start in the middle and then unify the story as you tell it.
- Unpredictable elements of a story are what keep it interesting.
- Contextualize for international audiences.
- Messages are not stories. Messages can contain stories, stories can contain messages, but they are not the same thing.
Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms. 💯
👉A good manager wants to be a good communicator. If they want their teams to be engaged & productive — they've got to embrace effective communications.
👉Line managers are interpreters for internal comms, not a channel. Comms professionals should understand that role and support them rather than dumping all the information on their shoulders and expecting them to distribute it to their teams.
Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms. 💯
In his Sapiens book, Yuval Harari says that gossip was one of the primary drivers of human evolution. Fair point, but gossip in the workplace can be disruptive. In this episode, Mike Klein argues that grapevine's disruptive nature makes it the greatest internal communication system of all time. Employee comms should learn to guide grapevine communication. You can do it by identifying the 3% of people who drive 90% of conversations in your organization. To learn more about the 3% rule, check out episode 4 of the Comms Shift podcast where Mike talks about organizational network analysis.
Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms. 💯"
"Information overload is real and often, internal comms contribute to it in one way or another. Brad Whitworth suggests two ways to optimize your communication stream to get the results without overwhelming your employees. 👉 Not everyone needs to read everything. Segment your audience. Read Brad's article on why one size does not fit all when it comes to IC: https://blog.smarp.com/brad-whitworth-on-why-a-one-size-fits-it-all-approach-to-internal-communication-doesnt-work 👉 Use different channels and groups — let the receiver choose what information they want to receive, when, and how.
Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms. 💯"
In today's remote work reality, your employees need a single central space for communications. Mike Klein shares his list of things to consider when choosing or adjusting your employee comms platforms for that role:
👉 Treat this platform like you're building a corporate headquarters. Because you are.
👉 You have to decide what you want to keep and what you want to toss from your current comms environment.
👉 If the IT is leading the process, make sure you've seen the leading tools on the market before accepting anything they would want to build. Why reinventing the wheel when it's not absolutely necessary?
By having this mindset of comms platform being a corporate HQ, you can think about what needs to go into it to serve that role. Think about your employees' information needs, their social needs, connection needs, and data access needs and build your tailored comms platform based on those needs.
Join our employee comms community: https://smarp.com/join/ Once a week, we'll send you our best piece of content. No BS. Only quality comms!
One thing we haven’t yet covered in the Comms Shift is Employee Advocacy. When companies communicate effectively with their employees, many will naturally become your best brand ambassadors, speaking your business message across their own networks.
It is a big topic so we figured we should talk about it with a big name working at an even bigger brand.
For this episode of the Comms Shift, I had the opportunity to speak with the one and only Rani Mani, Head of Employee Advocacy at software giant Adobe!
Rani works across different Adobe teams to drive understanding, excitement, and advocacy among their global workforce, all so that Adobe can enable and empower all their employees to be the company’s biggest brand ambassadors.
She’s been with Adobe for 12 years and describes herself as the CEO and the janitor of Adobe’s employee advocacy program. Just the right person to deep dive into what a successful employee advocacy program at the enterprise looks like.
Among other things, Rani and I discussed:
- The relationship between internal communications and employee advocacy.
- How is employee advocacy structured within Adobe?
- What kind of content strategy is Rani using for the program.
- 2 smart ways Rani identifies and develops new Adobe brand ambassadors.
- The role of partners and contractors in an employee advocacy program.
- Why Rani believes that employee advocacy should be in every employee’s job description and performance review.
Really excited about how this one turned out. Have a listen!
No one likes to deliver bad news. It's never easy. Yet, it's part of our job as employee communicators. How to make this less painful? — continuous communications. Don't hit people with one unexpected announcement. Instead, provide them with frequent, clear, and honest updates about the situation in your organization. If people are prepared, if they get information from trusted sources, not the rumors, they will be more understanding when or if there will be any bad news.
Join our employee comms community: https://smarp.com/join/ Once a week, we'll send you our best piece of content. No BS. Only quality comms!
👉 Cascading is not communication. Cascading usually comes with an overreliance on PowerPoint slides and a lack of prioritization in messaging. It's not communication; it's a chaos that comes at a cost.
👉 It's the CEOs best interest to get the whole company aligned around common goals. You want people to pull in the same direction. How do you do it? You start with language. Specific ideas need specific words. Then you add context. Purpose, vision, values — they provide the perspective where words can frame clear pathways to actions.
👉 Prioritization is key. You need to set common priorities. Today, companies cannot afford frictions about the basics. If they are not clear, people will reshape and distort them to their own needs.
📖 Read Mike's full guide for CEOs who want to know more about internal comms and get the most out of this function. It's super informative: https://blog.smarp.com/what-should-a-ceo-know-about-internal-communication
Employees are well-trained to recognize when the leaders' words and actions are not in sync. That's why it's crucial for employee comms teams to focus not only on messages but also on actions and alarm the leadership every time these are not lined up. Employee communications function should be a trusted counselor to senior leadership to point our misalignment of actions and words and deliver the employee feedback to executive leaders.
The main objective when choosing a tone of voice for your company is consistency. Ask yourself: can this voice be used consistently and credibly? The corporate voice should never disempower or displace employee voice — it should respect and amplify it. Keep in mind that you deal with 3 voices: corporate (e.g., Pepsico), brand (Pepsi, Mountain Dew), and employee voices.
You have to repeat a lot to get your comms to stick. When it comes to safety information, for instance, McKinsey's study found that you need to repeat the safety message 9-12 times for the audience to perceive that risk. So how can we repeat-repeat-repeat without turning off our audience? — Diversify your comms strategy. You don't necessarily need to be coming up with something new to say. Come up with new ways to say it, broaden the ways you package and deliver information — from channels to content formats.
Three top priorities for comms teams during a merger or acquisition: 1. Understand the purpose and goal of the M&A. Is it a merger of equals? Is it a streamlining? Is it assets stripping? How will the future organization look like? You need to have a deep understanding of this to be able to build your comms strategy. You want to be perfectly aligned with the company's objectives. 2. Understand the dynamics. Keep in mind that you're dealing not with two but three organizations: the acquiring, the acquired, and the future (merged) organization. Each of those has its interests and needs when it comes to employee communications. 3. Be strategic about how you position people on both sides of a merger. Be mindful of the visibility and inclusion of people on both sides of the equation in your communications.
Clear thinking is the skill that drives great writing, which is at the core of everything comms people do. Powerful writing comes from a clear structure. You may have a million great ideas, but you need to organize and present them in a way that can convey your message most effectively. The way to check on your clear thinking is to share your early drafts with colleagues to get their perspective and feedback, suggests Brad Whitworth.
What was the Iceland government's communication strategy when the COVID-19 pandemic hit? Why did people like it? And why is it so close to corporate comms?
Rewrite the approval rules if that process is holding you back. Sit down with the people who are on the approval process and align what is critical for them to see and what they can trust you to take care of. Also, make a rule that if you don't hear from certain people in a certain amount of time, you are ultimately the one who's responsible for getting comms live regardless of the feedback you might get. It comes with some risk, but it is also how the trust is built.
What happens to employee communications when a global health crisis shakes up the industry you work in?
When a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic hits, how do you communicate about it to your employees? How do you adjust your processes and comms to make sure that you are giving your employees the information they need to be successful at work, while also communicating relevant news from the market?
You have to change. You have to be agile.
For this episode of The Comms Shift podcast, we caught up with Sophie Maddison, Strategic Programs and Change Manager in Commercial Excellence at Booking.com
Don’t be fooled by her title, Sophie is a guru when it comes to employee communications. She has led change management programs and communications teams at organizations such as HSBC, KPMG, the National Bank of Australia as well as, of course, Booking.com.
Sophie has a unique blend of change management, agile business development, and communications expertise which gives her perspective on comms that not many others can bring to the table.
In the episode, we talk about, among other things,
- How Booking.com managed the COVID-19 crisis from a communications perspective from style to tactics
- How, as a change management professional, there needs to be processes in place that allow you to adapt your communications in the face of change such as the COVID-19 crisis
- How the concept of Agile communications can benefit any organization when planning out their communications strategy
So, as always, sit back, relax, and enjoy episode 12 of The Comms Shift Podcast with Sophie Maddison.
In this episode, Mike Klein shares his must-read for internal comms professionals: Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky. This book provides unique insights on community organizing, navigating the hierarchies, and moving ideas, thoughts, and actions within the organization.
What about you, Comms Minute listeners? Do you have a book or maybe a film that changed the way you approach employee comms? Share your recommendations on socials and tag @Smarp in them. We'd love to discover some inspiring materials and share them with the whole comms community!
When we talk about employee communications, the line between internal and external comms becomes more and more blurry. It’s not black and white: these people are employees and these are not.
Some HR people or lawyers may argue that you can’t communicate on a regular basis with people who are not full-time employees. Brad takes a counterpoint and says you cannot afford not to communicate with them.
There are many flavors to our audiences and we as communicators should be aware of them. Contractors, consultants, partners — none of them are technically your employees, yet they need as much if not more information coming their way than the traditional employee audience.
The key two things: first of all, you need to introduce the new leader and their agenda to the organization. Help them integrate seamlessly and visibly. Secondly, you’ve got to demonstrate the value of the comms function to the new CEO. It’s your chance to prove that employee communications is a strategic function that has a real impact on business goals.
Your corporate video doesn’t have to look like a polished TV production. Get away from the green screens into the real world. Make your leaders and employees look real and authentic, and frame it into a short, digestible format. Join our online workshop on how to use video to communicate with employees: https://app.livestorm.co/smarp-1/how-to-use-video-to-communicate-with-employees-5-hacks
Here are some basic things you should do:
1. Get to know what is on their agenda. What keeps them up at night?
2. Show that you’re a seamless contact within your function. And prove your strategic and tactical expertise when it comes to communications. Deliver better results that the manager and their team could do on their own.
3. Find allies within the project.
Otherwise, you can get micromanaged very quickly, you find yourself losing access to critical information, and you ultimately may be seen expendable.
Ultimately, empathy & efficiency are gonna carry the day.
The average attention span is down to eight seconds today.
That is less than the nine-second attention span of your average goldfish.
Keep this in mind when you write your next piece of comms. Clarity, accessibility, and structure are crucial today. In this episode of Comms Minute, Brad Whitworth shares his trick to make comms more digestible.
Communications folk can often look back at their careers and say ‘I did a really good job there, too bad the client or the boss didn’t like it’. In this episode of Comms Minute, Mike Klein shares three steps to avoid this kind of situation:
- First, define what success means for you and your company. Ask yourself WHY? and define objectives.
- What’s driving those objectives?
- What’s the value of this campaign when it’s completed? Can you quantify your results?
We are excited to introduce you to a new, much shorter, more tactical show called Comms Minute. Three times a week, we'll be sharing super tangible hacks, little tips and tricks that will help you in your daily work. All we ask from you is literally a minute or three of your time.
You can turn this on at any moment and get your daily bite of employee comms best-practices. Stuff like:
How to share bad news? for example.
What are the hacks to make leaders more effective?
How do I engage managers who have never worked with comms before?
Meet the exclusive guests of the Comms Minute show:
Mike Klein and Brad Whitworth, senior advisors of Smarp's strategic services team with over 60 years of combined comms experience.
In the first episode, Brad Whitworth shares his tricks to get leaders to speak like human beings.
If you like this type of content, if you do find it useful, please subscribe and share it with your colleagues. If you don't like it — please tell us why. You know that all the effort we put into it is ultimately for you, so any kind of feedback would be really helpful.
If you have questions or ideas for the upcoming episodes — we would love to hear from you. Feel free to send us an email at marketing@smarp.com with 'comms minute' in the subject line. You may even send an audio-clip with your questions, and we'll try to come up with good answers together with Brad & Mike.
Measuring employee communications has always been deemed IMPOSSIBLE. Not just clicks, likes & comments.. but actual BUSINESS IMPACT.
Until now.
Introducing Workforce Insights. The AI-powered analytics suite that helps enterprise communicators make data-driven decisions.
Learn more: https://smarp.com/workforce-insights/
Hey everybody, we’re back with another episode of The Comms Shift podcast! This time around, we went BIG! 5 massive brands: HEINEKEN, Sony, Booking.com, Nissan, Carlsberg. One power woman: Maria Ljungbeck.
That’s right. For this episode, the wonderful Maria Ljungbeck joined us for a chat around a subject which she’s dealt with for almost 10 years: Creating a dialogue with the hard to reach.
The hard to reach, you ask? These are employees who don’t sit in front of a computer all day. They may work at a factory or maybe drive a van around the city. You get the idea. They make up a huge part of the global workforce and in Maria’s case, a significant part of her internal audience at most of her roles.
Here are some of the things we covered:
- What it was like communicating with the hard to reach 10 years ago.
- Maria’s award winning program: Nissan Insider Mobile.
- What made it an award winning program.
- What stakeholders were involved and why.
- The main problem Nissan was trying to solve.
- The impact it had on the business.
- How you can create your own award winning program.
- The most common mistakes people make communicating with the hard to reach.
- The one advice Maria has for anyone looking to tackle this challenge.
- Content strategy for the hard to reach.
- The risk of not doing anything about this segment of employees.
This was a fun one. Have a listen and do let us know what you think!
If you've ever been searching for someone knowledgeable about internal communications technology, you've more than likely come across Shel Holtz.
Which is why, as an internal comms technology geek, I couldn't resist inviting him to join us for this episode of The Comms Shift Podcast 🤓
Shel Holtz is Director of Internal Communications at Webcor, a California commercial general contractor and builder headquartered in San Francisco. Before joining Webcor in 2017, Shel spent 21 years as an independent consultant, helping companies adopt new technologies into their communication efforts and improve their employee communications.
Shel has written six communication-themed books and countless articles and blog posts. His blog series on A New Model For Employee Communication, which is the topic for this episode of The Comms Shift, is three years in the making. Additionally, he and his co-host launched the first and longest-running communication podcast in 2005. He is a Fellow of the International Association of Business Communicators, a Senior Fellow of the Conference Board Marketing and Communication Center, and a Platinum Fellow of the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network.
For this episode, Shel and I got together to discuss his New Model for Employee Communication.
During the chat, we cover areas such as:
- The definition of employee communication.
- A model and framework to aid comms professionals in defining their communications programs that includes:
- The direction in which true employee communication flows.
- The content and information that employee communications should be delivering.
- The work that goes into delivering employee communications.
- What communicators should be focusing their efforts on.
- The inputs into successful employee communications strategies.
- Measuring the impact of communications across the organization.
- As well as first steps to take in order to deliver world-class employee communications.
From communications delivery to measurement, we cover it all in this episode. So sit back and enjoy episode 10 of The Comms Shift with Shel Holtz.
Links:
Follow Shel on LinkedIn
Learn more about Shel and check out his blog
Link to the blog series on A New Model for Employee Communications
Smarp
The Comms Shift Podcast
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In this very special episode of The Comms Shift, we’re introducing not just one, but two new voices to the podcast!
Firstly, this marks the first episode hosted by me, Aleks, Product Marketing Manager at Smarp. For a long time now, our CMO Bruno has been hosting The Comms Shift. The two of us have so many conversations around Employee Communications (with each other as well as the amazing comms professionals we work with), that a transition to co-hosting the show just made sense.
Secondly, and more importantly, I’m more than excited to introduce Jill Christensen to our Comms Shift listeners!
A former Fortune 500 business executive with a Six Sigma Green Belt, Jill Christensen understands how organizations operate, and what they need to do differently to attract, retain, and engage employees. Her best-selling book, If Not You, Who?, outlines, among other things, the clear benefits linked to an open, honest and authentic communications culture.
Thanks to her status as a Top 101 Employee Engagement Influencer, Jill has worked in 20 industries, partnering with the best and brightest leaders around the world to improve productivity, retention, and revenue growth through re-engaging employees with effective, authentic communications.
In this episode, me and Jill chat about:
- Her decision to move from corporate executive to consultant and speaker.
- The benefits of communicating authentically… and the cost of not doing so.
- Examples of organizations and executives doing comms the right way.
- What to do to fix comms in an organization struggling with transparency in their comms.
- How comms pros can directly show their impact on bottom-line results.
- What we can ALL do to become a bit more authentic when communicating.
I know I had a lot of fun chatting with her, and I hope you’ll have just as much fun listening. There is a little something for everyone in this episode, so settle into your commute and have a listen!
For this episode of The Comms Shift, I’m delighted to introduce, straight from Canada, a country which I was lucky enough to call home for 10 years, the one and only, Priya Bates.
Priya Bates is probably one of the most qualified professional communicators you will ever meet. If you look her up on LinkedIn, she goes by Priya Bates, ABC, MC, SCMP, IABC Fellow. Let’s break those down.
Priya is an Accredited Business Communicator (that’s ABC) and one of the first Certified Strategic Communication Management Professionals in the world (that’s SCMP). In 2010, she received the Master Communicator designation (that’s MC), which is the highest honour you can possibly have as a communication professional from IABC Canada by the way. As if that wasn’t enough, about 4 years ago, Priya was recognized as an IABC Fellow, a global lifetime achievement award for her contribution to the profession.
She’s been doing this for 20+ years. She’s led communication for organizations including Loblaw Companies Limited, HP Canada, Compaq Canada, and The Ontario Nurses Association. These days, she’s the President and Owner of Inner Strength Communication where she works with organizations across a variety of sectors who are looking to build strategic internal communication expertise that drives business results.
In this episode, Priya and I dissect her 5 I’s framework for evolving internal comms into strategic thinking:
- What are the 5 I’s and how can you apply them at your work?
- How IC professionals can take a strategic vision of the tactical work they’re given
- Priya’s approach for understanding internal audiences at large corporations with a dispersed workforce
- How to combine relationships with knowledge of the organization to influence decisions
- The Yogurt story - A practical example of measurement in internal comms
Whether you’re new to internal comms or a seasoned veteran, I think you’ll enjoy this conversation. Grab a coffee and listen on!
For this episode of The Comms Shift podcast, I’m delighted to welcome one of the most renowned communications experts in the world, Brad Whitworth.
Brad is a Silicon Valley thought leader in communications, a past IABC International Chairman, an IABC Fellow, and an author of the IABC Handbook of Organizational Communication. In his 40 years in communications, Brad has led internal and external communication programs at Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Oracle and Hitachi. His pioneering research while at HP quantitatively proved the link between managerial communication and job performance.
Brad and I chat about the importance of internal communication today and into the future, including topics such as:
- What to do in your first 3 months at a new internal communications role.
- As a CEO, what would you have IC report to you and why?
- Brad’s approach to crisis communications from planning to execution.
- How to get the CIO to understand the importance of comms infrastructure in making business continuity plans a reality.
- An overview of professional development and certifications available for IC professionals who want to stand out in the marketplace.
I learned a lot from this conversation and hope you’ll get valuable insights too. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy this 30-min chat with Brad Whitworth.
As part of my job as CMO at Smarp, I get to talk to a lot of smart internal communications, employee engagement and experience folks. Over time, I've become completely obsessed with the profession.
I'm lucky enough to be a part of a lot of insightful conversations and this one is no different.
Given the current reality we're all living in due to the COVID-19 outbreak, I invited my friend and IC expert, Mike Klein, to join the podcast for the second time and discuss the immediate, mid and long term implications of the current crisis on the IC profession.
Mike has been in internal comms for over 20 years. He’s held in-house roles at companies such as Shell, VEON and Cargill, he’s the author of ‘From Lincoln to LinkedIn’ and nowadays runs ‘Changing the Terms’ out of The Netherlands. I’m happy to say, Mike has also recently joined the Smarp Strategic Services team to develop and deliver innovative services for our enterprise platform customers.
If you’re currently working in this space and looking for insights on why this new found 'Remote IC' is here to stay, this one is for you.
Grab a coffee and enjoy this 20-min conversation with the one and only, Mike Klein.
Last September, we attended the ‘Internal Communications Conference’ in London. The event saw 400 plus delegates, 10 topic streams and roughly 30 presentations, one of which by Oli Howard.
Having worked in internal communications for over 15 years, holding positions in companies such as the Civil Aviation Authority, Scope and Royal Mail, Oli is a true industry veteran.
He’s currently Interim Head of Strategy Development at the CIPD, the professional body for human resources and people development and also a board member of the Institute of Internal Communications, which puts him in a very interesting position to talk about the complex relationship between internal communications and HR.
I was so impressed by his talk that immediately after the session, I approached Oli and tried my luck to see whether he would be willing to come on The Comms Shift podcast to go even further into the topic. Lucky for us, he said yes.
In this episode, Oli expands on:
- What it is about IC and HR that makes it so difficult for the functions to get along.
- The impact of the industrial revolution on the birth of large organizations and employment at scale.
- How EX redefines the relationship between IC and HR.
- Approaches IC and HR can use to work better together.
- Finding the middle ground between immediate pressures (all the tactical things IC is constantly asked to do) and long-term uncertainty (IC waiting for the heads up on strategic initiatives).
- His one piece of advice for IC folks looking to advance their careers.
I want to thank Oli again for coming on the show and sharing his knowledge with us.
Without further ado, here’s episode #5 of The Comms Shift Podcast with Oli Howard.
You don’t have to look far into the field of internal communications to come across Mike Klein. With 20 plus years of combined in-house and consultancy experience, a knack for research and a background as a political consultant, Mike is one of the most forward thinking IC pros today.
Over the years, Mike has practiced IC in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain and the US. He’s authored "From Lincoln to LinkedIn, the 55 Minute Guide to Social Communication," a manual for mobilizing peer-to-peer communication in communities and organisations, and he’s also the owner of "Changing The Terms", one of Europe's top PR and Communication blogs according to Communication Director Magazine.
Needless to say, I jumped on the opportunity to meet Mike for a chat during my last visit to Amsterdam.
Among other things, we covered:
- Measuring the ROI of comms.
- The differences Mike has picked up from practicing IC in 5 different countries.
- The role of Enterprise search as a source of information.
- How to identify and engage key organisational influencers.
- What Mike has learned about comms from his visits to Iceland.
- How organisations can bring employees together earlier in an M&A scenario.
- What makes a great business partner for IC.
- The value of strategic services for IC teams.
If you’re deep in the world of internal communications, this one is for you. Grab a coffee and enjoy this in-depth 30-min conversation with the one and only, Mike Klein.
We recently travelled to Amsterdam to catch up with Hunkemöller’s, Global Internal Communications Manager, Evelien Post. 🇳🇱
Hunkemöller is a leading women’s bodywear retailer from The Netherlands founded in 1886. Today, it is a well recognized omni-channel brand with more than 8,000 employees spread across over 21 countries and 900 stores.
Evelien was kind enough to welcome us at their offices in Hilversum (listen to the podcast as I completely bomb the intro thinking I’m still in Amsterdam 😳) and share a bit more about her career, recent move to Hunkemöller as well as why she sees IC as the spider on the web.
A few weeks back, we travelled to Amsterdam to meet up with Caroline Tjan, Head of Global Internal Communications at Nouryon.
Nouryon is a young company with a long heritage that goes back 400 years. When it split from AkzoNobel one year ago the majority of employees had already worked there for many years. Today 10,000+ employees work at Nouryon in over 80 countries worldwide. Needless to say, that sets us up for an interesting internal communications conversation.
On the very first episode of the Comms Shift Podcast our host Bruno is joined by Sue Dewhurst who has over two decades of experience with internal communications working with companies such as Royal Mail, Barclays and now she has co-written her own book ‘Successful Employee Communications’. Sue shares how internal communication has evolved over the years and how the digital age has impacted today’s communications with the modern employees. Tune in now and remember to subscribe!