What the Future Holds for Internal Communications

2017

INTERNAL COMMS TRENDS

CONTENTS

1

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

A FOCUS ON MANAGERS

A STRATEGIC FUNCTION

THE EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE

EMPLOYEE FEEDBACK0

20

30

40

50

DIGITAL CULTURE60

EMPLOYEE FEEDBACK

01

EMPLOYEE FEEDBACK01 4

Only 4% of HR Managers think their system of accessing employees is effective at measuring performance - and 83% say their systems need an overhaul.

(CEB Global, 2015)

HIGHLY ENGAGED

ENGAGED

SOMEWHAT ENGAGED

SOMEWHAT DISENGAGED

DISENGAGED

51.5%56.1%

68.4% 74.1%77.8%

ANNUAL PERFORMANCE REVIEWUSAGE, BY ENGAGEMENT LEVEL

Source: State of Employee Feedback, 2016


Fortunately we’re in the midst of a pretty significant transformation in the business landscape around performance management.

With lots of experimentation in:

Continuous Feedback Processes

Peer-to-peer Recognition Programs

Use o

f

new t

ech


Because the recognition is peer-to-peer,

it feels less like a performance review,

and more like an organic expression of

gratitude. Hugely motivating.

Source: Harvard Business Review, 2016

PEER-TO-PEER RECOGNITION PROGRAMS


Peer recognition also leads to a stronger sense of being part of a hard-working and high-achieving team.

Source: Rob Peters, CEO Standard of Trust

Recognition is becoming more specific and

personal, which is a strength of peer-to-peer

recognition.


CONTINUOUS FEEDBACKPROCESSES

During the year, new things will come along. Employees are iterating and experimenting, and oftentimes that means they’re not necessarily working towards what they originally listed as an annual objective. Nevertheless, employees would end up in an irrelevant discussion in December, trying to assess whether they’d fulfilled the goals they’d drafted 11 months earlier.

Source: Diane GhersonIBM’s Chief Human Resource Officer


According to PwC, nearly 60% of survey respondents reported that they would like feedback on a daily or weekly basis – a number that increased to 72% for employees under the age of 30.

Furthermore, 80% of GEN Y said that they would prefer on the spot feedback and recognition over more formal reviews.

Source: PwC Millennials at work Reshaping the workplace


CONTINUOUS PEER-TO-PEER RECOGNITION PROGRAMS

It looks at the process, and not just the end result.

It does not solely involve a 'final grade'. This helps to reduce the fear of

Trying new things is the only way to develop performance. That's why continuous peer-to-peer feedback could be the answer:

failure that many employees experience when they try new things.


Josh Bersin,Deloitte (2016)

A new market has emerged: Employee feedback apps for the corporate marketplace.

These tools are powerful and disruptive, and they have the potential to redefine how we manage our organisations.

USE

NEWTECH

OF


USE OF NEW TECH HAS GIVEN

A Pulse Survey is a fast and frequent survey tool, that gives a quick insight into the health of an organisation.

They provide, amongst other things...

RISE TO PULSE SURVEYS

Source: 6Q, the employee engagement survey system


Encourages open communication

Detailed information on the organisation

Near real-time measurement of employee satisfaction

Frequent reminder that leadership values employee feedback

Helps direct future employee engagement activities

Improves employee health & happiness

HIGHER RESPONSE RATES

THAN ANNUAL SURVEYS

02ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

A FOCUS ON MANAGERS03 15ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE02 15

Source: Mckinsey & Company, 2016

Artificial Intelligence looks set to cause great disruption in the world of work. With anything that can be automated, likely to be.


Ultimately AI will understand who needs to be connected with what and whom. Which it will achieve through the creation of a Knowledge Graph.

Save & index every single document, message or file. Not only that, it will be able to connect eveything of relevance together.

Source: MIT Sloan Management Review, 2016

IN THE WORKPLACE, AI WILL:


Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Cofounder 2016

The knowledge graph will represent the interconnection of all the data and communications within your company.

Just as a social graph represents the interconnection of relationships in an online social network.

KNOWLEDGE GRAPH


1. IMPROVED UNDERSTANDING AND INTELLIGENCE

A Knowledge Graph will allow Internal Communications teams to measure, identify and provide effective solutions for less tangible workplace factors, such as sentiment; e.g. sentiment towards certain campaigns, policies or business decisions.

BENEFITS OF AI FOR INTERNAL COMMS:


2. FEEDBACK AND PERFORMANCE REVIEWS

For the majority of jobs, reviews tend to be subjective in nature.

AI can identify every behaviour, idea and action that an employee makes. Allowing their value to be objectively measured.

Clear strengths, weaknesses and areas for improvement can be easily and quickly highlighted.

AI will change that.


3. EMPLOYEE TRAINING and ONBOARDING

The Knowledge Graph will be able to answer any question a new recruit may have. Furthermore:

AI can quickly bring the new recruit up to speed on past and current projects, as well as the outcome of recent meetings.

AI can serve up things it deems the new employee should learn and understand.


4. Redefining Management

54%30%

10%

7%

Developing people & engaging with stakeholders

Solving problems &collaborating

Strategy & Innovation

Administrative coordination &

control

How managers spend their time.

Source: Accenture survey 2016


Bots can do many admin tasks much better and faster than their human counterparts. This will free managers up to focus on the things they as humans are better at doing.

It’s important to view AI as a colleague.

and not as a competitor or replacement.

Source: Harvard Business Review, 2016

03A FOCUS ON MANAGERS

A FOCUS ON MANAGERS03 24

When it comes to identifying the drivers of employee engagement, numerous studies, organisations and foremost thinkers all recognise there being one single most important variable:

Source: CIPD, 2016

THE QUALITY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMPLOYEES AND THEIR

DIRECT MANAGERS OR SUPERVISORS.


They’ve become reliant on one-way digital channels, e.g:

Manager toolkits

E-newsletters Email

announcements

The cascading of information in an organisation, has led to managers arguably becoming too focussed on

passing information down.


Help is at hand for managers in creating

better two-way dialogue, and it comes in the form of social media channels.

In 2017, leadership and management must recognise that the use of social media is not a nice to have, but a fundamental skill that they must have as managers.

Source: Chartered Management Institute, 2016


To see why else a focus on management communications is so important, it's worth looking at the main types of Internal Communications between employees.

Of which there can be said to be four:

1. Management to non-management employees

2. Non-management employees to management

3. Non-management employees to non-management employees

4. Management to management


For some reason, management to

management communications

seem to have been neglected.


IC pro's need to understand the types of behaviours that are needed to help improve the flow of information from manager to manager, so that the right tools and training can be made available to them.


Source: The 2016 Deloitte Millennial Survey - Winning over the next generation of leaders

In fact, understanding of the workforce has revealed that the next generation of managers – millennials – feel woefully under prepared for management.


And what with it being widely cited that employees rate their manager’s

communication skills as poor...

...Manager communications is an area that must be prioritised by organisations in 2017.

Source: Gallup, 2015

04A STRATEGIC FUNCTION

A STRATEGIC FUNCTION04 33

It has become clear that there are a number of changes in the workplace that are driving the need for far more strategic internal communications.


1. Millennials. They demand to have a clear purpose and want to work for organisations with distinct values that they themselves share.

2. The rise of internal social media. Organisations must understand how the use of social media can support business objectives.


3. The demand for more internal communications, often with less resource. A need to prioritise comms, ensuring all comms are linked to business strategy.

4. The development of metrics to determine employee engagement and outcomes of internal comms. IC being held far more accountable for their actions.


And more specifically on the outcomes of engagement:

EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE

INCREASES IN

Engagement for Engagement Sake

Internal communications need to focus less on simply

Source: CIO, 2016


Most initiatives do not fail because of missing ideas or concepts. They fail because the intentions, goals and hard information do not properly reach their often company-wide audience.

Good ideas need good strategy to realise their potential

Frank Wolf, Staffbase

Reid Hoffman, Founder, LinkedIn


Some of the ways by which Internal Communications can get more strategic:

Internal Communications must continually reinforce the core values of the organisation. Ultimately, these values should be reflected in employee behaviour and output.

1. ALIGNED WITH VALUES


2. FORMING STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS WITH OTHER DEPARTMENTS

The Internal Communications function simply cannot be strategic by itself. It has to form partnerships with all other areas of the business if its strategy is to be effective.


What should be obvious is how any internal communications strategy must be tied to a business goal. This helps leadership to recognise the importance of internal communications.

3. LEADERSHIP BEING REALLY CLEAR ON THE LINK BETWEEN INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS ACTIVITY AND THE OVERALL BUSINESS STRATEGY


Savers do what they are told to do and what is expected of them. Investors are different.

They continually invest in themselves, looking for new opportunities to develop themselves at work.

4. HELP CREATE INVESTORS, INSTEAD OF SAVERS

Source: Jane sparrow, 2016


This is to ensure everyone is clear on - and driven by - theirs, and the common purpose.

Internal Communications NEEDS TO have A seat at the strategic table.

THE EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE

05

THE EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE05 44

MANY Organisations ARE IMPROVING THEIR CUSTOMER experience, BY USING AN employee-centric APPROACH.

Tempkin group, 2015


1. The ongoing war for talent

2. Millennial mind-set

3. Employees want a ‘consumer-like’ experience at work.

4. Relationship between customer experience and employee experience.

5. Employee Engagement linked to productivity

A requirement, largely being driven by five key trends:

Source: IBM Institute for Business Value.


Key components of the Employee Experience:

Physical Environment

Tools & Technologies

Connections & relationships

Source: Jeanne Meister, Forbes 2017


A good way of approaching the three key components of the employee experience, is to map the employee journey:

to ongoing engagement and communication

to retirement, resignation or termination

Organisations should understand all the steps an employee goes

through on their journey.

From recruitment and onboarding


1. The areas that need to be addressed to improve the Employee Experience.

2. The touch-points through which organisations should ensure the companies brand values and attributes are being experienced and brought to life.

Mapping the employee journey will identify:


Ultimately the design of the employee experience must result in a personalised experience for each and every employee.

Source: IBM Institute for Business Value.

DIGITAL CULTURE

06

DIGITAL CULTURE06 51

SIMPLY JUST SWITCHING ON NEW TECHNOLOGY DOESN T CUT IT.'' '

The right culture and employee behaviour must be in place beforehand to support new digital tools.

Therefore change management programs and a focus on digital literacy are key for successful adoption of new digital tools.

Source: Paul Miller - Digital Workplace Group


LEADERSHIP BECOMING FAR MORE DIGITAL

Leaders will not only use digital channels more heavily as a way to help lead. But their use of digital – leading by example – will be a way of increasing adoption of digital tools throughout an organisation.

Source: Deloitte - Building your digital DNA.


Long, lengthy emails that sit within long, messy email chains are not how employees want to communicate with one another.

Employees want to communicate in the same way as they do in the consumer world.

Instant messaging is also better suited to the mobile way in which employees are working.

INSTANT MESSAGING

Source: Business 2 Community, 2016


INTELLIGENT INSTANT MESSAGING

‘Intelligent Bots’ are what will eventually do a lot of the instant messaging on behalf of employees. Bots will be equipped with Artificial Intelligence to know what information employees are after and where to get it from.

They will become your intelligent digital colleague, and your link to the entire digital workplace.


INTRANETS HAVE BECOME THE FRONT DOOR TO THE WIDER DIGITAL WORKPLACE.

No longer are Intranets merely a dumping ground for latest company news and links.

Intranets will continue to be important and will further evolve to the needs of a mobile, remote workforce.

Source: James Robertson, 2017


AUGMENTED REALITY

The obvious success of Pokemon Go in the consumer world, highlights the huge potential Augmented Reality technology – when gamified – has when incorporated within the workplace.

The integration of the real world with a virtual one provides opportunities for how employees not only perform their role, but how they learn and develop, and work with others.


VIRTUAL REALITY

Facebook’s purchase of Oculus Rift, shows that Zuckerberg is betting big on VR being a dominant communications channel.

You’ll see this technology being used more and more in the workplace. Learning, team based working scenarios and team communications are all things that can be done in a completely immersive and truly engaging way.

CONCLUSIONWe hope you found our internal communication trends helpful.

You can keep up to date with all of our internal communications thinking at our blog (rimadesign.com/blog).

To make sure you never miss a thing you can follow us on Twitter @rima_design And linkedIn

It would be great to know what you thought about the trends we’ve covered. And of course, if you’d like any further info or help on any of the topics covered then please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

We’re a 30 year old independent design agency who specialise in internal communications.

We work with a number of large corporate clients and for a couple of them we are also responsible for their in-house design function.

To find out a bit more about us then simply take a look at our website or get in touch.

About us…

[email protected] | Tel: +44 (0) 207 902 1310

THANKS!

http://www.rimadesign.com/blog

https://twitter.com/Rima_Design

http://www.linkedin.com/company/rima-design

http://www.rimadesign.com/

REFERENCES

59

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What the Future Holds for Internal Communications

Leadership & Management

Transcript of What the Future Holds for Internal Communications