Mastering Effective Employee Communication: Key Content Strategies (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: I'd like to share with you some tips from my chapter in the book on content. Content in the letter C is one of the six steps in the impact communications model which is included in the book. Together these help you overcome the challenges that we all face as we try to communicate effectively to our employees. Now when I talk about content I'm talking about two things. I'm talking about the words and I'm also talking about the graphics and together this is the language that we use as we develop our communications content. In the book I share lots of tips but what I'd like to share with you now are three guiding principles. The first one, create content which is valuable. Some people call it the what's in it for me. So what is it that employees are going to take away from the communications and what will make them take notice? Let me give you an example. If you're communicating a new benefit, let's say it's an online discount platform where they can make savings. If your content says introducing new employee benefits, is there any value in it for them? Probably not. Instead, all you have to do is change the content slightly and say exciting new way for you to save money and there's that value to them. Second, relevance. As much as possible try to create some relevance, something that they can associate with so that they will want to read your communications and take notice. Some people do this through segmentation. Let me give you an example with pensions or retirement plans. If you have a young population, the last thing they are thinking about is retirement. So using words like pensions and retirement is not going to create any type of relevance and they probably won't take notice. So often what people are doing is using the word saving. It's a bit more subtle and it's a bit more relevant to them. For an older population, you could go and you could use the words pension and retirement because these are things they're thinking of. They're thinking of planning for the future. The last guiding principle is consistency. As you develop your content, you want to make sure that it is all consistent either through having one name for it, either having brand, tone, voice, colors, whatever you do to do consistency. An example of this is if you are communicating your words informally, it's fine to create graphics that are informal. However, if you're creating content and words which is formal, probably the last thing you want to do is use an informal cartoon. It's a bit too informal. There's no consistency. There's no connection. So those are three very quick guiding principles. I hope you find them helpful and help you as you communicate to your employees.