Deskless Employees Trust Each Other the Most

Insider Comms for internal comms

Mar 28, 2022

Comms-rades, I tried to send this dispatch on Friday but a glitch meant it went nowhere. So here’s attempt two.

📣 Coming soon: an interview with Ellen Thornton, Senior Manager of Employee Communications at Cisco.

Deskless Employees Trust Each Other the Most

Traditional internal communications efforts are missing the mark. In a new survey from PR firm MSL, 34% of employees say internal comms have little to no impact on how they think about their employer’s reputation.

Some key findings of the study:

69% of deskless workers’ perceptions of their employers are affected a great deal or moderate amount by other employees [my emphasis]. Family members are the next highest source of influence at 62% [my befuddlement].
Desk-based workers consult a broader diversity of sources than deskless workers do. The top two sources of influence are internal announcements and what their company says in public.

~60% of respondents believe a company’s employees are a more credible source for positive information about a company than company executives (59% vs. 41%) or a news outlet (60% vs. 40%).

🚦 Stop and take note:

“Most internal communications have an unintentional but inherent bias toward desk-based workers, so many traditional tactics and channels fail to connect.”

The few highlights from this study are enough ammunition to justify your internal comms strategy, especially for 1) editorial/storytelling plans that feature employees and 2) employee advocacy programs (à la Firstup, née Dynamic Signal).

Bottom line: Facilitating positive horizontal communication over top-down comms has the potential to move the needle on employee sentiment in the right direction.

Personal Note

For the past six months I’ve been enduring chemotherapy to (hopefully!) cure a rare blood cancer. You’ve all been very supportive, understanding, generous, and patient.

Thank you.

There is light. On Monday, March 28 I will attend what I hope will be my final chemotherapy session. It will also be the most difficult, so I’m taking most of the week off to disconnect and recover.

In mid-April I’ll undergo a test to see what’s happened to the cancer. I’m optimistic, but I’m also not going to jinx anything…

🙏 I’ll keep you updated.

Industry News

🗣️ Julia Levy interviews Megan Stack, head of Global Content and Culture, Internal Communications at Dropbox (The Switchboard)

🥊 How intranets and employee experience platforms complement and compete (CMS Wire)

🇺🇸 Is DEI an American issue? (HBR)

💰 Staffbase raised $115M, boosting its value to $1.1 billion (TechCrunch)

Place your bets: which employee comms tech company will be the first to file an IPO this year?

📊 24% of U.S. employees feel strongly that their organization cares about their wellbeing—the lowest percentage in nearly a decade (Gallup)

⛔ Slack is cutting off customers in Russia (PCMag)

Insider Comms

Here’s Boeing CEO David Calhoun’s note to employees on the situation in Ukraine (@jonostrower)

ICYMI: Disney CEO Bob Chapek’s note to employees on why the company didn’t speak out about the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill (Mister Editorial)

Google recently held an all-hands meeting in which compensation was a hot topic. CNBC’s article gives some insight into how Google takes questions for all-hands meetings.