ICYMI: Security alert, AI creativity, and Shrill
“While the voting results were lopsided and our direct relationship with employees is strong, it’s clear to me that we need a better vision for how we create value for employees—a vision for their success.” Jeff Bezos said in his last letter to shareholders as CEO of Amazon (WSJ).
🏆 Ragan announced their 2021 Employee Communications Awards across dozens of categories, including best intranet video, best social media campaign, and the Employee Communications Team of the Year.
In case you missed it…
1. A Ticking Time Bomb
Mainstream messaging apps are killing your company’s security, writes Alex White, co-founder and CTO of Glacier, an anonymous and encrypted communications platform.
In light of the Solar Winds cyber attack (attributed to Russia), companies are super focused on threats to their cyber infrastructure, both from inside and outside the company.
If employees are using messaging apps to communicate with each other outside of your organization’s firewall, your company is vulnerable. Says White:
“With data privacy an ever-present concern, enterprises should shy away from using apps that allow data to be shared with any outside party.”
WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, and other messaging apps are popular with employees.
The problem is, these apps share data with third parties, making them vulnerable to cyber intrusion.
Signal and Telegram, encrypted messaging apps that promise to destroy user data, are signing up droves of new users.
Your company must have a policy about what applications are approved for communicating with each other.
Regardless of whether the rules are followed, chances are your company will be hacked.
Now—before that event occurs—is the time to ready your internal comms playbook for what to do in case of a cyberattack.
2. Employee Experience Platforms
Employees want the same tech experience they use outside the company to happen inside the company. They want intranet searches to be like Google, employee apps to be as smooth as their favorite news app, and messaging to be as delightful as their emoji-filled WhatsApp group chats.
The struggle is real for employee comms teams who have to work with piecemeal platforms, outdated technology, and legacy systems. Not to mention being underfunded and understaffed.
Dion Hinchcliffe, VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research says companies need to adopt “employee experience platforms,” or EXPs:
EXPs allow organizations to readily and easily connect disparate applications and software into a more cohesive, focused, consistent, and better-organized digital workplace for employees.
Eventually, there will be an overarching solution that will successfully house and create a primary delivery point for the digital journey of work. Until then, enterprises must assemble an interim EXP from a powerful set of technologies that have developed over the last few years.
3. Industry News
The Women in Communications Conference (UK) is happening virtually on April 28.
Sign up for the Executive Communications Council’s Employee Communications Summit, happening virtually June 22-23.
Following the centralization of employee comms, Sarah Gavin has been promoted to SVP of global communications and corporate brand at Expedia Group (PR Week)
"We Haven’t Even Begun to Define The Future of Work” by Dhiraj Sharma, founder and CEO of Simpplr (Forbes)
Airtable is valued at $5.8 billion, making it one of the top 20 most valuable U.S. VC-backed companies.
Four Things Gen Z and Millennials Expect From Their Workplace (Gallup)
Zoom Burnout Is Real and It’s Worse for Women (NYT)
📰 This Friday newsletter is free, but you can explore insights into editorial strategies for your internal comms with a paid subscription to Mister Editorial.
Recently subscribers received What Makes a Bad Newsletter
And before that, A Business Outcome-Focused Template for Requests for Content
Please consider becoming a paid subscriber today.
4. Can AI Can Replace the Water Cooler?
We still can’t solve “the water cooler problem.” In our evolving WFH/remote/hybrid workplace, CEOs across the board are lamenting the lack of spontaneity, collaboration, and serendipity that happened in hallways and at lunch tables IRL.
Can artificial intelligence manufacture Zoom serendipity? Writing about the problem in Wired, Carl Benedikt Frey thinks so.
In 2021, companies will be throwing resources at developing this kind of matching AI in the workplace. Based on employees’ emails, Google searches and other data, AI algorithms will be able to deduce what people are working on and their current interests and will act upon that by making digital introductions that would otherwise not have happened.
5. What I’m Into
What I’m watching: From executive producers Lorne Michaels and Elizabeth Banks comes Shrill, a comedy starring SNL’s Aidy Bryant. Based on the book of the same name, this delightful comedy series follows Annie, a “fat young woman who wants to change her life, but not her body.” You’ll laugh. You’ll cringe. You’ll throw up your fist in you-go-girl solidarity.
What I’m reading: The Education of a Wandering Man is the memoir of Louis L’Amour, an American novelist known primarily for his Westerns and short fiction. (I haven’t read any of his books.) L’Amour takes us on a journey through his itinerant life as a hobo, seamen, prizefighter, and constant traveler who always made time to read whatever was at hand. Though he dropped out of school at 15, L’Amour educates himself in the school of hard knocks and great books. This memoir is for readers, for those who read what they want without shame or show.
.
Disclaimer: Besides running Mister Editorial, I work in employee comms at Splunk. The views in this newsletter are my own.
.