Multichannel Publishing, Mixed Priorities, and 💩 Comms

The authority on mixternal comms

• 🎃 Halloween is on Oct. 31, a Monday. If your newsletter goes out Monday mornings, this is an opportunity to be scarily clever.

• The advanced Learning Institute hosts Diversity, Equity & Inclusion For Internal Communications Oct. 19-21 (virtual) .

• simplyEXP 2022 for internal comms pros is Nov. 14-15 in London.

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Omnichannel. Multichannel. Same Diff.

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You must publish across multiple channels consistently. It’s the only way to create a virtuous loop of content generation, feedback, and metrics. Moreover, it’s the only way to reach employees where they are, not where you want them to be.

• Channels should include internal and external channels, the essence of mixternal comms.

Multichannel publishing is alive and well in comms, according to a couple of new studies. (Whether the strategy is intentional or a byproduct of haphazard comms is uncertain.)

• Above is a snippet of an infographic from Digital Signage Today with results from a recent study that asked IC professionals about challenges and opportunities over the next few years.

• According to Ragan/PoliteMail’s The State of Corporate Communications Survey 2022, the most popular place to publish employee news is SharePoint (i.e., internal) and the most popular service for video publishing is YouTube (i.e., external). Of the tools respondents find most valuable, multichannel analytics dashboard tops the list.

Publishing to a platform, rather than to individual channels, is the surest way to increase the return on investment (ROI) for your time, effort, and output.

• Channels are distinct outlets. A newsletter is a channel. So is a Twitter feed. So is a bathroom poster. 

A platform contains contributors, multiple channels, and feedback loops that interact across three levels of activity, in order: 

1. Ideation and Creation 

2. Publishing and Distribution

3. Engagement and Feedback

Go deeper: Publish to a Platform, Not Just to a Channel (Mister Editorial)

⚠️ Just don’t be annoying. See below.

• Bonus: Ragan/PoliteMail note that communicators seek “more attention and acknowledgment from leadership.” Good luck with that. 👉 What About That Seat at the Table? (Mister Editorial)

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Quick Hits

💬 Here’s a helpful guide of eight best practices for learning how to write for executives. My favorite advice is number six. (The Switchboard)

💻 A new study from Microsoft suggests three areas managers need to work on to improve the hybrid work experience:

1. End productivity paranoia

2. Embrace the fact that people come in for each other

3. Re-recruit your employees

😰 A new tool and scorecard from Aon, Axa, Bank of America, and Prudential helps companies measure and improve the mental health of their workers. It’s aim is to combat workplace stress and anxiety. (Bloomberg)

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Is There a Disconnect?

57% of internal comms pros in simplycommunicate’s workspace report ☝️ say “culture and engagement” is a top priority for the next 12 months.

70% of survey respondents in Ragan/PoliteMail’s survey say “Improving employee retention and engagement” is a strategic goal.

• I quibble with the line of questioning. While intertwined, “retention” and “engagement” are separate activities and outcomes.

So here we have two big studies from both sides of the Atlantic where internal comms pros declare that boosting “engagement” (whatever that means) is a primary goal for the next year.

• “Engagement” appears 22 times in the Ragan/PoliteMail survey and five times in simplycommunicate’s topline report. Across both reports, a definition of “engagement” appears zero times.

Meanwhile…

40% of employees say health and well-being are their top concerns ☝️, according to the Integral Employee Activation Index. Additional priorities include job creation (32%), data privacy (23%), income inequality (21%), gender inequality (20%), and racial inequality (19%).

• Since Integral released its study in July economies have taken a turn for the worst. Layoffs and hiring freezes are in the news daily and a recession is looming.

• Today I suspect that job preservation would be top of mind for many (most?) employees.

Questions:

• If “employee engagement” is the main KPI for your team, what exactly do you mean by that?

• How does your top priority square with employees’ priorities?

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Employees Are Overwhelmed

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Previously I’ve argued…

There’s too much information coming from too many sources for employees to absorb and manage. No news there. Internal comms pros know it through experience, evidence, and simple gut checks.

Employee comms might be part of the problem because a shallow form of “engagement” is an important metric for “success.”

• Prime examples include likes, comments, and internal shares. These are examples of volumetrics.

• Poll participation, feedback, idea generation, views, listens, and social media postings are other engagement metrics.

Employee comms is pressuring employees to “engage” in order to generate metrics that make the output seem worthwhile.

• We’re distracting our coworkers with soft demands to respond to our pings, dings, chirps, chimes, social share buttons, and empty comment fields. We’re increasing their anxiety for the sake of our engagement metrics.

• This isn’t entirely all comms’ fault. It’s a systems issue. Other departments, like IT, HR, Security, and others, must also share some of the blame for fostering a work environment taped together with 30, 40, 50(!) applications.

More questions:

• How can we ensure comms is not part of the problem?

• Do we get smarter about what we ask employees to do?

• Maybe we change our definition of and metrics around “engagement.”

🤔 Or maybe we altogether stop making “engagement” a goal.

Go deeper: What If ‘Employee Engagement’ Is the Problem?

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We’ve learned that our policy is great but our comms is shit.

—Penny Mordaunt, the U.K.’s House of Commons leader, explaining why the government’s ill-conceived tax policy failed to gain traction

Editor’s note: No amount of great comms will save a shitty idea 💩.

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Interesting Opportunities

Aritzia - Manager, Retail Comms (Vancouver)

BAE Systems - Head of Internal Comms (remote available, London)

Brilliant Ink - Contract Comms Research Analyst (remote, U.S.A.)

Heifer International - Public Relations Officer (remote, U.S.A.) - Chelsey Louzeiro is the hiring manager

MAKE Corporation - Executive Comms Consultant (Chicago) - Meredith Cornelison is the recruiter

Mars Wrigley - Internal Comms Director, North America (Newark, NJ) - Word is this is a “very visible role with a lot of opportunity for growth.”

Virgin Voyages - several internal comms and brand roles (Florida)

• 🤨 Don’t know what to think about the employee in Virgin’s job ad posing with S&M bondage accessories…

Advertise your open role in Mister Editorial. Email editorshaun@gmail.com.

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Story Opportunity

Mister Editorial@MrEditorial

1/4 Attn comms-rades in the U.S. -- Here is a potential GOOD story for your company to tell during these volatile times. Today Fortune published The American Opportunity Index, a scorecard of the U.S.’s top 250 companies on how well employees can advance and grow their careers.

5:15 PM · Oct 13, 2022

Click the tweet ☝️ to follow the thread, learn more, and get the link to the index.

☀️ You’re all caught up!

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Disclaimer: Besides running Mister Editorial, I am the editor-in-chief of Digital Publications at Lam Research. The views in this newsletter are my own.

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