Organizational comms can lack much-needed authenticity. Maybe leadership is too busy to add their voice to your messaging. Or maybe you’ve fallen into a stale routine with your newsletters, but you know you need to freshen them up. Whatever the case, here are three ways to add more authenticity and humanness to your employee communications.
- Actively involve leadership in your comms. People want to hear from other people. How can you involve organizational leaders in your messaging efforts? Is leadership more likely to get on board with a weekly high-level update video or a light-hearted Q&A series featuring a different leader each month?
Be careful not to force leaders into doing something they’re uncomfortable with — the result will not only be inauthentic, but you’ll also experience a lot of pushback. Instead, work with leadership to find their sweet spot. When this feels fun and easy for leadership, it’ll be authentic and human.
- Let your employees talk. Although employees want to hear from leadership, a communications plan that’s solely top-down will limit your impact and authenticity. As you ramp up leadership’s involvement, brainstorm how you can let all employees have a voice. What would motivate an employee to share or create content for your organization?
If you work with creative folks who are eager to write or speak, invite employees to submit guest blogs, vlogs, or join an episode of your company podcast. If you work with employees who are hesitant to create content or show up on camera, but they’re happy to talk about their work, take time to interview those employees. Employee-generated content will quickly add authenticity to your comms.
- Feature non-work topics. It’s hard to humanize communications when they’re all about work. And with many folks working from home, the line between work and home is becoming increasingly blurred. By adding non-work topics to your comms, you can inspire conversations that foster employee connections.
If you want to move beyond corporate updates, consider how you can help employees bring their full selves to work, while still respecting their privacy and boundaries. You may want to spotlight employee pets, highlight employee volunteer efforts, or send birth and adoption announcements (given you have parental consent). BetterUp recommends celebrating new, promising ideas with a “wins of the week” bulletin or Slack channel. To make this less corporate, you could specifically celebrate wins of the week that occurred outside of work.
Adding authenticity to your employee communications
By involving leadership, giving your employees a voice, and adding more personal (non-work) topics to your comms, you can add authenticity to your messaging. With each of these strategies, also consider how you can incorporate more images and videos of your employees and leadership. When you add a face to your brand, you can quickly humanize your organization.
