Crafting employee communication? Here's what NOT to do

​Hey Reader,​

Last week, I spoke at the Elevating Employee Communications: Shaping the Future of the Modern Employee Experience Conference in NYC. These conferences bring together internal communication experts from across the country to deliver workshops, keynotes, and panels about how to truly connect with, engage, and inform employees.

Internal communication is kind of a passion of mine. When a group of people spend the majority of their waking hours under the umbrella of the same mission, it’s my opinion that it’s the duty and obligation of the leaders of that collective group to communicate with them in ways that increase transparency and trust, provide clarity and the information they need when they need it, and is respectful and engaging.

Communication is one of our most powerful tools as humans, and internal communicators are the stewards of that tool in the workplace (and really, anyone who communicates with anyone else at work is an internal communicator!).

I respect and admire my fellow comms experts, but every time we get together, there’s one thing that still makes me cringe (and for my new subscribers who were fellow conference attendees, you heard this last week!): their main focus is the message.

Mine is the stakeholder.

The way I design any strategy actually flips a more typical framework around to focus on what matters most — the people. This goes for communication strategies as well. Let's dig in!

Internal communicators often start by centering the message

First, they create key messages.

Then, they develop their stakeholder list (or use an existing one – that might be incomplete or not segmented properly for the topic!).

Then, they tailor their key messages to their stakeholders (often using the framework WIIFM, or What’s In It For Me, which is NOT the best framework for communicating, but I won’t get into that now).

Then, they distribute their messages to stakeholders via various communication channels.

This is a totally normal and generally accepted way of crafting internal communication. And it...sucks.

Shuffle it around, and you have a much more effective and engaging strategy, one that centers the stakeholders

First, start with curiosity

Forget about your message for a minute. Who are you communicating with?

Who are all of the different individuals or groups who could potentially be impacted by whatever you’re communicating about? What is important to them in general, what is their daily work experience like, and how could the topic you’re communicating about apply to their daily lives?

This doesn’t mean why you think they should think it’s important. Why is it actually important to them — or not? If it’s not important, why? How could it be?

A deep curiosity about the people you want to communicate with will set any strategy up for success.

Then, channel compassion

Compassion is a sympathetic consciousness of someone else’s distress along with a desire to alleviate it. So how will you impact the people you have just centered in your strategy? How can you reduce any burdens and barriers they might face as a result of your communication?

Now, distress might seem dramatic, but think about it: say you’re launching management training. Super simple and standard. All of a sudden, a six-session management training pops up on someone’s calendar. It doesn't matter how well you crafted a description of the training, how useful it will be for them, etc. etc.

Maybe it conflicts with meetings they had, or they had no clue that they were part of it, or they’re just bogged down and don’t want another thing on their plate. That can cause distress!

While you might not be able to alleviate the distress by canceling the training, there are other ways to alleviate it (top tips: validation and gratitude).

What can we do with our communication strategy to not only alleviate distress, but do the opposite?

Then comes clarity

Now what message should be communicated? When and where? This still isn’t what you want to communicate to an audience; it’s audience-focused messaging that gives the audience the information they need and want and is tailored to them as human beings.

Clarity can look like embedding new topics or messages in existing organic comms to reduce the amount of messaging people receive. It’s knowing the best mediums, formats, channels, and frequencies for your audiences. It's sharing the why and how of the recipient, for the recipient. It’s striking the speaker-focused phrase “I’m happy to announce” from your vocabulary!

Centering your message is not the way to communicate

Starting with people, channeling compassion, and then ensuring you’re communicating with clarity is.

And you can use this framework at any scale, from sending a single email to designing an entire strategy — because it’s a great way to not just craft a message, but to design strategies in general.

I'm looking for more venues to share Communicating with Curiosity, Compassion & Clarity, whether they're leadership conferences, keynotes, panels, workshops, or deep dives with other internal comms folks.

Know somewhere I should be? Reply here and let me know!

Talk soon,

Caitlin Harper
​Founder, Commcoterie

P.S. – Know someone who needs to read this? Forward them this issue or share this page on your socials – there folks can check out past issues and subscribe so that they never miss a new one. Thanks, as always, for reading <3

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