What are the newest ways to engage employees in strategic communication?

A good way to start is through first person stories the team can write or tell to showcase their own journey, stories or anecdotes. Perhaps set up a coffee chat every other week to set narrative and context to employee communications and their relationship with cross functioning teams.

Storytelling requires a backbone of honesty, coupled with the most appropriate language and lexicon to drive impact and value. There is no point in speaking to your audience on what you think they already know. A key component of storytelling that most forget is research. Understand your topic area, your audience and understand the strategic vision you are trying to create through your story.

Having been a 50-year public participation, community relations, and public relations practitioner, I've made my share of mistakes and learned from them. I start many of my presentations by saying, "I made a mistake" and this is what I learned. Some of them are funny, some of them not so. Fortunately, no one was ever injured nor did my organization ever end up in court. From the outset, I share what we did, what we learned, and how we turned our learnings into best practices. I then explain how we developed the public participation and communications process model we call the path to Collaborative Informed Consent (R). A model that keeps the organization "out of the court of law and winning in the court of public opinion."

Employees are perhaps the biggest brand ambassadors of any organisation. And, employee stories that are honest, genuine and from the heart usually have a high recall amongst listeners/ readers. The medium of effective storytelling could be determined by audience profiling and preferences.

New ways to get employees involved in communication include using virtual reality for immersive learning, AI to tailor content to individual needs, and games to make learning fun. Encouraging employees to share company messages makes communication more personal and widespread. Pairing these tech tools with a focus on well-being and inclusivity makes messages more meaningful and engaging for everyone.

Podcasts are a powerful tool for creating dialogue and long form storytelling. I also see an opportunity to for them to be used as ways to forecast vision and inspire employee engagement. You could be daring and use fictitious narrative storytelling that exemplifies the core values of the company. Sci-fi isn't just for the screen.

Las plataformas digitales tienen que servir para escuchar a los trabajadores. En ocasiones, los comunicadores estratégicos pensamos solamente como emisores de información, y dejamos de lado uno de nuestros principales cometidos: mejorar las relaciones. El objetivo relacional hace imprescindible la escucha. No lo olvidemos

Designing interactive quizzes or surveys with a gamified interface can make the feedback process more engaging and enjoyable for participants, increasing response rates. This is already implemented in schools with programs like Kahoot which encourage engagement and provide opportunities for productive competition. Healthy competition can be useful in increasing feedback from employees and audiences as it taps into people's natural desire to excel and be recognized for their achievements. When individuals see their feedback being ranked or compared to others on a leaderboard, they may feel motivated to provide more valuable or insightful feedback to stand out.

A great way to engage employees is through a self nominated communications committee. Basically the committee will meet one a month (or whichever frequency suits your team) to discuss ideas and strategy related to comms. This helps promote co-creation by pull rather than push. Providing regular trainings also helps the team remain excited and encouraged to participate.

It’s often helpful to encourage camera-shy teammates that using a phone as a camera is fine these days. With a couple lighting tips they can be ready to go. This allows everyone to shoot at home or wherever they feel most comfortable, encouraging personal and authentic stories which will motivate others to do the same.

Absolutely resonate with this! Co-creation has been a cornerstone in many successful projects I’ve led. It not only garners buy-in but sparks a level of enthusiasm and ownership among the team. It’s essential, as you pointed out, to have crystal clear goals from the get-go and a shared understanding of the scope of influence. I’ve seen magic happen when these co-created ideas evolve into actionable plans. It creates a culture of continuous improvement, with everyone invested in pushing the needle further. The camaraderie built during such collaborative efforts is the cherry on top, making the journey as rewarding as the outcome.

One of the best ways to Co-create with employees is to co-author a brand advocacy program that involves using employees as advocates for the brand, to remind their audience of what the brand and business stand for and why it matters.

Co-creating ideas is one of the best way to achieve buy-in and motivate people. Done well, the outcome is likely to be advocacy and empowment. To be succesful, it's important to ensure that people are clear about the goals, and what they can (and can't) influence. They also need to be able to turn the outputs into actions, and influence continuous improvement.

As a 100% virtual company even before the pandemic, we highly utilize Microsoft Teams to communicate for both work and more lighthearted communications. For example, we have one Teams chat called "Company Virtual Water Cooler" that often includes employees posting about personal accomplishments or family milestones as well as the weather, sports, or even sharing "Dad Jokes." It's like our virtual break room. Another channel we have is for our Marketing Team which is utilized more for production updates and ideas sharing.

If you're going to embrace DEI, you need to be genuinely invested in it, or employees will see it as the gimmick it is. This means, you will have to be open about confronting uncomfortable truths. It's not just about celebrating the "fun" aspects of different culture, but also, how are you addressing some of the challenges affecting your employee-base. It also has to include different voices and perspectives. One way we did this at a previous company was through the creation of short videos with employees of different backgrounds around one topic. They highlighted the different challenges, and viewpoints between employees of different backgrounds - as well as the commonalities that unite us all.

Keep your communication fresh, relevant, and effective in this crazy competition! 🚀 Stay updated with trends, like when millennials switch from avocado toast to kale smoothies. 🥑🥬 Be a master of emoji translation to connect with the Gen Z crowd. 👍💯 And always remember, if all else fails, just communicate through interpretive dance! 💃🕺 #FreshMoves

Review of customer feedback is great way to illicit employee engagement. Hearing directly from the customers we serve helps to maintain a customer-centric perspective. Use of social media engagement, social media customer service cases, real-time instant surveys, secret shoppers, on-site event polling, focus groups, and case studies serve as a barometer of our customer satisfaction initiatives. Direct customer feedback helps galvanize our teams with key, unfiltered insights to help improve our overall client experience.

La mejor herramienta para involucrar a los trabajadores en la comunicación estratégica de la organización es el Employee Advocacy. A través de ella es posible transformar a los trabajadores en embajadores de marca y comenzar a utilizarlos como canal de comunicación orgánico, auténtico y mucho más confiable que cualquier otro, incluso más que la marca o que el vocero tradicional o designado de la organización. El Advocacy es el boca boca moderno.

Another powerful tool is be open and transparent while being empathetic to your audience. If genuine, this will be felt and your employees will feel this and buy into your vision more easily. Making it relatable is also an added bonus.

'Strategic Communications' for one company begins with ONE shared Aim,ideally one phrase or sentence. An Aim is singular. If'Aims'are in the title or mentioned in text,almost all of those will be Objectives. The Aim is owned by the Strategic company lead (one person). Company communications planning should support and amplify the company Aim. For many leads and teams,this falls into Coordination,Collaboration, feedback and regular revisions and is'Tactical' Much of the words in the article seem to fall into support for shared Objectives('Tactical'),or are 'Operational':supporting a single Aim('Strategic') Is there an argument that all Communication Plans are Tactical-not Strategic-as thier sole purpose is to assist achieve the Aim