How internal comms can produce content that builds connection

Producing employee-focused content is a great way to build cultural bridges across a company and showcase what your employees are doing to keep your organization moving every day. But the production choices comms pros make heavily influence how a piece of content will land with employees.

Bryan Bullock, director of internal communications at Children’s Hospital Colorado, said that the way employee stories are filmed, written and photographed helps refine the cultural message it’s sending.

“As large as we are, we know most employees will never meet the person being featured,” he said of Children’s Colorado’s employee-featuring content. “So the way we produce these stories has to help people connect.”

Here are a few production tactics internal communicators can use when creating employee-focused internal content:

• Determine the right level of production value for your piece. Bullock said that at Children’s Colorado, each employee spotlight features an interview and professional photography to give the audience a complete and polished story about the employee subject. He said this type of production helps attract the audience to learn more about their colleagues and the work they do, creating an increased awareness of the many job functions that support the hospital. “That level of production matters because it pulls people into the profile — the image catches their eye, and then the story helps them learn something new about a coworker they may never meet,” he said. However, not every story requires the same level of production. For instance, extra polish can go on flagship-type employee profiles that go on high-visibility channels like newsletters, and lower-production stories that feature everyday activities can live on employee destinations like intranets. Shannon Iwaniuk, vice president of internal and executive communications at McKesson, told Ragan that due to the highly dispersed nature of her company, the comms team will ask employees to record themselves and let the editing team handle the rest. “We have a widely distributed workforce, so we’re not afraid to have people record themselves on Teams or on their iPhone. With the right editing, we can turn those clips into polished internal videos. Some of our best stories were filmed right where people work — in a distribution center, behind a pharmacy counter or from someone’s home office. It lets us feature people we’d never get into a studio.”
• Align the medium with the subject and story. Some stories will shine more with a slickly filmed video, while others require the depth only the written word can provide. It’s up to communicators to decide which format will showcase employees the best, and that comes from a deep knowledge of both subject and audience. Bullock said that words alone would never do justice to the hospital’s med-flight team. “We filmed them in action, flying helicopters and delivering lifesaving care,” he said. “Video let us showcase the intensity and impact of their work in a way written profiles couldn’t.”
• Build a workflow. With the sheer amount of content internal comms pros are charged with producing, having a repeatable and methodical process in place can help things move along efficiently. Bullock said one person is responsible for quarterbacking the employee profiles at Children’s Hospital Colorado. “Once someone is selected, we assign a team member to run the whole production,” he told Ragan. “They conduct the interview, coordinate with photography, build the written profile and then get it approved by the employee’s leader. Only after all of that do we package it for the newsletter, intranet and digital signage. It’s a full production pipeline, and each step is intentional.”

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.