Inside Uber’s approach to anticipating employee questions

Before she sends out any major announcement to her organization’s employees, Kristin Komar, senior manager of global internal communications at Uber, starts by asking the project team that’s involved in the announcement what they had to figure out along the way. Those early-stage questions help her build question maps to anticipate what employees might ask when the announcement lands in employee inboxes.

“I try to look at the project from every level of familiarity, including the perspective of someone hearing about it for the first time,” Komar told Ragan. “That helps surface both the basic questions and the harder ones we know may be coming. Even if employees might not love the answer, it’s better to be upfront than leave leaders scrambling to respond later.”

Komar added that preparation becomes even more important when employees have a direct line to their company’s senior leaders. At Uber, any gaps in the original message can quickly surface in a public employee forum like a town hall.

“We have global forums where employees can ask questions publicly, and our CEO answers the top 10 every time, no matter what they are,” she said. “If we aren’t transparent in the communications we send out from the beginning, we leave our executive leaders on the line to answer tougher questions later. I’d rather make sure we’ve addressed those questions upfront.”

Here are the three major steps communicators can take to build efficient employee question maps:

1. Start early and let the map evolve

Communicators don’t need to wait for a finished decision and a request from leaders to draft a piece of communication to get started with a question map. Getting visibility into a project or initiative ahead of time allows comms pros to understand project milestones and what impacts there might be on an employee’s day-to-day experience. Komar told Ragan that her team uses this philosophy when it creates question maps ahead of announcements related to office openings and changes.

“We start our communications plans and question maps before the lease is signed, because that process can take several months,” she said. “We stay close to the project through regular touchpoints as it develops. By the time the agreement is final, we can be ready with the foundation of a six-month communications plan rather than starting from scratch.”

During the first phase of question mapping, comms pros should document:

• What decisions are final and what decisions could still change.
• Who will be impacted and when.
• Milestones that trigger messaging to employees.
• What teams need to verify specific answers.
• What questions the organization can’t answer yet.

The map should remain a working document that absorbs new information as the project develops, giving communicators a reliable reference point even when there are still some moving parts and uncertainties.

“The question map is always building and changing as the project moves along,” Komar said. “The conversations we have beforehand give us a long runway. When it is time to communicate, we already have something to work from.”

2. Give each question a destination for the answer.

Once the initial map is sketched out, communicators should determine the pathways for employees to find answers. The most pertinent information should go within the body of an announcement, while detailed or developing answers might be better suited for an FAQ document or a dedicated answers page on an intranet platform.

Komar said that she keeps a running list of questions inside each project’s internal communications plan. She added that for each question on the map, comms pros need to note:

• The person responsible for confirming the correct answer.
• Whether the information in the answer is final or still in development.
• Which channel or format will host the answer.
• When employees need the answer by.

“We’ve started creating project microsites that launch from (company intranet) Uber Hub because they give us more room to fine-tune and customize the information for a specific project,” Komar said.

Communicators should also involve the leaders who are likely to hear questions firsthand. Komar told Ragan that Uber creates steering committees for workplace projects that include people with direct knowledge and influence of the project.

“The steering committee might include senior leaders, local decision-makers or delegates from their teams,” Komar said. “They hear updates directly from the project team and can ask their own questions in real time. That gives them context they can draw on when employees approach them later.”

3. Use feedback to further shape the map.

Once the main message goes out, the question map should shift from planning mode to listening mode. Komar told Ragan that she monitors Uber’s local Slack channels, where employee questions are centralized. She then compares those questions with what the team anticipated before the announcement on the map.

As questions come in, communicators should:

• Add new or repeated questions to the map.
• Check how easy it is for employees to find a given answer.
• Find unresolved questions and answer them in the next message update.

“Sometimes employees will use an announcement to ask about something else that’s been on their mind,” Komar said. “We’ll point them toward the right place for an answer, but we’ll also bring the conversation back to the project so every update doesn’t become an open forum for every workplace issue.”

She added that these kinds of questions can show communicators what deserves attention next.

“If we announce that someone’s office neighborhood is changing and employees tell us the space has never worked well, we use that as an opportunity to address it in the next message,” Komar said. “Those channels show us what people actually want to know more about, and then we build that into the next plan.”

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.