How comms can influence current employees and prospective hires
Internal comms has a major role to play in external perception and whether people stay.
What do your current employees and prospective ones have in common? There’s plenty to name, but for one thing, internal communication is the origin of how you can effectively reach both audiences.
Internal communication should impact both employee retention and employer reputation through employee-centric, culture-building messages that emanate from the inside out. When you communicate a strong sense of organizational identity internally, you’ve got a great chance of empowering your employees as brand ambassadors that positively affect the external perception of your company.
Employee engagement has internal and external implications
One of the biggest roles of an internal comms pro is getting employees engaged in the culture of their companies.
A great way to build engagement that can show the organization cares beyond the walls of the office is by working with directly with employee communities. This work can better highlight what day-to-day experiences at the organization are like and how that can foster both goodwill with employees and intrigue from those looking for a new company to call home.
Jennifer Hawton, public relations manager at PEMCO Insurance, shared an anecdote a campaign her previous employer, Boeing, ran for Disability Awareness Month. The campaign focused on the stories and triumphs of Boeing’s employees with disabilities and their role in helping define company culture. After running internally, the campaign also went external to give the outside world a sense of how employee life at the company allowed workers to thrive.
“This initiative educated employees about hidden disabilities and reduced stigma,” she said. “The success of this campaign was evident in the significant rise in self-identification, retention and the positive feedback from employees who felt their lives were changed by the communications efforts.”
Hawton said that ultimately, both employee retention and employer reputation-focused communication come back to supporting the larger business.
“By focusing on these areas, communicators can help create a more inclusive, collaborative, and engaging workplace that’s appealing to more people,” she said. “This can lead to higher employee retention and better business outcomes with increased employer reputation.”
She added that internal comms pros need to gather data on what’s impacting retention and hiring trends in their companies through surveys and trend analysis and implement those findings in their messaging. Beyond just conducting a pulse survey or check-in for sentiment, communicators should create a list of patterns they’re seeing in the employee base and craft a through-line narrative for leadership.
For instance, creating one-sheets for leaders on these findings can help simplify the complexities of employee sentiment for the necessary influence over decision-making processes that affect reputation. Additionally, comms pros can set meetings with teams to inform them about messaging that involves their projects in marketing efforts outside the company. Showing the reaction to these employee efforts from the outside can help build goodwill and a commitment to the company while simultaneously keeping feelings of employee appreciation high.
Reputation affects retention
Hawton shared another anecdote in which her comms team’s messaging through HR’s recruitment efforts had a direct influence on retention comms. She had to quickly recruit engineers for a new research center — but that recruitment push was just the beginning of the process.
“After recruiting these engineers, we needed to keep them interested as Silicon Valley tech companies were consistently trying to pull them away,” she said. “The internal campaign focused on promoting the team’s capabilities and highlighting great individual work. I also helped various executives and teams with two-way outreach to ensure employees were heard and knew they were being heard.”
More specifically, Hawton told Ragan that her team developed a comms cadence that shared project updates with employees on specific projects. Within these messages, the comms team included in-depth details on how a given employee’s project was both pushing the business forward and impacting the positivity of team culture.
“As a result, the new employees stayed engaged and excited about the work,” she said. “Continuous communication and feedback loops are key to maintaining employee interest and commitment to the company.”
Hawton told Ragan that her team created a simple-to-navigate dashboard that allowed for employee and leader commentary, emphasizing the impact a seemingly minor tool can have. She also said that since reputation and retention are fluid and dependent on company actions, comms needs to constantly be involved with it.
“Look at the numbers and response first and then dive deeper by doing a listening tour or focus groups,” Hawton said. “Then, when you have the data and understanding start to test and learn on communications approaches.”
