A roadmap for RTO communications

At Ragan’s Employee Experience Conference earlier this year, Sophie McCarthy, partner and reputation management lead and strategic communications at Avoq, shared her experiences helping her clients navigate the challenges of internal communications campaigns centered on RTO processes. She told the audience that it can be tough to win people over with an RTO comms push.

“RTO is very much a policy challenge,” she said. “The communications around RTO are quite straightforward. Even when it’s done really, really well, it’s not something where you can win hearts and minds with a communications campaign.”

She added that no matter the circumstances or details of the RTO process, messaging needs to maintain a tone that focuses on the humanity of those impacted by an RTO mandate.

“You want to be clear, to be consistent and to be compassionate,” McCarthy said. “Perhaps the one last thing that is really important is to do no harm.”

McCarthy said that one of the biggest challenges internal communicators face amid an RTO process is the perception that an RTO process inherently pits an employer against its employees.

“There is this unhelpful but fully baked narrative in the media that it’s employees vs. employers,” she said. “It’s important to shift that narrative.”