How tech tools can help comms pros support ‘the human side’

Tech tools can be a great asset for any internal communicator — but they’re only effective if the pro using them knows how their tech stack fits into their mission.

At Ragan’s Internal Communications Conference earlier this year, Lori Rodney, global head of communications at Shutterstock, Hillary U, senior director of employee experience and communications at Rivian, and David Bowman, product director at Fresh, discussed what they’ve learned figuring out how tools can support people-centric activity on the job.

Rodney said that comms pros need to remember that, as great as technology is, the ultimate aim is to reach human beings.

“Yes, we have protocols and technology systems, but the tools don’t remove the human side,” she said. “They must support it.”

Technology, Rodney said, can help comms pros deepen the relationships with those around them.

“If you’re in two competing meetings, you can use your AI assistant to capture notes and then drop them into Copilot or ChatGPT and ask for the biggest takeaways,” she said. “Compare them for conflicts. Let AI do some of that work so you can spend your energy meaningfully engaging with people.”

U said in her time at the helm of comms at Rivian, she’s learned that person-to-person relationships are strengthened by tools — including those between a manager and their reports.

“Every frontline employee has email, but relationships come first,” she said. “We invest heavily in leader cascades, digital signs and video messages at the start of every shift. The biggest gap is often that the manager doesn’t know what’s happening, so tech must support the manager first.”

Another discussion among the panelists centered on knowing how to pick tech tools that sing in concert for maximum effectiveness. Bowman said that if comms pros use tools that don’t work well together, communication can become muddled and lead to confusion among employees.

“If you end up in an organization where you’ve got a patchwork of collaboration platforms and tools, it can be very complicated to try and find anything,” Bowman said. “If information is scattered across different platforms or stored in places where tools can’t reach it, people draw conclusions based on incomplete information. That’s where misalignment shows up — not because people aren’t trying, but because the tech stack itself isn’t enabling a single source of truth.”

To watch this panel in its entirety, visit Ragan Training.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.