Don’t assume frontline workers saw your last email

When you’re a communicator charged with reaching frontline workers, you’ve got to make sure you’re crafting messages that grab attention.

During Ragan’s Employee Communications and Culture Conference last month in Boston, Erin Kennedy, associate director of internal communications at Mount Sinai Health System, shared some of her experiences in working to reach healthcare workers spread across a large hospital system in New York City. She stated that comms pros need to realize that frontline workers have different job demands than your typical corporate desk worker, and that communicators need to adjust accordingly.

“How many of you have executives who think everybody works like they do — sitting at a desk, at a computer, with a corporate-issued phone that has email loaded?” Kennedy said. “If we all had a dollar for every time a leader asked us to send a system-wide email blast, we’d all be retired by now. Meanwhile, our nurses are standing at computers that only access clinical systems. They’re not checking the CEO’s email.”

Kennedy added that the best way for communicators to learn frontline workers’ comms preferences is to get out there with them and observe.