Reaching Employees Where They Are

Much of my work involves helping clients better understand and appreciate how people within their organizations communicate, and how they prefer to get information. Insights into that is the first step towards developing a communications model that effectively reaches the internal audiences.

There is no single solution, not even within one individual company. The legwork must be done, preferably by getting out and talking directly to the employees at all levels. One of my first lines of inquiry when talking with employees in that context is to determine their reading habits and how they get the information they want and need, both for personal and business purposes. (In fact, their personal habits likely echo their preferences within the business environment, which is why I ask.)

Where do they go to get their news? When there’s a big breaking news story, to what source do they turn first? Which sources do they trust most (and least), and how do they stay informed about the issues that concern them? How does that parallel the ways they get the information they need on the job – or does it? How would they prefer to get the kind of on-the-job information that helps them perform their jobs?

Establishing a pattern among a particular employee audience is critical in developing a communications strategy that reaches them in a timely fashion to assure that important management messages are getting through, and that those messages are relevant to them and their world.

But what are we to make of the growing reality that the general population is apparently becoming reading- and information-averse? Not only that, but the sharp audience declines experienced by various print and broadcast news media seem to indicate a growing distaste for conventional news sources. So where are people going now for their news? Or do they even care?

Of course, the answer largely depends on which demographic you’re talking about. Gauging by the types of advertising that predominate the evening network newscasts – geriatric medications, mobility devices, and such  – it’s safe to conclude that the older demographic is tuning in. I don’t need to point out why the evening newscasts’ audience continues to shrink.

Many among the younger demographic – the fastest growing demographic and the one that increasingly comprises your company’s internal audience – get much of their news from faux news programs, such as Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” as well as the late night talk show hosts’ opening monologues. That helps explain the scramble among politicians to be guests on those shows: that’s where their target audience is.

I raise the subject because I just read a “rant” by prolific blogger and marketer Seth Godin on the subject. It led me to do a little online research. It’s troubling to me, an inveterate book reader and newspaper consumer, to learn that the average person spends about 70 seconds each day reading the news online; that an Associated Press poll found that one-in-four people did not read a single book in 2006.

According to an August 21, 2007 article in the Washington Post, that number has been declining for more than a decade. It’s probably safe to assume that, four years later, we are likely approaching a one-in-three ratio. That’s scary stuff, and a real danger to our republican form of government.

These facts depress me, knowing that people are less well informed, apparently deliberately ignorant of current affairs. At the same time, these facts tell us that we need to adjust our approach to internal communications vehicles if we are to reach our employees with any regularity, if we are to make sure they get the information we want them to have. We must delve deeply to learn their reading habits (or lack thereof) and strive to be ever more creative in our selection and use of communications channels and tools available to us, as well as how we craft our messages.

No longer can we assume that printed newsletters, mass distribution of emails, or even “town hall meetings” are the best (or only) way to reach the broad employee audience with our critical messages. (I cringe at the recollection of a client for whom the only means of reaching its worldwide employee audience was through emails. We actually discovered that a number of employees used their spam filters to sift out the frequent emails from their CEO.)

Instead, we must tailor our communications approach to accommodate our reading-averse audience, to meet our people on territory that is familiar and comfortable to them, but that may not be for us, the communicators. Simply put, we need to connect with them where they actually are, not where we think they are or where we want them to be.

That may mean overcoming our discomfort with and lack of trust in the social media where many of our younger employees spend so much time: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the like. If we want to have an on-going dialogue with them about what’s important to the business, that’s where we need to engage them.