Employee Communications

Employee Communications

Sixty percent of companies don’t have a long-term internal communications strategy (Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.). 74% of employees have the feeling they are missing out on company news (Gallup). And 1 in 3 Americans would rather discuss their weight than go through open enrollment (Willis Tower Watson). Does that sound familiar to you?

It’s easy for employees to overlook or underutilize their benefits. Lack of employer interaction and employee awareness can result in missed opportunities for improved health and wellness, lower work productivity, and lower overall satisfaction with work and its benefits. Employee communications is key to building trust and buy-in with employees. NFP’s strategic framework will help you shape an employee communications plan that improves your business and the overall employee experience.

Total Rewards programs are broad and go far beyond compensation. When using the Total Rewards framework, Employee communications is part of the connective tissue that touches every facet of the employee experience, from compensation and benefits to well-being, leadership support, and more. Employee communications impacts everything.

At NFP, we created a proprietary communications process for clients interested in advancing communications efforts with their employees and other key stakeholders. LASSO^TM, “Listen, Assess, Strategize, Start, and Optimize,” is a multichannel employee communications model that captures employee attention and drives action.

LASSO

L - Listen

Audit your current employee communications strategies and goals. Listen to your people through interviews, surveys, or focus groups, and review your communications materials or digital assets. Take a thorough approach in cataloging timing, frequency, channels, messaging, etc.

A - Assess

Review the feedback and results from your audits. When analyzing your employee communications, ask yourself what stands out, where gaps are, and who is falling through the cracks? Ultimately ask, ‘Are your employees getting the messages that empower them to take actions that leverage the resources you offer as an employer?’

S - Strategize

Build your benefits communications approach and strategy. This could be as simple as memorializing and recognizing the plan you already have in place and tweaking it with your new perspective (or the perspective of an outsider). First Person can help you assess your internal communications resources, augment them when necessary, and direct them to accomplish the task of distributing information to your employees.

S - Start

Execute the benefits communications strategy. Now that you’ve set a strategy and timeline, it’s time to implement it. Your organization may have the resources in place to accomplish this task, or First Person can integrate into your communications team and help build the materials and content you need.

O - Optimize

Review the results and make enhancements to your strategy. This iterative process can involve weekly check-ins or data reviews for some operations and activities. For others, the check-ins may be monthly, quarterly, or annually. The key is checking in on the execution and adjusting as the data suggests where you can make improvements.

Bottom Line

As you use LASSO to set your employee communications plan, stay focused on the individuals you serve. Employee communications should be easy to access and understand. To meet employees where they are, we use the rule of seven. This rule states a message must connect with its target audience seven times seven different ways to drive engagement. This could mean finding multiple channels, for instance, using text, email, and internal posts for the same message, or finding multiple ways of communicating a message.