Jason Allan Scott

Professional
Communication
JASON ALLAN SCOTT

PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION

2
Professional Communication
1st edition
© 2021 Jason Allan Scott & bookboon.com
ISBN 978-87-403-3870-6

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION Contents

CONTENTS
About Author 5

About the Editor 6

1 Communication Skills: Definition and Importance In The Workplace 7

2 Why You Need to Develop Strong Communication Skills 10

3 Smart Ways to Your Improve Communication Skills 17

4 Your Employees Have Changed 21

5 There’s No CX Before EX 24

6 People Trust People (Not Logos) 27

7 External Is Also Internal 29

8 Measure The Business Impacts Of Your Internal Comms 31

9 People Don’t Remember Facts, They Remember Stories 33

10 Follow The Path Marketing Has Carved 35

11 Dare To Be Human 38

12 Create Corporate Content In The Voice Of The Employee 39

13 Comms Is Everyone’s Job 41

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION About Author

ABOUT AUTHOR
Jason Allan Scott is a serial entrepreneur from Cape Town, South Africa. Growing up in a
council house in front of Albow Gardens, Scott was in pursuit of a life beyond what was
on offer in post apartheid South Africa and came to the UK twenty years ago.

Despite overcoming many personal challenges including nearly dying from a gunshot wound
as a child and living with an autoimmune condition, Scott is an award-winning event
professional, best selling author, podcaster, founder, and keynote speaker.

Named on platforms such as The Guardian, Eventbrite, Haymarket Media and Marketing
Weekly. Scott is penned as one of the UK’s Top 100 Entrepreneurs in Events.

As a conqueror of two of life’s top stressors at the same time: an incurable disease and three
divorces, Jason is grateful for the gift of each new day.

Residing in London, Jason enjoys living life to the fullest with his partner along with
speaking at events, writing books and running two successful companies both helping others.

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION About the Editor

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Suzanne Lyons has a background in Psychology and Literature, and has utilised her critical
eye for detail and editing skills with proofreading, editing and publication of blog posts and
books within this field and beyond. She has previously partnered with Jason Allan Scott as
an editor of his best-selling books on Conflict Resolution and HR Management.

She also works alongside successful companies as a copywriter and content creator for their
brand, and has a particular passion for creating content for podcasts.

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 COMMUNICATION SKILLS: DEFINITION AND
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION IMPORTANCE IN THE WORKPLACE

1 COMMUNICATION SKILLS:
DEFINITION AND IMPORTANCE
IN THE WORKPLACE
Developing strong communication skills is essential when it comes to building a successful
career.

Communication skills are a set of activities that ultimately make a quality public performance.

Communication today is very important both in the business world and in private life.

Successful communication helps us better understand people and situations. It helps us

overcome diversities, build trust and respect, and create conditions for sharing creative
ideas and solving problems.

Developing strong communication skills becomes one of the leaders’ top priorities. In the
business world, many employers believe that proper internal communications can significantly
increase employees’ productivity.

Although communication itself seems simple, often when we try to establish communication
with others, there is always a chance for a lack of understanding that might cause conflicts
and frustrations in personal or professional life in relations with other people.

Speaking to others
• Listening - your tone of voice and the words you choose are very important at
work. Remember to speak clearly and politely to your colleagues and customers
at all times. Try not to demand things, but ask instead.
• Never be rude or aggressive. Use the right words. Jargon (technical language that
most people don’t understand) should be avoided. Try to explain things in the
simplest way possible.

Listening skills are just as important as speaking skills.

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 COMMUNICATION SKILLS: DEFINITION AND
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION IMPORTANCE IN THE WORKPLACE

Always:

• Listen carefully. Look at the person you’re talking to let people know you’re
listening by using encouraging words.
• Keep your body language open and positive
• Use your body to show you’re listening, for example by nodding your head

Before we start, let’s look at a few things.

The importance of body language

When your body says something different.

We give people a very strong impression by the way we use our bodies, particularly our
arms, our eyes and our posture (the way we stand). Body language can say more than the
words we use. Pay attention to body language when you’re at work – negative or bad body
language can make things more difficult for you. Sometimes, someone’s body language says
something different from the words they’re using.

An example of false body language could be when a person says they are telling the truth,
but avoids eye contact with you or touches their face a lot when they are talking.

Signs of false body language like this could mean someone is nervous or hiding something.

Asking Questions
You should never start a task without having all the information you need. This means
you’ll often need to ask questions when at work.

Sometimes people don’t ask questions because they’re shy or they think it’ll make them look
stupid. If you don’t ask the right questions at the right times, things can go bad quickly.

Find out who is the best person to ask, and make sure you ask at the right time. Never be
ashamed or embarrassed to ask questions – it’s the only way to get things done correctly!

A big part of your job is to give help to others, and answer any questions your colleagues
might have.

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 COMMUNICATION SKILLS: DEFINITION AND
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION IMPORTANCE IN THE WORKPLACE

Try to be as helpful as possible at all times. Saying ‘I’m busy’ isn’t a good answer.

If you really can’t help, take the time to tell the person who needs help about someone else
they could ask instead.

Developing strong communication skills is essential when it comes to building a successful

career. But your communication skills play a key role in your private life too. Learn about
the most in-demand communication skills and how to improve them.

Principles of Modern Communications

You need to keep in mind while communicating with the modern employee:

By acquiring strong communication skills, you can better connect with your friends,
colleagues, boss... all while improving communication in the workplace.

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 WHY YOU NEED TO DEVELOP STRONG
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION COMMUNICATION SKILLS

2 WHY YOU NEED TO

DEVELOP STRONG
COMMUNICATION SKILLS
In this modern time we live in, we are receiving, sending and processing a large number
of messages every day.

But successful communication is far more than sharing information, it is also an understanding
of the feelings behind this information.

Successful communication can deepen relations in personal life or professional life. In

personal life, they can help us better understand people and situations that happen on a
daily basis.

Developing communication skills can help us avoid conflicts, compromise and help in
better decision making.

Here is a great overview of why communication skills are important.

Quick in
Problem
Solving
Better
Strong
Response
Decision
from all
Making
Stakeholders

Advanced Effective More

Professional Communication Productivity
Image

Consistence
Better
in the work
Control
flow
Strong
Business
Relation

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 WHY YOU NEED TO DEVELOP STRONG
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION COMMUNICATION SKILLS

The Power of Strong Communication Skills in the Workplace

With strong communication skills, you can clearly impact your business. Great communicators
are the ones who bring solutions, drive change, motivate and inspire their colleagues.

By improving communication skills, we can improve employee engagement, teamwork,

decision-making, and interdepartmental communication in the workplace.

For that reason, communication skills are the most demanded soft skills that employers
are looking for in their employees.

Top 10 Most In-Demand Soft Skills

(Based on % of members with skills who were hired
into a new job)
1 Communication 57.9 %

2 Organization 56.5 %

3 Teamwork 56.4 %

4 Always Punctual 55.9%

5 Critical Thinking 55.8 %

6 Social Skills 55.8 %

7 Creativity 55.0 %

8 Interpersonal Communication 55.0 %

9 Adaptability 54.9 %

10 Friendly Personality 54.6 %

Good communication skills enable managers to receive and send negative or heavy messages
without creating frustration and disruption of trust. This is important to keep employees
motivated and engaged.

Employees today expect to be informed about every aspect of the business and not to miss
any important information.

They expect from the leaders to communicate regularly their role and goals. They expect
continuous feedback on their work, and they expect to be able to find information that
they need in seconds.

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 WHY YOU NEED TO DEVELOP STRONG
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Employers who manage to successfully communicate the company’s values and business
goals to their employees have much lower turnover rates.

What’s more, the way managers communicate with employees during change has a direct
impact on the company’s bottom line. Indeed, most digital transformation strategies fail
because of a lack of communication in the workplace.

Therefore, employers need to have a well-set strategy about how to keep their employees
informed and engaged.

Although we can develop certain communication skills, communication is more effective if

it is spontaneous than when it follows certain formulas. The spoken word has a different
echo of spontaneous spoken speech.

Of course, it takes time and effort to develop these skills and become a successful speaker.
The more effort and practice, the communication skills will be more spontaneous and more
instinctive.

Check out the stats below on professional communication

• 7% of communication is verbal, 38% is the tone and inflection and a
staggering 55% is body language (Smarp)
• Over 80% of Americans think that employee communication is a key factor in
creating trust with their employers (Slideshare)
• 81% of recruiters identify interpersonal skills as important (mba.com)
• However, more than 60% of employers say that applicants are not
demonstrating sufficient communication and interpersonal skills to be considered
for jobs (Business Time)
• 57% of recruiters say interpersonal skills will grow in demand over the next five
years (mba.com)
• 98% of top salespeople identify relationships as the most important factor in
generating new business (Salesforce)
• More than 90% of employees would rather hear bad news than no news
(Jostle)
• 69% list strong communication skills as a reason they are confident in hiring
graduates from business school (mba.com)
• According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 73.4% of
employers want a candidate with strong written communication skills (Inc.)

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 WHY YOU NEED TO DEVELOP STRONG
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION COMMUNICATION SKILLS

• Companies lose on average $62.4 million per year because of inadequate

communication to and between employees (SHRM)
• 57% of employees report not being given clear directions (HR Technologist)
• 69% of managers are not comfortable communicating with employees (HR
Technologist)
• Only 19% of organizations say they are “very effective” at developing leaders
(Infopro Learning)
• 82% of employees don’t trust their boss to tell the truth (Forbes)
• 85% of employees say they’re most motivated when management offers regular
updates on company news (Trade Press Services)
• 70% of all organizational communication emanates through the grapevine
(Chron)
• 63% of millennials feel their leadership skills are not being developed (HRPA)
• 56% of employees believe managers need to adapt their skills to manage a
remote workforce (PowWowNow)
• 77% of employers say that soft skills are just as important as hard skills (Smarp)
• 41% of leaders are not able to gather appropriate information quickly. As a
consequence, 40% are not able to make timely and deliberate decisions (PwC)
• 69% of managers fail to organize communication with their employees
(Rallyware)
• 37% of managers are uncomfortable having to give direct feedback about their
employees’ performance if they think the employee might respond negatively to
the feedback (Harvard Business Review)
• Communicating well is the one critical skill that 91% of 1,000 employees in a
recent Interact/Harris Poll said their leaders lack (Inc.)
• Around a quarter of employees think email is a major productivity killer
(Bluesource)
• Employees feel a communication divide could have serious business implications,
including low staff morale (61%), confusion for the company’s clients or
customers (60%), and loss of business (31%) (HR Magazine)
• 74% of workers would like their company to let them work from home more
frequently as a result of COVID-19 (Robert Half )
• 28 % of employees report poor communication as the primary cause of failing
to deliver a project within its original time frame, according to a survey by the
Computing Technology Industry Association (Bluesource)

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 WHY YOU NEED TO DEVELOP STRONG
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Communication Skills You Can’t Ignore

There are dozens of different communication skills to possess, there are top 5 communication
skills we will focus on in this blog.

These 5 skills are absolutely necessary for successful communication in the workplace or
private life.

1. Listening
Listening is one of the most important aspects of communication. Successful listening is
not just an understanding of spoken or written information, but also an understanding of
how the speaker feels during communication.

If a speaker can see and feel that someone is listening and understanding, that can help
build a stronger, deeper relationship between interlocutors.

Careful listening can also create an environment in which everyone feels safe to express
ideas, opinions and feelings, or plan and solve problems in a creative way.

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14
 WHY YOU NEED TO DEVELOP STRONG
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION COMMUNICATION SKILLS

2. Straight talking
Conversation is the basis of communication, and one must not neglect its importance.
Even a simple, friendly conversation with colleagues can build mutual trust and even detect
problems before they become serious.

A healthy dose of chatting with an unknown person can lead to a business opportunity. Be
accessible and friendly because then you will be able to talk to almost anyone.

3. Non-verbal communication
When we talk about things that matter to us then we send a lot of nonverbal messages.

Non-verbal signals are wordless communication, body position, facial expression, hand
movements, gestures, eye contact, attitude and tone of your voice, muscle tension and the
way you/we breathe.

The way you look, listen, create, react, gesture, speaks far more about feelings than words
will ever be able to.

Why are non-verbal communication skills important?

Because, according to Salesforce’s research on interpersonal communication, 93 percent of
communication is non-verbal.

Developing the ability to understand others and use nonverbal signals will help you connect
with others, express what you think, meet challenging situations, and build better relationships
at home and at work.

4. Stress Management
In small quantities, stress can be very useful and encouraging for work. However, when the
stress becomes constant and completely begins to take effect, it can affect communication,
clarity of opinion, and appropriate behavior and action.

When you are under stress you may misunderstand other people, send confusing nonverbal
signals, and use funny patterns of behavior.

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 WHY YOU NEED TO DEVELOP STRONG
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION COMMUNICATION SKILLS

How often did you feel stressed during discussion with your friends or colleagues and then
said or did something you regretted later?

If you improve stress management skills, not only will you avoid these subsequent regrets,
but you will also be able to influence the other person you are entering into a conflict.

5. Emotion control
In communication, feelings play an important role. Making decisions more often affects
the way you feel than the way you think.

Guided by emotions, your nonverbal behavior affects the understanding of other people
and how others understand and perceive you.

If you are not aware of your feelings you are guided, you will not be able to express your
needs and experiences. This can result in frustration, misunderstanding and conflict.Control of
emotions provides you with tools to understand others, yourself and the messages you send.

Though recognizing feelings makes it simple, many people have strong feelings like anger,
sorrow, or fear being pushed under the carpet.

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION Smart Ways to Your Improve Communication Skills

3 SMART WAYS TO YOUR IMPROVE

COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Communication experts have a lot of advice on how to improve communication skills.

There is no single way to develop great communication skills or become a great leader.

The methodology you’re going to pick will depend on the objectives you want to achieve
and your personality as well (we don’t need to develop the same communication skills).

To help you get started with thought leadership, we share below 4 of the most productive
ways to quickly and efficiently improve your communication skills:

1. Listen with empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings, thoughts, and beliefs of another person.
Exactly this is the reason why organizations have started developing empathy in the workplace.

Emotional acceptance, closely related to empathy, means that, after empathizing and
understanding how another person feels, we can accept the reasons why somebody feels
or thinks the way they do, regardless of whether we agree with it or not.

Try to see things from others’ perspectives by accepting what you hear instead of trying to
“fix things and solve the problem“.

2. Speak up
Communication begins with you. Take responsibility and start communication, do not
wait and expect another person to do so and don’t hide behind various forms of online
communication.

Good communication, especially on important topics, requires far more than what we can
express in a written message.

We often misunderstand this kind of communication because we do not see the person’s
face, its nonverbal communication, and in what circumstances communication starts.

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION Smart Ways to Your Improve Communication Skills

3. Prepare what you’re going to say

Think before you speak. Most of us work best when we have time to process our own
thoughts before we share them.

If the conversation or meeting is worth your precious time, take a few minutes to prepare
the speech draft.

For a very important conversation, try a mock-up conversation with a trusted person so
you can get rid of any potential mistakes.

4. Be ready for different answers

As you formulate a speech strategy, put yourself in the position of a person who will
listen to you.

This will ensure a balanced approach and you will be prepared to learn and defend potential
disagreements and it will be easier for you to defend your standpoint.

No one can predict with certainty how other people will react.

Improve chances of a successful conversation by expecting negative answers and queries. So

it is harder for your listeners to catch you unprepared.

Help Your Employees Improve their Communication Skills

Leaders and employees need to have strong communication skills to support the business’s
growth.

Think about it: communication is actually the glue that holds the business together. Without
effective communication, employees don’t have a clear understanding of the company’s vision
and priorities. Managers struggle to motivate and inspire their teams.

At the end of the day, it’s the company’s success that may suffer from poor communication.

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION Smart Ways to Your Improve Communication Skills

What’s more, you need to communicate with your employees through their favorite channels,
so they engage with your content and keep developing communication skills.

• Relevant messages shared with your employees

• An internal communication strategy adapted to your employees’ needs
• Content creation. Yes, your employees can become great content creators and
they don’t need to become motion designers to do so!
• Employee advocacy. The Advocacy Amplifier makes it easy for your employees
to share insights with their personal networks so they position themselves as
industry experts.
• Strong Analytics that make it easy for your employees to measure the
engagement they’re generating through their posts and shares

Don’t forget that your employees can be great communicators inside and outside the
organization! Employees with strong personal brands and communication skills can become
your best ambassadors.

As a result, not only do your employees feel well-informed about what’s going on in the
company, they also feel engaged and proud to be part of the company

Do you remember the old days when you received company news and announcements
through one-size-fits-all email newsletters or outdated Intranets?

Well, these old days are over. At least they should be.

The workplace and employees’ habits are changing at a fast pace. We have clear expectations
when it comes to communication in the workplace.

We want the right information to find us at the right time without having to look for it.
We want to read content that resonates with what we do.

We want to personalize our news feeds and consume content that is easy to read. But we
also want to be influential in the workplace the same way we are on social media. To stay
on top of their game, companies need to adapt their employee comms to their employees’
habits and expectations.

This challenge is pretty hard to overcome since today’s workforce is getting multigenerational
and more and more businesses have their employees scattered around the world! Businesses
need to develop employee comms strategies that will help them reach all their employees,
including deskless and remote workers and engage with multiple generations of employees,
from Gen Z and Millennials to employees who are about to retire.

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION Smart Ways to Your Improve Communication Skills

This mission isn’t a piece of cake and it surely keeps IC practitioners awake at night! But
don’t worry, we’ve got your back.

To help you rethink your internal comms, we’ve compiled in this book multiple principles
of modern employee comms you can’t miss if you want to connect and engage with your
employees.

Are you ready?

Let’s dive in!

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION Your Employees Have Changed

4 YOUR EMPLOYEES
HAVE CHANGED
Technology has deeply changed the way we consume information. Think about it: how
often do you search for relevant news versus reading interesting information that naturally
comes to you through your favorite news app, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter apps?

These technologies cater content to us based on our preferences, interests and interactions over
time. This means that our expectations—when it comes to information consumption—are
at an all-time high. Still, when most of us get to work every day, we’re back to two main
communication channels—email and Intranet.

While these channels serve a purpose, the modern employee expects relevant information
to be delivered at the right time through their preferred channels and devices. “…the
modern employee expects relevant information to be delivered at the right time through
their preferred channels and devices.”

The “modern employee” is reshaping the workplace

A new generation of employees— Millennials—is entering the workforce.They are the largest
generation in the US labor force and they are projected to represent 75% of the global
workforce by 2025. The thing is, they are shaking up organizational cultures and the way
companies are working.

They grew up in the technological age, they are connected, can’t spend a few hours away
from their smartphones and they check their phones many times a day—150 times a day
to be exact!

Unsurprisingly, they have their own expectations when it comes to communication and
collaboration in the workplace and most importantly, they want to do things their own way.

Millennials have a different approach to work and they don’t hesitate to question traditional—
and outdated—ways of communicating in the workplace. Think about it: they are used to
having personalized news feeds on social media.

They build online communities, share insights on forums and look for recommendations
on social media. If you stick to untailored email newsletters and outdated Intranets to

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION Your Employees Have Changed

communicate in the workplace, you’re going to create a gap between your employees’
communication habits and the way you’re communicating with them and this gap may
harm your business’s bottom line before you know it!

If you want your employees to engage with the content you share with them, you’ll need
to adapt your internal communications to their media consumption habits. In other words,
you’ll need to communicate relevant content to each individual within your organization,
through their preferred channels and devices.

It’s time for you to embrace change

If companies want to communicate effectively with their employees, they need to recognize
that fundamentally, their employees have changed and look to mirror the behavior they
already have rather than trying to create new ones.

You can’t expect your employees to communicate with their colleagues through emails and
the company Intranet because it is convenient for the business. Instead, you need to adapt
your internal comms to your employees’ expectations and habits.

More specifically, you need to consider the following points when rethinking your employee
comms:

1. How to build an employee comms strategy that is suitable

for all the generations you have at your workplace?
Your workplace is most likely made of several generations—Millennials as mentioned earlier
as well as Generation X, Generation Z and employees who are about to retire.

Since you’re dealing with a multigenerational workforce, it becomes challenging for you
to find the messages, content types and comms channels that are convenient for everyone
within the organization.

2. How to keep your deskless and remote workers engaged?

Remote work has become the norm in some businesses. Think about it: one-third of the
companies surveyed by Buffer said that all their employees work remotely. That’s a lot!
There’s no doubt that remote work is changing the game. You probably know the saying
“out of sight, out of mind”.

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION Your Employees Have Changed

So, when your employees aren’t at the office, you need to rethink your IC strategy so
you can keep them informed and engaged. But remote work is not the only challenge IC
practitioners are facing right now.

They also need to find ways to connect and engage with deskless employees, whether they’re
on the road or working in factories for example.

Organizational structures are getting more and more complex and if you want your employees
to keep up with the company news and engage with the content you share with them, you
need to communicate with them through their favorite channels—personalized news feeds,
mobile apps, and tailored newsletters

23
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION There’s No CX Before EX

5 THERE’S NO CX BEFORE EX
It’s 2021 and every company is “customer centric”. Well…to become customer-centric, you
first gotta be employee-centric, right?

The math is pretty simple here: take care of your employees and they will take care of your
customers. Remember what Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group said: “If you
look after your staff, they’ll look after your customers.

It’s that simple

Essentially, there’s the relationship between a company and its employees which is then
followed by the relationship between the employees and the customers. The point is, great
customer experience starts with an exceptional employee experience. But how many so-called
“customer-centric” companies put as much effort towards their employees?

Not that many. A recent Deloitte survey found that 59% of executives say their companies
are not ready or only somewhat ready to address EX.

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24
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION There’s No CX Before EX

And it’s problematic since EX and CX are strongly connected: Jacob Morgan, the author of
The Employee Experience Advantage found that companies that invest heavily in employee
experience are included twice as often in the American Customer Satisfaction Index compared
to those that don’t make EX a top priority.

There’s no CX before EX.

It all starts with great employee communications.

Employee communications plays a critical role in employee experience or EX.

Think about it: the way you communicate with your employees and whether you encourage
them to share their thoughts has a direct impact on how they feel about their jobs, the
company and the brand itself.

As Gallup defines it, the employee experience is: “The journey an employee takes with your
organization. It includes all the interactions an employee has with your organization before,
during and after their tenure”.

Most businesses acknowledge the importance of employee communications when it comes

to delivering a great employee experience.

Yet, the current state of employee communication is quite alarming:

• 60% of companies don’t have a long term strategy for their internal
communications
• 72% of employees don’t have a full understanding of the company’s strategy
• 74% of employees have the feeling they are missing out on company news
• Only 23% of executives say that their companies are excellent at aligning
employees’ goals with corporate purposes
• Only 40% of IC professionals believe that employees understand “well” or “very
well” the contribution they’re making to their organization’s strategy
• 41% of leaders are not able to gather appropriate information quickly
• 40% of executives are not able to make timely and deliberate decisions
• Less than half (47%) of employers say that they have the capabilities or processes
they would need to meet a crisis with the best possible outcome.

Keep in mind that to deliver a great employee experience, you’ll need to assess your employee
communications first. It’s the only way you can ensure that your employees have a great
understanding of the business goals and deliver outstanding customer service

25
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION There’s No CX Before EX

As Paul Barton, principal at consultancy Paul Barton Communications says: “You can’t take
a dispassionate, dictatorial tone with your employees and expect them to deliver warm,
efficient service to customers.

You need to talk to your employees like you want them to talk to your customers. Audiences
often don’t remember exactly what you said as much as they remember how you make them
feel. That’s certainly true with employees.

26
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION People Trust People (Not Logos)

6 PEOPLE TRUST PEOPLE

(NOT LOGOS)
When was the last time you made a purchase? Big or small… it doesn’t matter. Would you
rather hear what the corporation has to say about that product or service, or what customers
who have used it think about it?

You’ll most probably prefer to hear what customers have to say about it and you’re not
the only one! Nielsen found that only 33% of consumers trust brands while 90% trust
recommendations from their peers.

Today, we have the opportunity to hear from customers instead of the corporations and
checking online consumer reviews has become a habit: 54% of people use social media to
research products before buying them and 93% of consumers say online reviews impact
their purchasing decisions.

People trust people (not logos)

People also check employees’ reviews before joining a company. Not only does word-of-
mouth impact our purchase decisions, but it also impacts our career decisions, especially
when it comes to deciding which company to join.

The stats speak for themselves: 59% of candidates check out company social channels to
get an insight into the company culture and the work environment before submitting their
application. But candidates also love to hear from employees when it comes to gathering
information about the company culture, management, and what it’s like to work at the company.

In a recent survey, Glassdoor highlighted that 88% of their users search for or apply to jobs
and the majority of users read at least 7 reviews before forming an opinion of a company.
Keep in mind that no matter the channels they’re going to use—social media, forums or
company review sites such as Glassdoor, Indeed.com or Comparably— your employees are
most likely going to share their thoughts about you as an employer and the company.

Think about it: we live in the era of P2P marketing and influencer marketing. It’s natural
for most employees to share company news and their thoughts about their employers
with their followers.

27
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION People Trust People (Not Logos)

They want to keep their friends and family members in the loop and that’s a great opportunity
for you!

If you make employee engagement one of your top priorities and take concrete initiatives to
help your employees feel heard and engaged, they’re going to become your best ambassadors!
When you embrace modern employee comms, you build strong, two-way relationships with
your employees.

You tailor the messages you share with them and encourage them to drive conversations
in the workplace. You naturally turn your employees into true brand advocates. That’s the
power of great employee communications!

When it comes to your comms strategy, you can’t have a gap between the messages you
share internally and the ones you share outside the company. Your employees have access
to the content you’re sharing internally as well as all your external content (think PR,
corporate comms).

What’s more, the messages you share externally can be useful for your employees. Whether
it’s a press release announcing the launch of a new product, the expansion of the business
into a new region, or a merger the company is undergoing, the information you share with
your external stakeholders can help your employees better understand the business overall.
In other words, your internal and external communications should support each other.

That’s the reason why your internal and external messages have to be consistent. “Your
employees have access to the content you’re sharing internally as well as all your external
content (think PR, corporate comms). They see everything and you can’t fool them! ”

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION External Is Also Internal

7 EXTERNAL IS ALSO INTERNAL

Broadly speaking, transparency and consistency are key when it comes to employee comms
and here’s why:

Consistent messages help you align your employees with your company’s vision. If the
messages you share externally don’t resonate with the ones you share internally, your employees
may get confused and feel lost. “What are the company’s short-term objectives?”, “How do
these short-term objectives contribute to the company’s vision?”. “By the way, what is the
company’s vision and mission statement?”, “How does my work contribute to the business’s
bottom line, how do I help the company to create value for our customers?’.

Remember, 72% of employees do not have a full understanding of the company’s strategy.
Ask your employees to describe your product or service. All of them will probably be able
to correctly answer that question.

Now, ask them to list your top 3 corporate values. You’ll see that they won’t cite the same
values or if they do, they won’t most likely list them in the same order. And if you ask
them to describe the company’s mission statement, some of them will probably give you
an answer while others won’t be able to answer that question.

This is what happens when you don’t align your internal and external messages. You spread
confusion and even worse— misinformation in the workplace.

As a result, your employees may not be working towards common goals because they have
different understandings of what the business goals are. And it’s pretty hard to deliver great
results when you’re not aligned with the company’s vision, isn’t it?

Consistent messages help you build trust in the workplace. If your employees notice that
your internal and external messages are misaligned (and they will if your messages are indeed
misaligned), they may start questioning a) top management’s ability to build a strong vision
for the business and b) your ability to be a great leader.

Think about it: 63% of employees don’t trust their leader.

Ouch! Many reasons may explain this lack of trust in leadership, including poor employee
comms and more particularly misalignment between the messages shared externally through
the company’s website, social media channels, PR campaigns and the ones that are shared
with your employees.

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION External Is Also Internal

If you want to build trust with your employees, you need to involve them in your IC
strategy. And to do so, make sure that you share the same messages with them as the ones
you share with your external stakeholders. It’s the only way you can create a sense of unity
and build trust in the workplace!

External is also internal

Alignment between your internal and external messages is even more critical in times
of crisis! No matter the industry, headcount and location, every company may at some
point deal with an expected event that may have a direct impact on its brand image and
reputation. The thing is, when a crisis occurs, top-level managers often tend to focus their
communication efforts only on their external audiences, including journalists and customers.

And it’s understandable.

What will investors think about the company? Will customers stop advocating for the brand
while they liked it so much before the crisis occurred? And what about competitors, will
they manage to take advantage of the situation?

Most of the time, top management overlooks the importance of communicating with
employees in times of crisis.

Nearly 30% of respondents to a Deloitte Advisory poll believe that employees are the most
overlooked stakeholders when their organization is dealing with a crisis.

As a result, employees don’t have a great understanding of the situation, they don’t know
how they can help and they may feel frustrated because they realize that they may know
less about the crisis than external stakeholders actually do.

As Paul Barton said: “In the rush and panic of a crisis, it’s easy to take employees for granted
or maybe even forget them altogether.

That’s a costly mistake because employees are probably going to be the single biggest
determinant in how fast and how well an organization recovers from a crisis, and they’ll
be the first contact with customers as recovery occurs. It is employees who represent the
company’s brand to customers. And it is employees that get the work done”.

The bottom line is that you need to make sure that your internal and external messages are
consistent when a crisis occurs. Your employees play a critical role in the recovery process,
so make sure you instantly share information with them and keep them in the loop so they
don’t feel left out!

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 MEASURE THE BUSINESS IMPACTS
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION OF YOUR INTERNAL COMMS

8 MEASURE THE BUSINESS

IMPACTS OF YOUR
INTERNAL COMMS
Measure the business impacts of your internal comms (even if you are not asked to do so!).
Measuring the effectiveness of your internal communication is critical for your business.
(even if you are not asked to do so). It’s the only way you can understand how IC supports
the business’s growth.

The Importance of Measuring Internal Comms

The data you collect will help you understand what is working well in your IC strategy
and what needs to be improved.

Think about it: how can you know if it’s the type of content you’re sharing, the channels
you’re using to communicate with your employees, or the messages you’re sharing that need
to be improved if you don’t track your internal comms?

Surprisingly, the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) found that

60% of internal communicators are still not measuring internal communication. The thing
is, business leaders don’t even ask for IC metrics.

That is one of the main reasons why most businesses are still not measuring the impact of
their communications.

There are little expectations around IC metrics and often, IC data is given little to no
attention. Show your numbers and how they are tied to the strategic business goals even
if you’re not asked to do so.

Measuring the effectiveness of your strategy is a great way for you to become accountable,
prove the value of internal comms and be recognized as a strategic business partner.

What metrics to look at?

Probably one of the longest standing questions in comms is: how do you effectively measure
the effectiveness of your internal comms strategy?

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 MEASURE THE BUSINESS IMPACTS
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION OF YOUR INTERNAL COMMS

There’s no unique answer to that question. Internal communication is the cornerstone of

your business.

It has a direct impact on employee productivity, cross-departmental collaboration, employee

motivation, employee engagement, organizational alignment, the employee experience you
deliver, and the list goes on.

A better question to ask here would be: what do you use internal comms for?

In other words, what goals are you trying to achieve with your internal comms?

Think about it: the goal is not to measure your internal comms just for the sake of measuring
it and showing a cool dashboard to your boss.

The key is to determine whether your IC strategy supports the business’s goals. That’s the
only way you can actually prove the value of internal comms at your organization. Metrics
such as clicks and likes are important because they give you an immediate indication of
success—whether your employees read the content you share with them or not—but they
are also very short-sighted.

The trick is to tie your employee comms to the business outcomes. For example, you could
have everyone in the company watch a safety video and assume employees now understand
what’s required from them in order to stay safe on the job. If your accident rates are not
decreasing, then you actually haven’t had any impact on the business outcomes. But why
are accidents still happening if everyone understands the safety procedures?

Well, maybe there’s a tight timeline when employees ignore safety and prioritize getting the
job done on time. That’s when accidents happen.

The data about the video being watched by everyone, combined with actually talking to
people, would then help you determine the right steps to impact outcomes. Maybe you
don’t need another video. Instead, all you need is to get through to your employees that
following safety procedures is more important than a contract deadline.

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 PEOPLE DON’T REMEMBER FACTS,
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION THEY REMEMBER STORIES

9 PEOPLE DON’T REMEMBER

FACTS, THEY REMEMBER STORIES
Delivering a message and getting employees to actually read it and remember it are two
very different things. For example, when you send out email newsletters to your employees,
you deliver a message to your workforce.

But that doesn’t mean you’ve actually got their attention.

In fact, 2 in 5 employees ignore HR emails. In addition, 71% of employees don’t read or

engage with company emails or content.

Ouch!
Good copywriters—including internal communicators—understand the importance of using
storytelling to craft strong narratives. When you communicate with your employees, don’t
send out broad, untailored messages. Those are noisy messages and most of the time, they
are not engaging.

Instead, tell your employees stories. It’s a great way to catch your employees’ attention and
encourage them to actively take part in your internal comms.

People don’t remember facts, they remember stories

It’s all about telling the right stories to the right employees. We all like stories and we
remember information better when it’s communicated with visuals or engaging content
such as videos.

An interesting survey by TechSmith found that employees absorb information 7% faster

when they’re given text with accompanying images, versus just text.

What’s more, the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text, and 90
percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual.

So, if you want your employees to engage more with your content, you’ll need first to a)
use the right type of content such as videos, pics, visuals or infographics and b) personalize
the messages you share with them.

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 PEOPLE DON’T REMEMBER FACTS,
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION THEY REMEMBER STORIES

The second point mentioned above is as important as the first one. It’s not only about telling
your employees stories. It’s about telling the right stories to the right employees.

That’s the only way you ensure that your employees consume your content and remember
it afterwards. And to do so, you’ll need to segment your internal audiences and understand
their needs so you can tell the right stories to the right employees.

There are several frameworks out there for storytelling.

When communicating with your employees, keep in mind that:

#1. The goal of every line is to get people to read the next line (starting with the headline).

#2. Focus on what happens if you don’t do something versus if you do. Villain > Hero.

#3. Give proof whenever possible. Got social proof? Even better.

#4. Numbers and stats are cool but no one remembers them when they are communicated
without a story. Remember to always provide your employees with the context the stats
are related to.

#5. Consistency is the key! Provide one clear outcome or action from each message.

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION Follow The Path Marketing Has Carved

10 FOLLOW THE PATH

MARKETING HAS CARVED
Fifteen years ago, the CEO would ask the CMO “Hey, are we doing events? Are we doing
a bunch of stuff? Great”.

Since then, marketing has risen to a critical revenue contributing function. That happened
when marketing was finally able to prove its value which largely happened due to technology.
Parallel to this shift, we watched the MarTech space explode and go from 600 to over 7,000
vendors within just a few years.

The thing is, internal comms is where marketing was decades ago. The idea of delivering
the right message at the right time to the right employees through their preferred channels,
and being able to track everything and report on it against business outcomes that we see
now in employee comms is really not that different from the story we saw in marketing
25 years ago.

However, not that many IC practitioners dare to apply marketing tactics to their internal
comms strategy. Just 14% of internal communicators have a strategy in place to describe their
internal audiences and 29% have a written value proposition for internal communication.

Unsurprisingly, 34% of employees are currently dissatisfied or extremely dissatisfied with

communications they’re experiencing at their workplace. If you want your employees to
interact with your content, you’ll need to have an approach similar to the one your colleagues
from marketing have when you’re building your IC strategy.

Below are some tips and tricks you can use to take your employee comms to the next level:
· Conduct an audit to understand your organizational structure and defne your employee
personas so you can adapt your messages to their needs. ·

Set clear and measurable objectives.

Do you want to keep your employees informed, improve engagement, or help employees
find meaning at work?

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION Follow The Path Marketing Has Carved

As mentioned earlier, your IC strategy should be tied to your business goals so make sure
you’ve set clear objectives and that everyone is aligned with these objectives.

• Define the messages you want to share with your employees.

• Don’t communicate with your employees for the sake of it.
• Make sure your messages are clear and support your employees in their daily work.
• Again, your IC strategy should help your employees reach the business goals that
have been set! · Choose the type of content you’re going to share internally.
• Are you going to share reports, infographics, short videos or even podcasts?
• Make sure you share with your employees the type of content they prefer.
• Segment your internal audiences.

Not all your employees need to receive the same information. The marketing team or IT
team may not be that interested in the information you share with the accounting team
and vice versa.

Information overload is a challenge that most businesses are facing, so make sure you segment
the content you share internally to prevent your employees from feeling overwhelmed with
too much and/or irrelevant information.

Choose the channels you’re going to use to communicate with your employees. Are you going
to keep using the company Intranet, start sending out interactive newsletters and/or launch
an employee communications app so you can reach your deskless and remote employees?

Keep in mind that your workforce is made up of several generations. You need to find the
comms channels each generation feels comfortable with. ·

Measure the effectiveness of your employee comms strategy. As mentioned earlier, tracking the
results of your IC and comparing them over time is the best way to improve your strategy!

Forget about B2B, EX, CX or whatever it may be. Modern communicators clearly understand
that behind every job title there is a person and by humanizing their work, they can better
get their message through.

Put yourself in your employees’ shoes for a moment. Would you prefer to read long format
and unpersonalized email newsletters or a short post that would highlight the key insights
you are interested in? You’d probably prefer to read short posts that would highlight key
insights and take no more than 5 mins to read, wouldn’t you?

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION Follow The Path Marketing Has Carved

The thing is, employees are dealing with a lot of emails and messages. The average office
worker receives 121 emails per day.

That’s roughly 600 emails received every week!

And we’re only talking about emails

These stats don’t include all the messages and notifications employees are getting through
chat channels, project management tools or file sharing tools every day!

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION Dare To Be Human

11 DARE TO BE HUMAN
Unsurprisingly, it is common for employees to feel overwhelmed with too much or irrelevant
information. Indeed, Burton Group found that:

• 72% of employees can’t find the information they need within their company’s
information systems
• 42 percent of IT managers complain that they are bombarded by too much
information
• 39 percent say they can’t figure out which information is accurate
• 21 percent say they don’t understand the value of the information they receive.
What’s more, Deloitte found that 57% of employees consider that their
organizations are “weak” when it comes to helping leaders manage difficult
schedules and helping employees manage information flow.

So, try to make life as easy as possible for your employees. Forget about long reports,
untargeted email newsletters, and untailored messages.

Instead, make sure the messages you share with your employees are personalized and easy
to remember.

Talk to your employees, have discussions with them and ask them what they like most (and
least) about the content and the messages you share with them.

The bottom line is to make sure your employee comms is top-notch so you can deliver an
exceptional EX all while supporting your employees’ performance.

The results just might surprise you!

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 CREATE CORPORATE CONTENT IN THE
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION VOICE OF THE EMPLOYEE

12 CREATE CORPORATE CONTENT

IN THE VOICE OF THE EMPLOYEE
Social media plays a significant role in our daily life. GlobalWebIndex found that we spend
on average 2 hours and 20 minutes per day on social networking and messaging platforms.

But during these 2 hours and 20 minutes (a bit more for some of us and a bit less for
others), we don’t just check our news feeds, we also create and share our posts. We share
articles that we found interesting, we post pics and we regularly share updates to keep our
friends and followers in the loop.

We’re connected most of the time—if not all the time and we might end up cutting ourselves
off from the rest of the world if we stay away from social media for some time!

The thing is, we all want to be influential, even though it’s on a different scale. Some of us
have hundreds of followers on each social media platform while others have thousands of
them. No matter how large our followings are, we want to engage with our connections.

Like anybody else, your employees share their thoughts and interact with their followers and
friends, whether they have hundreds or thousands of followers on Instagram or Facebook!
So, when they experience standardized and top-down communication in the workplace,
they may end up feeling frustrated and disengaged. They don’t feel heard.

They are not even asked to share their thoughts. How many companies are still developing
top-down employee communications where top management and team leaders share messages
with the employees?

Too many
Running employee feedback surveys once or twice a year doesn’t make your employees feel
that their voices count.

While employees are influential outside the company, they feel they are not given a say
when it comes to employee communications. You can imagine how frustrated they may
feel! And that doesn’t do any good to your business.

Unsurprisingly, 85% of employees are not engaged at work.

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 CREATE CORPORATE CONTENT IN THE
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION VOICE OF THE EMPLOYEE

Create corporate content in the voice of the employee. Connect and engage with your
employees If you want your employee comms to drive engagement, you need to create your
content in the voice of your employees and let them create content they share with their
colleagues and even externally if it doesn’t contain any confidential information.

As you work towards empowering your employees within the company and their networks,
it’s important to think about relevance first.

Forget about internal, external and corporate communication. Instead, think about relevant
and tailored messages. The more relevant and fitting you make the content, the better it
will resonate with your employees and subsequently, their networks.

Think about it: when your employees receive content created by their colleagues, they’re
more likely going to read it and comment on it.

Why, you may ask?

Because your employees speak ”the same language”

Email newsletters written in a corporate style may not resonate that much with your
employees while posts or videos created by their colleagues will.

As mentioned earlier, when it comes to employee comms, you’ve got to be human and fnd
what type of content in terms of format, tone of voice and messages resonates most with
your employees.

Your employees want their voice to be heard, so let them be content creators! Again, you
can’t ask your employees who create posts and engage with their connections on LinkedIn
not to be influential in the workplace.

You need to adapt your employee comms to your employees’ communication habits, not
the other way around!

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION Comms Is Everyone’s Job

13 COMMS IS EVERYONE’S JOB

Many companies are taking steps forward to improve their employee communication.
But most of them are not very clear about one thing: who is responsible for employee
communications?

It’s true, some of us carry the job title. Depending on the company’s organizational structure,
employee comms may fall on the IC team and/or HR team’s shoulders.

Usually, when an organization happens to have an IC team, IC is the function responsible

for building effective internal communications while HR plays a strategic support role.

On the other hand, when the company doesn’t have an IC department, the HR department
is the one driving employees’ comms.

But the thing is, employee communications is everyone’s job.

Employee comms involves IC, HR and other key stakeholders such as the CFO, top
management, sales, change management team (if you happen to have one in your organization),
marketing, corporate comms, PR and the list goes on.

Indeed, when it comes to employee comms, the key is to make sure that everyone has a
great understanding of the messages that matter. That means that all employees have to be
aligned with the business’s goals and need to work towards these goals. It’s a big responsibility
and it can’t be entirely left in the hands of HR or IC.

It involves other departments we may not think of at first such as marketing as well as
corporate comms and PR. It’s essential to get these teams involved as well. It’s the only
way you can ensure that the messages shared internally are aligned with the ones you share
outside the organization.

At the end of the day, it’s all about consistency and relevance. Remember, employee comms
is a team sport, not an individual sport.

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION Comms Is Everyone’s Job

What about line managers?

Do line managers play a critical role in employee comms? Yes, they do.

You may have the best messages ever, they won’t be worth anything unless you manage
to get them across to everyone who needs them to do their job better. The thing is, we’re
not there yet: IBM found that 72% of employees don’t have a full understanding of their
company’s strategy.

To successfully get your messages across the organization, you’ll need line managers’
support. Even though their role is often overlooked in employee comms, they literally are
the guardians of your messages.

They explain to their teams what the business’s goals are, ensure that everyone on the team
is aligned with the company’s vision, and make sure that team members understand how
their work is tied to the company’s strategy.

You basically can’t drive a successful employee comms strategy without having them on
board! Keep in mind that with the rise of remote work, line managers’ role in employee
comms is even more critical today.

30% of companies surveyed by Buffer said that all their employees are working remotely,
that’s quite a lot of companies that support remote work! But connecting and engaging with
employees is even more challenging when they’re geographically dispersed. Line managers
play a key role when it comes to managing remote work and making sure that remote
employees don’t feel disconnected or left out in decision making.

They have to make sure that both deskless and remote employees still get the information
they need when they need it so they can effectively do their daily work. They are also the
ones that ensure that remote workers are aligned with the rest of the team’s goals and the
company’s vision. In other words, you can’t deploy a great employee comms strategy without
having line managers on your side!

Your employees are the heartbeat of your organization.

They develop your product or service, help your customers, and generate new ideas that
may lead to your next innovation patents. But things may not go that well if you overlook
one of the core components of your business—your employee comms.

The way you communicate with your employees and whether you encourage them to engage
with your content has a direct impact on how they feel about their job and the company

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PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION Comms Is Everyone’s Job

overall. But not only does employee comms affect employee experience (EX) and employee
engagement, it also impacts your employees’ performance.

At the end of the day, it’s your entire business that may suffer from poor employee comms.

Remember, 72% of employees don’t have a full understanding of the company’s strategy
and 57% report not being given clear guidance. How can we expect employees to achieve
and even exceed the business goals that have been set if they don’t even know what these
goals are?

As an IC practitioner, you have a lot on your plate. Indeed, one of your main missions is
to build an employee comms strategy that allows you to reach and engage with all your
employees, no matter where they are located and what devices they use.

Most importantly, you need to build your employee comms with and for your employees.
It’s not about the information you want to share with them, but the information that
resonates with what they do.

It’s not about using the comms channels that are the most convenient for you, but the ones
they feel comfortable with and it’s not about sharing standardized information with your
entire workforce but personalized messages with your employees.

Welcome to the era of modern employee comms!

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