16 Best Practices for Internal Communications — They’ve Changed!

As we’ve all noticed, the composition of our workforces are changing rapidly. Within a few years, millennials — those aged 18–34 in 2015 — will be a majority in the workforce. In fact, recent U.S. Census Bureau data shows that the Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living generation.

Some Millennials already are in middle-management positions and many more will soon be following and the earliest portion of the post-Millennial generation — Generation Z — already is entering the workforce.

So, Why Does it Matter that the Millennials and Generation Z are Here?

There are many reasons it matters, but perhaps the most important reason is that they communicate differently than previous generations and effective internal communications are critical for all organizaitons.

Your Millennials are much more accustomed to using consumer social media platforms outside of work and, to many management teams’ dismay, they have brought these tools inside of the enterprise. The days when you could expect your employees to check their cellphones at the door and communicate solely using the company email system are long gone.

Your Millennial team members like to communicate quickly — think instantly — to get the information they need to do their tasks. That’s not really such a bad habit, is it?

But, your Gen X and Baby Boomers employees don’t use these tools. Right? Well . . .

Just How Millennial is Your Company?

A few years ago the PewResearch Center created a 14 item quiz that rated people on how “Millennial” they were. At Incentive, we found this really intriguing, so we had each employee take the test, which let each of them see their own “Millennial” score along with the “Millennial” score of the others in the company.

To our surprise, we found that many of our Baby Boomers and Gen Xers were more “Millennial” than our Millennials. Go figure! We then consolidated the results and created our overall company “Millennial Score.”

Everyone had a great time and it gave the team here at Incentive some very good insights into what we needed to do to make certain our internal communications fit everyone’s needs.

Take the Test

The quiz is still live on the Pew website. Just click the following link — How Millennial Are You? The test takes just a few minutes and you just might be surprised at the results.

Be sure and share the results within your company or organization. People like to communicate in different ways. Knowing the communication preferences of your team members will have very positive impact on getting things done in your organization.

Create Your Company Millennial Score

If you would like to have an overall Millennial score for your company, just have your employees take the test and combine the individual scores into an index.

Now, Match Your Score to the 16 Best Practices

Once you have your Millennial score, you can match the results to Colin Bovet’s 16 Best Practices and see where you need improvement.

• Envision, strategize, and make a plan
• Use the right tools
• Be visual
• Make it entertaining
• Include metrics where you can
• and 10 more.

Read Colin’s complete Sweet 16 list here — 16 Internal Communications Best Practices for 2016

A Bit Too Complex for You?

If you like, we can do it for you. We do two free company scores each month. Just send an email request to Robert @ Incentive-inc.com and we’ll let you know where you are in the queue.

No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.” — Reid Hoffman