DisruptHR Toronto: What Internal Communications Can Learn From the News
Last night, I had the opportunity to speak at the 5th edition of DisruptHR Toronto, an incredible event that challenges us to re-think human resources. Given exactly 5 minutes and 20 auto-progressing slides, I nervously tried to stay on pace and communicate what I think internal communications departments and human resources leaders can be learning from media outlets like the NY Times. Namely, how can we best engage and inform our audience through audio. Here are some thoughts for those not there, and a little more info than 5min can fit for those who were.
2017 was a watermark year for audio, especially for news media and journalism. The latest Infinite Dial report showed yet another year of growth in podcast consumption, with weekly listens doubling in the last 3years. The New York Times went all-in on podcasts with their launch of The Daily. This 20–30 minute rundown of the days news now reaches nearly 1-million people everyday and has inspired the launch of not only more New York Times podcasts but also daily news shows from industry leaders like Vox Media.
All the while, the unavoidable tech trend of this Christmas season is smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home which have fully matured in 2017. Today, 7% of homes have a smart speaker, but by 2020 Gartner predicts that they will be in 75% of homes, and 30% of searches will take place through voice. The Washington Post has already made smart speakers a key channel in reaching its audience with daily headlines, and all media institutions are shifting priorities into how they can be apart of the on-coming voice and audio interface.
Internal communications departments have a long history of mirroring newsrooms in how they get information out to their respective audience. From the first internal newspaper/magazine, to e-newsletters, to internal social networks, to video. Both the newsroom and the internal comms room are faced with the persistent question of how they can best communicate the most compelling, important, and timely information to their increasingly diverse audience. While email may work for some, and video or social media for others, it is no longer possible to ignore the influence of audio in informing audiences.
The mediums are similar, the messages differ. As news outlets keep you up to date on changes in policy, elections, sports, and culture, they turn to long-form interviews with newsmakers, or detailed explainer shows with content experts, or roundtable debates to get to the heart of an issue. Internal news on the other hand keeps employees up to date on strategy, mission, changes in internal policy and programs, and as a result turn to interviews with the CEO, a valued customer with feedback, explainer shows on the latest changes to your benefits package, or roundtables on the future of the organization.
In both contexts we arrive at a much more transparent, thorough, and engaging way of communicating important information. Context and tone that would be lost in a long memo or employee handbook (or a newspaper article) is gained by hearing the details behind a decision, and hearing the passion in the voice of the decision-maker.
Today, 74% of employees feel they’re missing out on important company information, yet 67% of employees say their company sends too many internal emails. The medium is fundamentally broken. News outlets aren’t moving all their resources to audio, and certainly internal communications departments shouldn’t either. The questions remains though:
Are your employees getting the information they need to be productive, to feel informed, and to connect with the larger mission of their organization? If not, what are doing differently in 2018?
Thank you to the DisruptHR team for having me, to the 400+ who attended last night, and to all those who flagged me down to chat more about internal podcasts.
On the topic of podcast, I also feel I have to recommend a couple episodes that have recently got me even more excited about this space:
Voicebot Podcast with Matt Hartman, Partner at betaworks on the future of voice and audio.
Recode Decode with “The Daily” host Michael Barbaro on why you love “The Daily”
(shameful plug) HR Gazette with Me(!) on Patch and the future of internal audio.
