"Information overload is real and often, internal comms contribute to it in one way or another. Brad Whitworth suggests two ways to optimize your communication stream to get the results without overwhelming your employees.

👉 Not everyone needs to read everything. Segment your audience. Read Brad's article on why one size does not fit all when it comes to IC: https://blog.smarp.com/brad-whitworth-on-why-a-one-size-fits-it-all-approach-to-internal-communication-doesnt-work

👉 Use different channels and groups — let the receiver choose what information they want to receive, when, and how.

Join our growing comms community of 17 thousand peers at https://smarp.com/join/. Once a week, we'll share our single best piece of content with you. No BS - only quality comms. 💯"

In today's remote work reality, your employees need a single central space for communications. Mike Klein shares his list of things to consider when choosing or adjusting your employee comms platforms for that role:

👉 Treat this platform like you're building a corporate headquarters. Because you are.

👉 You have to decide what you want to keep and what you want to toss from your current comms environment.

👉 If the IT is leading the process, make sure you've seen the leading tools on the market before accepting anything they would want to build. Why reinventing the wheel when it's not absolutely necessary?

By having this mindset of comms platform being a corporate HQ, you can think about what needs to go into it to serve that role. Think about your employees' information needs, their social needs, connection needs, and data access needs and build your tailored comms platform based on those needs.

Join our employee comms community: https://smarp.com/join/

Once a week, we'll send you our best piece of content. No BS. Only quality comms!

Smarp's CMO Bruno chats with Adobe's Head of Employee Advocacy, Rani Mani, about why every job description and performance review should include employee advocacy.

No one likes to deliver bad news. It's never easy. Yet, it's part of our job as employee communicators. How to make this less painful? — continuous communications. Don't hit people with one unexpected announcement. Instead, provide them with frequent, clear, and honest updates about the situation in your organization. If people are prepared, if they get information from trusted sources, not the rumors, they will be more understanding when or if there will be any bad news.

Join our employee comms community: https://smarp.com/join/

Once a week, we'll send you our best piece of content. No BS. Only quality comms!

👉 Cascading is not communication. Cascading usually comes with an overreliance on PowerPoint slides and a lack of prioritization in messaging. It's not communication; it's a chaos that comes at a cost.

👉 It's the CEOs best interest to get the whole company aligned around common goals. You want people to pull in the same direction. How do you do it? You start with language. Specific ideas need specific words. Then you add context. Purpose, vision, values — they provide the perspective where words can frame clear pathways to actions.

👉 Prioritization is key. You need to set common priorities. Today, companies cannot afford frictions about the basics. If they are not clear, people will reshape and distort them to their own needs.

📖 Read Mike's full guide for CEOs who want to know more about internal comms and get the most out of this function. It's super informative: https://blog.smarp.com/what-should-a-ceo-know-about-internal-communication

Employees are well-trained to recognize when the leaders' words and actions are not in sync. That's why it's crucial for employee comms teams to focus not only on messages but also on actions and alarm the leadership every time these are not lined up. Employee communications function should be a trusted counselor to senior leadership to point our misalignment of actions and words and deliver the employee feedback to executive leaders.

The main objective when choosing a tone of voice for your company is consistency. Ask yourself: can this voice be used consistently and credibly? The corporate voice should never disempower or displace employee voice — it should respect and amplify it. Keep in mind that you deal with 3 voices: corporate (e.g., Pepsico), brand (Pepsi, Mountain Dew), and employee voices.

You have to repeat a lot to get your comms to stick. When it comes to safety information, for instance, McKinsey's study found that you need to repeat the safety message 9-12 times for the audience to perceive that risk. So how can we repeat-repeat-repeat without turning off our audience? — Diversify your comms strategy. You don't necessarily need to be coming up with something new to say. Come up with new ways to say it, broaden the ways you package and deliver information — from channels to content formats.

Three top priorities for comms teams during a merger or acquisition:

1. Understand the purpose and goal of the M&A. Is it a merger of equals? Is it a streamlining? Is it assets stripping? How will the future organization look like? You need to have a deep understanding of this to be able to build your comms strategy. You want to be perfectly aligned with the company's objectives.

2. Understand the dynamics. Keep in mind that you're dealing not with two but three organizations: the acquiring, the acquired, and the future (merged) organization. Each of those has its interests and needs when it comes to employee communications.

3. Be strategic about how you position people on both sides of a merger. Be mindful of the visibility and inclusion of people on both sides of the equation in your communications.

Clear thinking is the skill that drives great writing, which is at the core of everything comms people do. Powerful writing comes from a clear structure. You may have a million great ideas, but you need to organize and present them in a way that can convey your message most effectively. The way to check on your clear thinking is to share your early drafts with colleagues to get their perspective and feedback, suggests Brad Whitworth.