The new normal for internal comms
Everyone’s talking about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on their industry, and communications aren’t immune – if you’ll excuse the pun. But even those of us with a lot of experience in crisis communications won’t have experienced anything like this before – and that means we’re in uncharted territory when it comes to engaging with our audiences.
The closest I can come to an analogue would be the H1N1 scare in 2009, which claimed 284,000 lives globally. There was no vaccine at the outset, but rapid development provided one within ten months. During that time, communicators got to grips with the now-familiar material outlining personal hygiene, what we now call social distancing, and what we now call contact tracing.
Internal communications leveraged the familiar channels, providing daily updates via intranet or email and making sure colleagues’ awareness of longer-term mental-health risks, how the outbreak might affect business in affected countries.
Client communications involved providing reassurance that products and services would continue to be available and of the expected standard – and of course, client comms started with what was appearing in the press, so we were careful to emphasise those facts in conversations with reporters.
But H1N1 was only really a priority comms issue for a few weeks. It responded well to treatment with antivirals and it became clear that the spread would be contained. COVID-19 is a whole different ballgame: the word ‘unprecedented’ has become overused in describing its scale, infectiousness, and resistance to conventional treatment. And this has meant that internal communicators are faced with continuing to create programmes for a much greater duration.
We acknowledged this from the start, with plans that covered the successive phases: basic information provision, greater detail, the issues around working from home, mental health and general wellbeing. We started planning back-to-work comms as well. But several months in, as numbers in numerous regions continue to climb, we’re faced with audiences fatigued by saturation coverage of the pandemic, as well as the strains of prolonged social distancing.
The message has become much more nuanced: our audiences are fragmenting as different conditions affect different groups. Although it’s good practice to reiterate the basics in areas where infection numbers are growing, others are more interested in what’s expected of them as parents with children returning to school, or returning to a job they’ve been doing from home, or changing requirements as businesses try to survive. Evolving your messaging is essential to ensuring you have these needs covered.
As ever, guidance from government and local authority resources is plentiful. Keeping abreast of this and simplifying it will make life easier for those hungry for information about their specific situation. If your comms have been effective, you will have built some audience loyalty with a good proportion of returning readers to take on these updates.
But for large, complex organisations, finding ways of dealing with diverging information needs requires thorough planning. Much depends on the channels you use: an intranet with tagging functionality will help segment your audiences; enterprise social media solutions like Jive or Yammer give you the flexibility to create groups for different departments or businesses.
Those still tied to email have an easier job, with the ability to create custom lists – but keeping control of the process is key, as every new list requires maintenance, not to mention its own content plan. Keeping it simple is the best way to maintain a workable system.
And of course, leadership’s buy-in will always drive home the most important points – setting the tone as your organisation’s priorities evolve. The power of a 90-second video from the CEO can’t be underestimated, and many have become comfortable with shooting their own clips on smartphones – which is all that’s really needed.
Right now the priority is keeping true to the fundamentals of effective internal comms: ensuring your audiences remain feeling valued and engaged; that they not only have the information they need to deal with their situation, but the motivation to keep going as the new normal continues to assert itself. The pandemic is definitely unprecedented – and so is the demand for consistent, informative communications.
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
