Information Overload: Internal Communication Essentials
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Denise Cox from Newsweaver discusses information overload, highlighting its impact on employee engagement due to the excessive volume of unfiltered content received via email. She emphasizes the need for targeted, relevant communication strategies supported by measurement and audience understanding to mitigate overload issues. The document also promotes tools and resources available for improving internal communications efficiency.
Information Overload: Internal Communication Essentials
- 1. Information Overload denise cox, Lead Communications Consultant, Newsweaver Twitter hashtag: #icewebinar
- 3. 400 blue-chip and FTSE 100 organizations in 97 countries use Newsweaver Internal Connect to help them inform, engage and inspire employees
- 4. denise cox Lead communications consultant, Newsweaver Twitter: @denisecox Website: www.newsweaver.com/internal-communications Twitter hashtag: #icewebinar Claire Bergin Senior Marketing Executive, Newsweaver Twitter: @Newsweaver_IC Website: www.newsweaver.com/internal-communications
- 5. “When the volume of potentially useful and relevant information available exceeds processing capacity and becomes a hindrance rather than a help”
- 6. 6 Cost of Information Overload
- 7. all@everyone.com Senders rely on employee self-selecting importance Levels of emails increasing - especially at local levels No measurement – not even open rates No formal tool, process or governance in place Employees feel swamped with content of little use Stop opening emails Important information is being missed Causes of Information Overload
- 8. Are you part of the problem? “Blast” “Push” “eShot” “Mass” “Deploy” “All”
- 9. Governance in place Reduced frequency Increased relevance Personalized to audiences Targeted content Decisions made from measurement Or, are you part of the solution?
- 10. Timely, targeted, relevant Segment audiences Personalize content Determine frequency In depth measurement Informs your communications Acknowledges the employee 1. Data
- 12. No barriers Any device Scannable Easy to navigate WIIFM 3. Design
- 13. Today’s technology 20% of the work week is spent looking for internal information Source: McKinsey Report
- 15. Understand your audience Consolidate Twitter-style content Responsive design Embed videos Measure Courtesy of: Financial Ombudsman
- 17. Newslettercourtesyof:SovereignHousing Organized by sections Color-coded sections Content as snippets Priority sections at top
- 20. Newslettercourtesyof:VodafoneUK Consolidates Responsive design Aggregated news Measures traffic Measures audiences
- 21. Measure to reduce overload Insight into audiences Editorial guidance Click maps Trends Best time and day Target / personalize Decrease volume Content balance Most/least traction Destination traffic Re-send Consolidation opportunities Share insight with stakeholders
- 22. Access free How to guides, research and white papers www.newsweaver.com/internal-communications/learning-center/ Next IC Essentials webinar – Thursday, April 23 Increasing channel effectiveness
Editor's Notes
- #9: These are the words used when sending to all, or not tailoring content and message. This contributes to information overload
- #12: Enterprisewide planning calendar Partner with departments Regular comms CEO message Urgent messages Combining Separate Governance Tools Process
- #14: The right technology available today Adding real email measurement allows for improved communications and greater confidence in messaging. REAL TME METRICS DASHBOARD Central email platform to provide enterprise-wide control and visibility. Protected lists (all employees worldwide, all use employees, all sales & marketing employees being used to limited those with the capability to send mass emails. Pre-designed branded Interactivity Integrated to HR/people datsa. Customized Measurement and alaytics. Organizations should review the effectiveness of their email channel on two levels. First, there should be a company wide adherence to best practice. All-employee emails, excessive CCs and reply-to-all, plus the misuse of email for collaboration, document transfer and storage, leads to information overload and inbox clutter. Organizations need to address this specifically to educate and improve the use of email in the workplace. The second level is to make use of the email technology available today. By using this technology communicators can increase the relevance and impact of their communications, in turn increasing results. Once the technology is being used, Internal Communication teams should take a cue from their Marketing co-workers. This means moving away from a one-to-all tactic, and taking a sophisticated approach to communication. Internal Communication teams should implement a content marketing strategy, one that uses data to segment and send timely, targeted, relevant emails – the right information, to the right employee at the right time. In addition, they can use these email communications to drive adoption and traffic to their other channel strategies, including social and Intranet.
- #15: Once you get a data that the employee has taken an action, act on that. If they decline registration, stop contacting them. If they understand, stop contacting them. If they opened – only re-send to those who have not opened. Help decrease information overload.
- #16: We launched in-house newsletter, on the go, just over a year ago now. Previously had a monthly newsletter, as well as a weekly news email round-up that we used to inform and share organisation messages with colleagues. As an organisation we were going through a large amount of change – in just over two years our workforce had literally doubled – we’d had a change of chief executive and we were about to move to a new building. Our existing channels where too slow in production and colleagues said they didn’t have time to read everything, so important messages were getting missed. We knew we needed to s produce and share news with our colleagues more quickly, in a format that was easier to digest. We took inspiration from twitter –creating on the go that was made up of shorter news features and snippets. When did you launch it? How does it work? Because we produce it weekly – production and review needs to be quick and simple. Our internal communication team collate, schedule and produce the content – from contributions we receive from across the organisation. Within the team the role of editor is taken in turns, and we all contribute to the overall review. We also encourage teams to use the channel to create their own newsletters too. An appealing feature of on the go, is the bite-sized format. Tell us more. We know everyone’s busy with their day jobs – but being able to share information and keep up to date with the headlines is equally important. The bite-sized format took inspiration from the 140 character tweet length. Keeping things short and informative. What’s also been great is we can embed and add videos and sound bites too. Through the Newsweaver platform you can track and measure exactly how the audience interacts with the publication. What type of feedback and input are you receiving? Through the measures we’re able to gather and share insight on the headline’s that are really grabbing people’s attention – and the topics that matter to different areas within the organisation. And that can be everything from features on wellbeing to a message from the exec. We can share feedback easily with our contributors around who’s clicking on their articles, as well as encourage engagement through sharing and comments being posted back. (After Sally’s answer, I will bring in Denise to explain how analytics on Newsweaver works) What do you do with that feedback? The insight is great as it helps us give informed advice around communication channels and which ones will work best depending on the audience.