With the increasing complexity of today’s business landscape, effective communication within a company has become more important than ever before. It’s essential to have a well-thought-out strategy and plan in place to ensure your internal communications campaigns are successful. In this blog post, we will discuss the unique challenges of internal communications, the importance of strategy and planning, and tips for creating successful campaigns. By incorporating these insights, you can drive employee engagement, improve collaboration, and enhance overall business performance.

Unique Challenges of Internal Communications

Diverse Audiences

One of the main challenges in internal communications planning is catering to diverse audiences. Companies often have employees with different roles, responsibilities, and levels of authority. This makes it necessary to tailor your messaging to resonate with each group effectively. Understanding the needs, preferences, and expectations of various employee segments is crucial in crafting targeted and relevant content and it’s worth taking the time to map out audiences at the beginning of a campaign in order to maximise engagement throughout the campaign.

Information Overload

The digital era has brought an influx of information, making it increasingly difficult for employees to keep up with the constant stream of updates and announcements. Information overload can lead to disengagement and decreased productivity. Too often, the answer is to try a new channel but an effective internal communications strategy can help you find the right balance between providing essential information and avoiding overwhelming employees.

Remote and Hybrid Workforces

The rise of remote and hybrid workforces presents new challenges for internal communications planning. With employees spread across different locations and time zones, ensuring consistent and clear communication becomes more difficult. Remote workers may feel disconnected from their colleagues, leading to a sense of isolation and decreased engagement.

Rapidly Changing Business Environments

Today’s business world is characterized by constant change and evolution. As a result, internal comms must be agile and adaptable to keep employees informed about organisational changes, new initiatives, and shifting priorities. This requires a proactive and flexible approach to planning with a willingness to iterate on strategies when necessary. 

The Importance of Strategy and Planning

Aligning with Organisational Goals

A well-defined internal communications strategy is essential for aligning your efforts with the overall goals of your organisation. By setting clear objectives and KPIs, you can ensure that your communications campaigns contribute to driving business success. This alignment also helps to secure buy-in from leadership and other key stakeholders.

Enhancing Employee Engagement

Effective internal communications planning is critical for fostering employee engagement. Engaged employees are more productive, motivated, and committed to the success of the organisation. By delivering targeted and relevant content that resonates with each audience, you can create a strong sense of connection and purpose among your employees.

Facilitating Collaboration and Innovation

A strategic approach to internal communications planning can help break down silos, encourage cross-functional collaboration, and promote innovation within your organisation. By creating a culture of open communication, you empower employees to share ideas, provide feedback, and contribute to the company’s growth.

Managing Change and Crises

In times of change or crisis, a well-structured internal communications plan can help maintain stability and ensure that employees are informed, engaged, and supported. By providing timely and transparent updates, you can build trust, manage expectations, and guide your workforce through challenging times. Set time aside to create a template for crisis communications so you have it when you need it.

Tips for Creating Successful Internal Communications Campaigns

Develop a Comprehensive Strategy

To create a successful internal communications campaign, start by developing a comprehensive strategy that outlines your objectives, target audience, key messages, and desired outcomes. Ensure that your strategy aligns with the overall goals of your organisation and addresses the unique challenges of your internal communications landscape.

Use the Right Channels and Tools

Select the appropriate channels and tools for engaging with your audiences. Consider a mix of traditional channels (email, intranet, newsletters, townhalls) and modern tools (team collaboration platforms, social networks, mobile apps) to reach your diverse audience effectively. Make use of analytics to evaluate the effectiveness of each channel and adjust your approach as needed to optimize engagement and reach.

Personalise and Segment Communications

To increase the effectiveness of your messaging, personalise and segment your audience based on their needs and preferences. Create targeted content for different employee groups, considering factors such as job function, location, and seniority. This approach ensures that your messaging is relevant, engaging, and impactful. You can download our stakeholder mapping template here and adapt it to your needs.

Encourage Two-Way Communication

Successful internal communications campaigns foster two-way communication between employees and the organisation. Encourage feedback and open dialogue by providing channels for employees to ask questions, share ideas, and voice concerns. This not only helps to identify potential issues but also promotes a culture of transparency and trust.

Measure and Evaluate Success

Continuously measure the success of your campaigns by tracking key metrics, such as employee engagement, open rates, click-through rates, and feedback. Analyse this data to identify areas of improvement and refine your strategy for future campaigns.

Leverage Storytelling and Visuals

Engage your employees with compelling storytelling and visuals. Share success stories, case studies, and employee experiences to create an emotional connection with your audience. Use visuals, such as infographics, videos, and images, to make your content more engaging and memorable.

Train and Support Internal Communicators

Invest in the professional development of your internal communicators by providing training, resources, and support. This will help them stay current with best practices, improve their communication skills, and ensure the success of your internal communications campaigns. Get in touch if you would like to find out more about how our consultants can help.

Conclusion

A successful internal communication plan is an effective expression of your company’s values and overall strategy whether it’s for the entire company or simply a part. It contains the elements of a solid understanding of the situation, a clearly defined set of actionable goals, a set means of delivery, and measurability. When you make time to set it up, making sure you’re informed by employee data, it can become an effective tool in your arsenal.

The post Mastering Internal Communications Planning: Strategy, Challenges, and Success appeared first on ICPlan.

Once again, we want to At ICPlan we’re on a mission to see the latest shifts and trends when it comes the pitfalls and barriers to planning across the Corporate Comms function. We have collaborated with author and consultant, Liam FitzPatrick, to develop a comprehensive 2022 updated study on the issues that influence the way organisations plan communications.

On that note, we’ve launched the 2022 survey aimed at communicators from across the spectrum – from internal to external. We want to hear how they plan and are asking them to take just a few minutes to tell us what influences and affects their approach to planning.

You can take the anonymous survey here: Planning in Communications Survey

Better Planning in Communications: The Necessity of Study

As communicators, for us to be able to navigate the challenges we all face in terms of planning in communications, it’s critical that we continue to understand what the common barriers and roadblocks are. The survey we have created will only take ten minutes of your time but will still cover a lot of key areas of interest. These include what kind of planning takes place in your organisation at the moment, what planning approach you apply to individual projects, and even what factors help or harm implementation. Finally, we also explore who you involve in the development of your comms plans and ultimate sign-off.

It’s not just for internal communicators exclusively. We also want to incorporate the views and experiences of every kind of comms professional from across the diverse comms spectrum. Do internal communicators view and approach strategy in the same way as those in media relations or public affairs? How tightly integrated—or disparate—are these plans? Is there overlap in the utilization of tools? Do comms teams in a company strive for consistency in their messaging?

We Learn and Grow Together 

Please also note that this research project is also open to communicators from around the world. In fact, we are hoping to get a more diverse global perspective on planning in communications. We are interested in learning how comms professionals across the world view, approach, and deal with the problems we all face as a community and a profession.

What’s in it for YOU?

We will be carefully analysing the collected data and publishing the report early next year. Respondents who want to receive a copy of the research report can leave their email address at the end of the questionnaire. Additionally, we are also making a donation of $1 for each completed survey to Befrienders International (the international charity that provides confidential support to people in emotional crisis or distress).

The world still continues to change a great deal as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, yet the challenges of effective communication planning remain. In seeking to understand what the current status is and what continues to need to be improved in terms of planning, we believe that we can make a lasting impact for the communications profession.

You can take the anonymous survey here: Planning in Communications Survey

The post Our 2022 Planning in Communications Survey is Open appeared first on ICPlan.

I can’t remember where the conversation started but it eventually reached the point of “well how many communicators really take planning seriously?”

Throughout the Spring of 2020, I’d been chatting on Zoom with Dan and Maddy of ICPlan. We’re old friends and been sharing the highs and lows of lockdowns, home schooling and debating what the new world would look like for us; them as communication software providers and me as an advisor on good practice in communications teams.

So, we thought we’d ask our friends and contacts to fill in a survey. It seemed to resonate with many people – the questionnaire got shared around the world and eventually, hundreds of practitioners from every communications sub-discipline took part. And in the second half of 2020 we started sharing the raw results in a series of 1:1 conversations and virtual discussion groups with experienced professionals.

You can download the full report here:
Communications Planning Report 2021

No masterplan

The most striking message was that many communicators do not have a masterplan for what they are trying to activate with their operations. They may have specific timelines and tactics for individual projects but an overall view of why they exist and how to develop is not universal.

The people we spoke to linked this to another fact emerging from the data; people who plan are more likely to report having an educated set of internal stakeholders who appreciate what communications can do for them.

In short, if you work in an organisation that doesn’t value communications why bother thinking ahead or trying to implement a vision of reputation management or employee engagement? You’ll always be involved too late in the day to make a real difference on projects and getting leaders to engage with messaging will be a struggle.

Educating stakeholders

In contrast, communications teams that can align with organisational goals and strategies find they are more likely to be consulted and appreciated by their peers in the organisation.

The message seems to be that if you want to be valued you need to educate your stakeholders about what you can do; and you need to be educated yourself about the strategic goals and plans of your organisation.

Initially, this feels like a fairly obvious statement, but the data suggests that it’s a message that as many as four in ten communicators need to hear.

And it’s an observation that is reinforced by the finding that barely half of communications plans include anything much about audience insight or evaluation let alone links to detail about underlying business goals. However, the probability that many practitioners were still concerned with tactics rather than results did not entirely surprise our expert consultees.

They said that the profession still has a way to go to catch up with other professional disciplines in working to a structured plan.

Size matters

The research also found that size of team seems to matter in how people approach planning.

We found that the smallest and the largest teams seem to be better at planning and being aligned with each other. For the former it is probably a matter of living in a simpler world and for the latter it’s a question of necessity.

Yet mid-sized teams seem to struggle to gather intelligence, get involved in projects at an early stage or align communications.

Five key questions

After listening to the views and experiences of senior communications leaders it seems that there are five essential questions to test how planful a comms team is. There may be more but the consensus from our research is that the most universal issues are covered in these five questions:

• Do we have a master vision of communications that is aligned to business or organisational goals?
• Is there a clear methodology for planning communications – and does it involve our internal stakeholders?
• Have we a governance process which tracks the plan, keeps messages, audiences and projects aligned, and reflects on successes and failures?
• Have we the skills and mindset of planners who can engage with stakeholders, cope with change and overcome inevitable barriers?
• Is our planning driven by data, insight, evaluation and tracking?
Please download the report – we hope it proves useful to making your communications operation more effective.

And of course, if you need help to make your communications more planful get in touch!

You can download the full report here:
Communications Planning Report 2021

The post If you don’t know where you’re going any road will take you there appeared first on ICPlan.

Microsoft Stream and the Rise of Video

As of 2020, over 2 billion people log into YouTube on a monthly basis—that’s a lot of people consuming content ranging from the professional productions to amateur projects covering a range of topics. Even that number pales in comparison to the 4 billions video views that Facebook sees on a daily basis. The reason why video is so popular a medium is because moving images catch the eye, and actively engage other senses, like sound through compelling audio, adding to its power.

For internal communications, these advantages are magnified when you realize that the often busy nature of work and deluge of other mediums makes video truly standout. In fact, a study by Ragan has found that 75% of all employees are more likely to watch a video over any other medium. Somewhat ironically, while many companies are quick to have a YouTube presence for external comms, they tend to lock it down internally for fear of lost productivity. That’s where Microsoft Stream comes in.

What is Microsoft Stream?

Microsoft bills Stream as a secure video service. Through it, enterprise users can safely upload their own video content which can then be shared within their company. What sets Microsoft Stream apart is the ability to manage restrictions on access via identity management system Azure Active Directory. This allows you to utilize your platform for even the most secure and private of content reserved for those higher up in your organization’s hierarchy.

It’s a highly adaptive platform—allowing you to use it for general internal communications as well as live online training sessions for up to 10,000 attendees. Best of all, it’s integrated into a host of other Microsoft 365 enterprise products to make it easy to share content or invite colleagues to participate across a bevvy of different channel options. Again, all of this within a system that is safe and secure. If you’re familiar with how YouTube works, you already have the basics down to pat, but there’s so much more to discover.

Creating Channels and Workgroups

An essential feature to Microsoft Stream is the ability to create channels—a basic to all video streaming sites nowadays. Within Stream, you have two options when it comes to channels. The first is companywide which is perfect if you want to organize things by topic. These channels are those that can be seen by the whole company. In fact, only videos with the widest spanning accessibility features can be added to them. Further control lies in the fact that only channel creators and the overall Stream admin can edit the channel.

Group channels are where Microsoft Stream diverts from other video streaming and sharing platforms. These can be customized with tighter permissions and limited to a set cluster of employees as needed. For example, you could have a channel focus entirely on your Sales team and limited to employees within that team. Their content can be more highly focused and attuned to their needs. For either channel, there are customization options that allow for internal branding.

Interestingly enough, it’s with organization focused features like these that you get your first taste of the Microsoft 365 integration. When you create Microsoft 365 Groups, they automatically create workspaces within streams for any videos that are created. Best of all, the membership settings of the Microsoft 365 Group automatically applies to the workspace created. This organization within Microsoft Stream makes it all that easier to share content seamlessly.

Microsoft Stream Cross-Platform Integration

Speaking of sharing, the true breadth of the sharing capabilities of Microsoft Stream can best be experienced in other applications in the Microsoft 365 Suite. SharePoint, with its ability to create team microsites for customized news and updates, is one of the best examples of strong Streams integration. Embedding a video already uploaded on Microsoft Stream is a simple matter of looking for the ‘web part’ in the list of components you can add to your SharePoint site.

Another very practical integration is within Teams. If you utilize that platform for keeping constant lines of communication open with your employees, you can easily push video content from Microsoft Stream into Teams. The simplest is to cut and paste the video’s particular URL into any conversation. If you wanted to put in a whole channel, just add it as a tab—Microsoft Stream appears among the options that you can select. From there, you just put in the URL for the channel or specific video you wish to share.

Still in Teams, it bears mentioning that you can also use Microsoft Stream to aggregate, collect, and organize recordings that you make of your video conferences in the platform. This is perfect for gathering minutes of your meetings which you can share later on with whoever needs it. As soon as these recordings are uploaded to Stream, they behave like any video uploaded on the platform. This means you can share it again as needed.

Interactive Videos with Microsoft Stream

Microsoft Stream really shines with the way content can be interacted with. For example, speech from an uploaded video can be transcribed side-by-side with the content as it is playing. This transcription can then be searched for key ideas and words for easy reference. Facial detection software identifies people within the video. Their particular portions within the video can then be jumped to via a visual timeline beneath your video itself.

These features make Microsoft Stream perfect for running training or informational campaigns. Whether in-person, over Teams, or through self-discovery, these features allow your employees to research specific concepts that they might want to focus on or revisit easily. No longer will they have to haphazardly click on a video timeline. They can also easily jump to key speakers as they might be directed to or go back to key points for reference with ease.

A great application would be ‘welcome videos’ for new employees. With Microsoft Stream, not only will they be able to take this welcome video with them wherever they go, but they can also easily search for key explanations on policies that they might find unclear or want to go back to. Your welcome video’s section on benefits or diversity and inclusion could be searched by term. Or they can even jump to sections featuring your HR manager if they wanted to review everything in one go.

Live events are also a possibility with Microsoft Stream. You can start them up from within the platform or have those started in Yammer and Teams saved onto Stream. All those intelligent interactive features don’t apply to the event itself, but they are applied afterwards once the final video is uploaded post-event. A final thing worth mentioning is that the technology is accurate but not completely perfect. Much depends on the quality of the video and audio uploaded to get things right.

Microsoft Stream Supports Forms

A final useful interactive feature in Microsoft Stream is the ability to embed all manner of forms alongside your video as it runs. Based on the useful Microsoft Forms platform, these can be anything from feedback forms all the way to interactive quizzes about the video. You can even run surveys to quickly gauge opinion on your video content—the results of which will arrive far more quickly than having it be a separate activity.

Setting it up is very intuitive. When you click on the ‘Add Form’ button as you prepare the video for upload, you get boxes for the Microsoft Forms URL as well as for the name of your form. You can then select the specific point on the timeline to embed the form into. When your employee reaches that point in your video, the form will unobtrusively pop up beside—and not over—the video for your employees to answer.

Inject Vibrance Into Your Communications Through Video

With Microsoft Stream, you have a secure, smart, and simple platform with which to upload and stream videos to your employees. It features a great many customization and organization options to ensure that everything is easily accessible by those who need specific content. The addition of intelligent interactivity features expands the platform’s utility into that of an effective training, educational, and reference tool for your employees.

The post Microsoft Stream: Bringing the Power of Video to Enterprise appeared first on ICPlan.

Remote Work Setups Demand Better Communications

If there’s one good thing to come out of this pandemic, it’s that many companies are actually capable of thriving in a remote work setup. For some companies, like Zillow, it has compelled them to extend the option for their employees until the end of the year. For a few others, like Twitter, it has gotten them to recognize remote work as a viable, permanent model. It’s looking like many companies are going to sit between these two extremes for the foreseeable future.

Post-crisis internal communications is going to be the glue keeping things together—as it has been doing through the darkest days of the crisis. With social distancing measures also likely to continue for those companies that do reinstate their in-office work, we’re likely going to see many activities like conferences, meetings, and one-on-ones done online and over the same internal communications channels that have been utilized effectively through the lockdown.

Post-Crisis Internal Communications Needs to Be On-Guard

The COVID-19 pandemic also revealed just how vulnerable many employees were in a crisis. For some, it was as simple as not being able to safely commute to work. For others, it could be the lack of a home infrastructure to make remote working sustainable. On the health front, the pandemic also revealed people’s greater care needs—and how dependent they are on strong, decisive stands from their leaders whether in the government or at work.

Post-crisis internal communications will have to continue to create open dialogue and bridges between employers and their people. We don’t know yet whether or not a cure is approaching, but we do know already that employees need help—financially, psychologically, or otherwise. It fell upon internal comms to ensure that these are delivered effectively to people far afield. In the “New Normal”, this function needs to be reinforced and enhanced—as well as prepared for the challenges that lie ahead.

Post-Crisis Internal Communications Can Take Cues from Parenthood

Dealing with people in a sensitive and conscientious manner is something many companies learned through the challenges that the COVID-19 lockdowns brought. After all, these are extraordinary times with very little precedent—and many people are reporting trauma responses to the circumstances they find themselves in. This has left post-crisis internal communications in an interesting situation where the hard truth alone won’t suffice—nor even be acceptable.

To that, communicators can take cues from parenthood—that is, to blend truth, compassion, and creativity in crafting their messages. The combination affords a great deal of respect not just for your employees but their current situations as well. Equally important to post-crisis internal communications is to veer away from a one-way informing model to one that gives greater choice and fluidity—as well as dialogue. This affords your employees’ greater sense of freedom in a world that’s already very tightly locked down and controlled.

Post-Crisis Internal Communications Need Greater Inclusivity

It isn’t just during crises that a certain degree of sensitivity and inclusivity needs to be applied. Post-crisis internal communications would benefit a great deal from it as well. If you take the example of Airbnb’s Brian Chesky’s statement when that company had to retrench, it’s a perfect example of sensitivity and inclusivity. In those examples, a lot of it has to do with word choice. Throughout the discourse, Brian Chesky refers to his employees as “teammates” implying a closer connection.

While that word choice is critical in creating inclusivity, what hammers the point home is the manner in which those who are due to be let go are ultimately treated. Apart from a hefty severance pay, which includes being able to take home their Apple laptops, Airbnb’s teammates are given full career support and guidance. It’s important this example is taken forward for post-crisis internal communications especially as it’s looking more like it won’t just magically disappear.

Post-Crisis Internal Communications Should Provide Accurate but Considerate Information

A lot of the panic in the early days of the COVID-19 crisis came from conflicting information. Some sources claimed that the virus would just go away, while medical experts said otherwise. Some companies—like the aforementioned Airbnb handled difficulties with honesty and grace—while others caused crises within their own companies with vague responses and unclear policies. It’s going to be especially important that, from here on in, post-crisis internal communications always stay honest and accurate.

That being said, it’s also important to be considerate of the people being communicated to. These are very tough times. For many employees—especially those who need to return to the workplace to earn a living—it can be very scary as well. While it’s not to say that accuracy should ever be sacrificed for the sake of being considerate, there is much to be said about carefully wording post-crisis internal communications. Additionally, communicators would do well to coordinate with decision makers more closely to ensure that responses also provide answers that employees might seek.

Post-Crisis Internal Communications Needs to Take Charge

Finally, post-crisis internal communications should take charge when it comes to enforcing and maintaining key communications policies that ensure that none of them are breached. For instance, cramped meeting rooms and conference halls are a thing of the past. As evidenced by experiences with work from home setups in these lockdowns, virtual conferences are the way to go to ensure that social distancing is maintained without compromising the need to actually meet.

A lot of this has to do with careful management of available communication channels as well as setting up procedures that other departments need to follow through the implementation. Some great practices include making meetings briefer and more direct to the point. This does away with the tendency for virtual meetings to drag on for too long.

Learn the Worthwhile Lessons

As undoubtedly difficult as the COVID-19 crisis has been for everyone, we’ve come to learn a lot from the experience. For one thing, we’ve proven that remote work operations are feasible. With the right internal communications setups and the right channels, business proceeds as normal as can be had. It’s clear that the effects of this crisis will be far reaching—there’s a new and different normal to be expected that will carry on some of the practices that the crisis itself has forced us to follow.

In order for companies to flourish, it’s important that their post-crisis internal communications stick to the valuable lessons from the crisis. For one, that remote work is a viable option for business continuance provided there’s a strong comms setup. For another, that companies can manage to be both honest yet still caring for their employees. Finally, that agility and expedience is necessary in comms to keep it ahead of the curve.

The post Post-Crisis Internal Communications: Moving Towards the New and Different Normal appeared first on ICPlan.

Microsoft Yammer and Fluent Design

The new Microsoft Yammer and its design are all informed by what Microsoft calls its Fluent Design System. Philosophically, ‘Fluent’ refers to the idea that technology and its use should have a natural, intuitive flow from one platform or device to the next. It’s really a reflection on how we consume technology nowadays—we often start work on our laptops and personal computers then shift to our tablets and mobile devices as we move about.

It’s a fitting design paradigm choice for Microsoft which used to be plagued by terrible cross-platform integration. Now, in more practical terms, ‘Fluent’ design is about anticipating use cases of its products and ensuring the overall user experience is crafted to meet many needs, contexts, and uses with little fuss and confusion. It’s certainly a long way from the days when Apple took potshots at the company for being the opposite of Fluent in its user experience.

What Fluent Means for Microsoft Yammer

A look at many other Office 365 programs will give you a glimpse into the future for what this could mean for Microsoft Yammer. There’s been a clear shift toward single colours—apart from white, that is—and an overall cleaner look. It’s certainly the first impression that you have when you visit the new Yammer. Fluent design influences are apparent in the much more organized look. Everything that you could possibly need is on display.

For one, there’s the much clearer company branding that includes your company logo and business name. There’s a prominent search bar as well as all the basic application controls and settings on the top. All these make it much easier to get to anything that you would like to change and customise in terms of your overall experience using the program. You even have easy access to your Office 365 profile card—changes to which will apply across the entire network.

Fluent Design Prioritises Engagement

When you move to the social cards themselves, you’ll find that Fluent design has ensured that engagement is a clear priority. Images and media content are prominent and eye-catching, but the real gem is in the comment section. Much like many other social media, there are the requisite reaction, comment, and share options. Conversations are tiered to keep threads in order. It’s clear, however, that Yammer intends to take advantage of a strong Office 365 integration.

There’s a dedicated button that allows you to share documents and files from everywhere in your company’s Office 365 network—from SharePoint to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more. From an employee standpoint, this makes collaboration significantly easier. From a comms standpoint, it will allow you to share content relevant to an employee post for clarity and support—without having to needlessly trawl through your own files.

AI and Guided Discovery in Fluent Design

AI is a big deal nowadays and features in everything from bots to even assisted search, and its presence can be strongly felt in the new Fluent design version of Yammer. For one thing, your discovery feed itself is curated to show you what matters to you. Depending on your job role, your prior search queries, and other little bits of detail that is sourced from your interaction with Office 365’s other applications, the AI learns what’s important and pushes it front and centre.

This is also applied to your search experience in general where you can easily find what matters to you at the moment. Perhaps the best applications of this machine learning have to do with the aforementioned ability to attach files. AI guides this behaviour and suggests the files that are most relevant to a particular post or conversation. It’s an easy way to have all activities flow more naturally for users in your company.

Fluent Design Guides Building Communities

One great update with Yammer is the focus on stronger community support. The communities within Yammer allowed one to create spaces to build camaraderie, cooperation, and collaboration. All three are reinforced by the ability to better brand internally within communities. Cover photos can be handily replaced with team or departmental logos or even guidelines and infographics that communities want to bring to the fore.

The expansiveness of Fluent Design can be seen in the ease by which communities can be managed via smartphone. The interface has been simplified for ease-of-use. Simpler, some have argued, than Workplace from Facebook’s interface which has become cluttered of late as more features are added into the mix. Posting is an easy and fluid experience as is, again, attaching relevant files from anywhere in your Office 365 network into a post.

One area of mobile where Fluent Design really shines is in video capture. Tools are in place to make the process of capturing, editing, and publishing a breeze. This is perfect for highly mobile comms or remote setups where high production value videos might not be easy to undertake. There are many great internal comms opportunities to be had with this improvement: from direct CEO comms to their employees to even on-site community updates.

A Smoother Fluent Design Native Experience

Those who are most invested in Office 365’s full suite of enterprise products are the ones most likely to enjoy the benefits of Fluent Design. Outlook is one particular platform where Yammer shines in its new iteration. The Native mode integration makes each inbox a mini-Yammer. You interact with posts shared to you in much the same way that you would were you to view them in Yammer. While limited to the web version of Outlook for now, it has been verified that the desktop and mobile versions are soon to follow.

It’s pretty much the same story when it comes to the conversations web part of SharePoint. Again, you can add file attachments from your work network, set up robust question and answer sessions, and share rich text content. All of this with the same level of coherence with the original Yammer platform. It breathes new life into a platform many often consider ‘yet another’ that they have to contend with—presenting a truly vibrant platform for communications.

The Power of Integration

If Microsoft and its adoption of Fluent Design across its platform prove anything, it’s that investing in a fully integrated suite of enterprise solutions is a worthwhile one. With Microsoft Yammer, you leverage the power of social media to enhance your communications across your company and its communities. There are a lot of exciting design changes being pushed out and more down the line to be explored. It shows that Microsoft is starting to listen to what its customers want the most.

The post Fluent Design: Microsoft Yammer Explored appeared first on ICPlan.

Despite the unprecedented circumstances companies around the world are in, much has and continues to be expected of business leaders around the world.

One company that has had both a strong and effective COVID-19 response as well as a clear plan for the post-COVID-19 world is Deutsche Telekom in Germany. Much of this stems from Tim Höttges who has been very visible and vocal in his role as leader of one of the biggest telecom giants in the world.

An Overview of Deutsche Telekom

Headquartered in Bonn, Germany, Deutsche Telekom has been in operation since 1995. It holds stakes in other telecom companies globally—stretching its span of operation east to west—from the United States all the way to Russia and Japan, including well-known brands such as T-Mobile, T-Systems and – as of May 2020 – Sprint in the US. As of 2020, it boasts a workforce of over 216,000 employees around the world. 

The Power of CEO Presence in Crisis

Tim Höttges, its current CEO has spent a significant portion of his career at Deutsche Telekom, joining the company in 2000. He was was appointed to the board of directors in 2006, eventually becoming its CEO in 2014. What has stood out since his appointment is the strong emphasis placed on great communications—particularly through the efforts of Tim himself. As well as consistently posting on his LinkedIn page he also regularly engages those that comment. 

As the COVID-19 crisis runs its course, Höttges has been very visible both internally and externally. As Deutsche Telekom’s employees, along with everyone else, deals with the fallout from the unprecedented world events, Tim has maintained the engagement and communication efforts—striking a reassuring tone with employees and clearly outlining the course Deutsche Telekom will take in the days, weeks and months ahead.

Let’s take a closer look at what he and Deutsche Telekom have done for an effective COVID-19 response.

Effective COVID-19 Response is Easier When it’s Institutional

Many companies struggled to push out an effective COVID-19 response when lockdowns started to go in place around the world—Germany included. Everything was turned on its head: restrictions were placed on travel and movement, businesses were shuttered down, people were asked to stay at home, and mass gatherings were discouraged. That’s why Tim Höttges almost immediately made the decision to forgo Deutsche Telekom’s participation at Mobile World Congress.

While the annual industry trade fair eventually did get cancelled, Deutsche Telekom initially came under fire for the withdrawal. Detractors insisted that, rather than cancel participation, Deutsche Telekom should instead establish a digital presence. Tim Höttges was adamant that the safety of not just employees but also attendees was their top priority. That distinction in his LinkedIn statement is reflective of the deeper institutional duty of care to everyone in the company’s sphere of influence from customers to employees.

Compassion and Decisiveness

A few days after the entirety of Germany went on lockdown, Tim Höttges took to LinkedIn to post a very comprehensive video that detailed his and Deutsche Telekom’s take on the evolving conditions brought about by COVID-19 as well as what their employees and customers could realistically expect. This honest, transparent and – in places – optimistic commentary on the situation, is something that has been a stand out component of leadership communications at this time of crisis.

A consistent theme in Tim Höttges communications around COVID-19 can be boiled down to three key elements:

• Transparency – The fact that internal communications are being proactively shared externally and also the messages are realistic in tone underlines the transparency that Höttges and Deutsche Telekom as a whole are currently operating
• The role of the company – A consistent theme in all of Höttges communications is the role that Deutsche Telekom plays at a societal level during this time, and the importance of service continuance for customers
• Charting the course – The third element that has been present in communications from Höttges has been looking forward to what the next steps are. Whether it’s to the positive changes that can come to ways of working or more practical steps when it comes to returning to offices, the Deutsche Telekom CEO has consistently presented a forward outlook in his communications

Deutsche Telekom Supports its Workforce and Customers

Many companies were forced into remote work situation when lockdowns prevented people from leaving their home to report for work. For Deutsche Telekom, it wasn’t as difficult a transition for a large portion of the workforce due to the company already having flexible working options in place.

An extensive communication exercise was rolled out to ensure that their employees were well-prepared and well-informed to handle changes to ways of working. This led to noteworthy measures like the shifting of over 12,000 contact centre agents in the US to a work-from-home setup in less than two weeks.

But what about those that are unable to work from home? Tim Höttges acknowledged early that many jobs in Deutsche Telekom could not be done “from home.” Those jobs included line technicians and those in service departments—those in the field who essentially keep things actually running. For those affected employees, new measures and protocols for working were rapidly rolled out to ensure safety and continuance of services for customers.

Deutsche Telekom Gives Back to the World

Apart from the continuance of service that is at the heart of Deutsche Telekom’s effective COVID-19 response, they rolled out additional data at no extra charge for their customers. They also partnered with SK Telecom of South Korea to provide stronger conferencing and communications solutions to help other companies in keeping touch with their employees.

It didn’t end there, however. Deutsche Telekom was also tapped by the German government to assist in the development of a contact tracing app. This is a critical technology that enables health services to find out who a particular person has interacted with in order to follow the lines of infection of COVID-19, helping Germany’s efforts to contain the virus’ spread within its borders.  

Effective COVID-19 Response Cares for Wellbeing

While many companies have – out of necessity – focused on the operational and economic aspects by COVID-19, at its core it is first and foremost a health crisis. As part of Deutsche Telekom’s effective COVID-19 response, they opted to meet one of the most critical components that is coming to define the new normal: face masks.

Often the last lines of personal defense against the COVID-19 strain, face masks have become increasingly scarce in the pandemic. Deutsche Telekom’s response was simple: create cloth masks from old, unused, but nonetheless clean fabrics. In a video posted on his own LinkedIn page, CEO Tim Höttges himself is seen creating one with a Singer sewing machine. These were then sent off to their employees all over Germany.

Working Towards the New Normal

As much of the world prepares to move to what everyone’s calling “the New Normal”, it’s unsurprising that Deutsche Telekom is well-prepared for what’s to come. As well as the distribution of face masks—which are to be mandatory for those working on company premises—they’ve also adopted additional measures in-office to protect their employees from the threat of a second wave of outbreaks.

To start only 20% of their workforce is preparing to return. Secondly, within offices, workstations that don’t conform to the principles of social distancing have been physically cordoned off with adequate spacing maintained for those working in-office. Finally, as Tim Höttges himself puts it, there is a stronger push towards allowing for some home working setups to continue—with stronger support for better digitalization.

What We Can Learn from Deutsche Telekom

There are several things that can be learnt from Deutsche Telekom’s effective COVID-19 response. These lessons aren’t just applicable for a crisis—in fact, they can be carried over into the daily operations of any business and company.

Internal Comms Matter

The COVID-19 crisis has underlined that internal comms is critical in keeping the company together in a crisis. What Deutsche Telekom did right was to keep its comms momentum from the moment that the crisis hit and never slowed down. They made it clear what the situation of their company was and what their employees could expect. This assurance, in turn, helped maintain business continuity when customers were relying on the company.

There are signs that internal comms should, once beyond an effective COVID-19 response, will acquire a greater importance in companies. This will in turn feed the need for proper planning, budgeting, and resources with personnel who not only have the skills, but are also empowered within their role. This delivers on multiple levels, for example, not only in terms of an organisations crisis preparation, but also in building a strong base of engagement and dialogue within the company. All of these are critical as the world emerges into a truly changed world.

Visible Leaders are Impactful

Much of Deutsche Telekom’s effective COVID-19 response features its leader, Tim Höttges, front and centre. His vocal, personable and compassionate style shines through. This, coupled with his position within the company, means his reassuring and consistent messages resonate. This is reflected in the comments from employees to his many LinkedIn posts.

Agility is Key

A final lesson that can be taken from the Deutsche Telekom example is that agility matters when it comes to business success. Companies that have seemed to navigate the the COVID-19 crisis successfully are those who responded quickly at the outset of the pandemic. Quick and decisive action is what makes Deutsche Telekom’s response stand out among others.

The crisis has underlined that agility and decisiveness is something that companies need to make central components of their philosophy and thinking.

The New Normal

As restrictions start to be lifted around the world, one thing is apparent: things will be far from normal for a long time to come. While the COVID-19 crisis has put the world into a very tough situation, there is much that can be learned that will be taken into the future. Deutsche Telekom is a great example of things done right. Its transparency, strong leadership, and consistent communications have allowed them to remain in control despite the prevailing conditions, with an agile internal communication strategy and leveraging CEO visibility and presence.

The post Deutsche Telekom Gets it Right With Its COVID-19 Response appeared first on ICPlan.

The State of Wellbeing Internal Communications

The idea of wellbeing in the workplace is something that has risen in prominence in recent years. Many companies have implemented programs under the work-life balance banner. Some offer subsidised gym memberships or even have gyms in their building, others offer yoga classes—all focused on helping employees be fit and healthy.

What is often left in the backburner is mental health. In fact, a report by the PRCA found that over 57% of comms professionals are hesitant when it comes to mental health issues when crafting wellbeing internal communication plans and communications. It’s a troubling statistic when you consider a study by Bustle revealed that one out of every four Americans suffers from anxiety at work.

The Situation Today

While COVID-19 is a disease that affects physical health, the crisis surrounding it has uncovered a whole spate of mental health issues. Many are affected by what is being called the trauma response that COVID-19 has brought out. That is not even considering those who have pre-existing conditions. Apart from deep feelings of depression and anxiety, many have started to report what is essentially a trauma response that can be likened to PTSD, more commonly associated with wars or natural catastrophes.

A lot of this is due to the rapid shift that people have had to make in order to comply with government-mandated lockdowns and home quarantine measures. The isolation, need to be distant from other people, and inability to go beyond the confines of one’s home has been taking its toll. Many companies scrambled to set themselves up remotely, and now – many weeks and months into the crisis – some are now starting to roll out initiatives meant to address the mental health needs of their employees.

Cisco has been leading the way in this regard with a lot of its wellbeing internal communications efforts starting to recognise the mental health issues that COVID-19 is causing. Thus far, much of their work has revolved around improving the quality of the work from home experience—which can be anxiety-inducing given the variances in reliability when it comes to home connections, family situations and even available technologies.

Wellbeing Internal Communications and the Role of Human Resources

There used to be a clear distinction when it came to who led on employee mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. Human Resource departments would design and implement the programs and initiatives, and comms would handle the internal communications.

With many now thrust in a remote setting, HR is now one step removed from employees. With the deeper experience and expertise of the technologies that enable communication and collaboration remotely, HR practitioners now – more than ever – need to work closely with comms to be effective.

The Challenges of Crisis and Wellbeing Internal Communications Response

It isn’t just the physical distance that’s a problem. Equally difficult is the lack of precedent given the scale and scope of the global reaction to the COVID-19 threat. All of the policies that previously supported a strong human resources culture within a company are being turned on its head. While most employees can apply for leave, receive benefits and support with a now-fully online system, how will they be able to effectively operate in the new world we are entering? This is why companies like Salesforce are launching new services to help companies safely open their doors and reinvent their day-to-day operational models as the workplace continues to react to the spread and containment of coronavirus.

Policies and Procedures Need Reimagining and Communicating

It isn’t just a lack of accessibility to physical forms and locations that is the problem. In fact, it’s merely a signal that policies need to change at a fundamental level—and the associated procedures along with it. For one thing, HR practitioners now need to take advantage of online collaboration platforms like Microsoft SharePoint for things like contact tracing that they may need to implement as a result of their company’s crisis response plan.

This is also where internal communications efforts around wellbeing come in. It is a given that everything affected employees receive needs to be comprehensive and clear in terms of directions. This should be transmitted across as many channels as required to ensure all employees the communication is targeted towards actually receive it.

Internal Communications Channels for Wellbeing

Assessment of viable channels is already a critical component of effective communication planning. When it comes to wellbeing internal communications, it takes on a whole new level of importance. The first consideration you must make is in regard to understanding the accessibility of channels for your employees.

While you should have a primary channel of communication that’s feature-packed to cover collaboration, conferencing, and rich communication, it’s also equally critical to have a lower tech backup just in case. An example of this is how some companies have gone back to SMS notifications for truly critical comms from particular key departments like HR.

Identify Key Issues Requiring Wellbeing Internal Communications

The World Economic Forum has rightly tagged the current COVID-19 crisis as ‘the world’s biggest psychological experiment’. Although this has mainly manifested in often humorous social media posts as the weeks of isolation set in, there are deeper issues that need to be uncovered. Anxiety and depression are two of the biggest mental health concerns here. The symptoms of those two conditions are heavily exacerbated by the necessary strictures of global lockdowns.

On top of that, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have also identified several stress responses that employees potentially face. These include difficulty in sleeping or focusing, changes in eating and sleeping patterns, excessive worrying, and even insecurity when it comes to work and life. Knowing which ones effect your people over time is key to coming up with an effective, coordinated response.

In the 1990s, France led the way in providing for accessible psychological care in crisis situations by fielding the Cellule d’Urgence Médico-Psychologique (CUMPS) to provide counselling in high-stress situations. This is something that many companies should consider setting up on a smaller scale. Such a team within a company can then send out regular pulse surveys through wellbeing internal communications channels to get a gauge of specific conditions afflicting workers. 

Consider a Mental Health Response Plan

There are several things that a company can do to aid their employees during the course of the COVID-19 crisis when it comes to mental health. Perhaps one of the simplest is to provide guidance on the direction and measures the company is taking. As much as possible colleagues are looking for companies to be honest and upfront about what is being discussed and decided at a company level.

Another equally effective measure is to provide counselling—or at least connections to reputable counsellors—that your employees can actively reach out to. This can then be complemented by regular ‘check-ups’ via your comms channels. Some companies planning for the return to work post COVID-19 are restructuring work schedules to allow for more mental health breaks to avoid burnout. Whatever the response plan is, wellbeing internal communications will play a key factor in its effectiveness within the enterprise.

Carefully Plan and Execute Wellbeing Internal Communications

This is where comms really comes into its own. Provided a well designed HR plan, the responsibility next falls on IC to come up with the strategy of how to effectively communicate the plan. A platform like ICPlan is extremely useful in this regard because it is specifically built to do just that. The calendar is central to ICPlan and allows you to carefully plot out wellbeing internal communications with heatmap functionality giving you insights into what days you may have too many communications going to a particular audience.

It’s always important to make sure you are not over-communicating and helping give people the ability to absorb information in a useful and meaningful way.

Ensure you have regular check ins with human resources scheduled to ensure that you are both on the same page. More than ever, it’s equally important to track readership and understanding. Given how important mental health considerations are in the current crisis, it also helps to cycle out the same information—including any updates—as the weeks progress.

A Duty of Care

There isn’t one thing that makes for a perfect wellbeing internal communications plan—or a crisis response plan for that matter. There are many factors to consider that include how both your business and each individual employee is affected. What can be considered ‘best’ are those responses that come from a place of empathy and duty of care.

When it comes to internal communications for wellbeing, this is complemented by a clear plan for informing and ensuring that the communications are understood and actioned. With the remote set up many companies are having to implement, it’s critical that departments work more closely together for the common good given their specific remits and relevant expertise.

The post Wellbeing Internal Communications: The Vital Connection between HR and Employees appeared first on ICPlan.

Work Life After COVID-19: Speculation and Reality

While China was the first country to fully face the devastating effects of what was then yet-to-be a global pandemic, it’s now become the best indicator of what work life after COVID-19 could look like. In late March of 2020, it began to lift its strict quarantine in the city of Wuhan when, finally, no new infections were being reported. While their efforts have been met with mixed results, the rest of the world is watching with anticipation as the country tries to restart its economy—doubtless taking notes for their own attempts down the line.

However long or short that “line” will be remains to be seen. If the recent spate of lockdown protests in the United States are any indication, many are itching to get back to “business as usual”. While the global Coronavirus recovery numbers are encouraging (at the time of writing they sit at around 1,159,000), it’s clear that it will be a long time before everything—especially in the workplace—will be anywhere close to the normalcy we once knew. The physical, emotional, and psychological toll is simply too great to be batted away.

More than likely much of work life after COVID-19 will resonate facets of our life today that have become the “new” normal. People will be generally wary of large gatherings—as they should be—manned checkpoints armed with portable temperature “guns”, and face masks are going to be in place until a reliable and accessible antibody test and —ultimately— a vaccine is in place. For those who soon return to offices will see much change in the foreseeable future.

The Changes That Might Be: Work Life After COVID-19

The World Health Organization has already released a set of guidelines covering work life after COVID-19 in anticipation of the inevitable return. In it, they cover in great detail many of the things that will likely feature in your workplace when people return. The first of these is a focus on sanitation and cleanliness. Whether by colleagues, cleaning teams or both, your workplace is going to be cleaned more regularly than before.

Although fumigation—which was very popular at the start of the outbreak—has been proven by the US EPA to be ineffective for cleaning contaminated surfaces, wiping them down with liquid cleaning products is. Expect to have your workstations regularly wiped down.

Keeping the (Social) Distance in Work Life After COVID-19

As for the actual look of the offices themselves, commercial real estate firm, Cushman & Wakefield have developed what they call the Six Foot Office. Given the experience, they had aiding over 10,000 companies and organizations in China move a one million-strong workforce back to work, their ideas are interesting to see. Much of the redesign ideas for work life after COVID-19 ready office comes from their own experimentation and testing.

The central guiding principles for the Six Feet Office revolve around concepts familiar to us already: social distancing and better hygiene. To the first end, they call for a reorganization of office workspaces to enforce that distance. The physical spacing of workstations is reinforced by visual signals—like clear and obvious circles embedded on the floor to subconsciously prompt people to keep a distance from their co-workers. Separation is further enforced by barriers between desks.

This they further support by the idea of a clockwise direction-only movement policy in lanes marked by arrows on the floors to get around the office. They cribbed the idea from hospitals they’ve worked with where the policy ensures that—even in the hustle and bustle of a work day—people don’t bump into each other, inadvertently breaking social distancing rules. The challenge, of course, is in shifting “very ingrained behaviours and expectations”, according to their head of Occupier Business Performance, Despina Katsikakis.

The New Face of Meetings

Of course, social distancing for work life after COVID-19 is one thing when people are sitting at their desks. It’s not so easy when you think about how meetings used to be conducted prior to the lockdowns. These were gatherings of varying sizes of people, often cramped in small spaces within the office. Many companies have recognized the danger should work resume and some have taken drastic measures.

When you think about it, however, the solution has been staring us right in the face. For the past weeks, the remote work setups adopted by many companies have paved the way for virtual meetings—as seen in increased usage of platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom. It wasn’t easy for some but necessity is the mother of invention and online meetings are pretty much the norm nowadays.

There’s really no reason why a modified form of this setup can’t be utilized even when people are back in the office. Conference rooms can serve as main communications hubs from which those who are initiating a meeting can safely base themselves with all the materials they need. Employee-attendees, in the meantime, can stream meetings via the company’s preferred platform from the safety and comfort of their workstations. The arrangement doesn’t take away the need for connection and interaction, neither does it compromise safety.

Comms Teams Will Take The Lead in Work Life After COVID-19

Apart from their very obvious role in facilitating effective meetings as previously discussed, internal communications teams will have a big role to play in work life after COVID-19. We’ve talked previously about how critical they have been at the start of and through this current crisis, as well as in the ongoing adoption of remote work by many companies. That’s likely to be further built on when we start transitioning back into the office.

Much of the work that communications teams can expect to be doing has to do with ensuring new setups and policies are disseminated and reinforced constantly. Remember the difficulty people experienced in getting used to remote work to begin with? It’s because the accepted way of doing things was turned on its head. This will be the same experience when office life returns.

So visually rich and engaging collateral like infographics, digital signage, training, and videos—are going to be necessary to ensure that everyone knows the rules and what they need to do. There are already highly creative examples like the ones posted in this post that make effective use of eye-catching visuals and easy-to-remember text to get a point across. All of this will then have to be carefully scheduled and planned so as not to overwhelm.

Testing The Waters With Technology

Of course, any information campaign is only as effective as how many people actually action what is being asked. This challenge is in changing embedded behaviour—a difficult task if there ever was one. For Cushman & Wakefield and their Six Feet Office, it’s all about leveraging existing technology. Beacons are installed throughout their office to track their employee’s movements via their phones.

Apart from allowing for a more comprehensive audit of their design, those same beacons can send out warnings to those who are breaking the six-foot limitations in place. This technology and its application are not completely new. They have been used before to gather so-called “people analytics” to aid in the refinement of diversity and inclusion programs within a company. It’s a noble aim, but the application of the technology isn’t without controversy.

Many have likened the application to Orwell’s 1984 and the breach of privacy is certainly something to note. Given the gravity of the risks in work life after COVID-19, the technology might warrant revisiting, but companies need to tread carefully. Besides, with careful communication planning and reinforcement, there might not be a need to go overboard and spend time and resource on tracking technology. Effective communication can reinforce the required behaviour without extra cost.

More Emphasis on Remote Work Options

The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lockdowns globally has revealed for many companies how business does not stop when it goes remote. While that might not signal a grand shift towards wholly remote work setups, work life after COVID-19 will likely feature at least limited integration of the option for remote work within many companies. After all, the benefits of the model for employers and employees alike is one that has been proven time and time again.

In order to do this, companies need to invest in communication platforms and be clear on what is used for what. Comms heads can and should work alongside their counterparts in IT in uncovering which platforms meet the needs of their company when it comes to remote working. Microsoft and other leaders in the field have stepped up the development of their platforms to provide for the communications and collaboration needs of companies through the crisis and beyond.

Without doubt communications will have a strong part to play in work life after COVID-19. Initially, this will be centered on the education of employees in the shifts in policy that companies are making, and the continuous reinforcement of it. On a wider scale however, comms heads are becoming the go-to people for executives who are starting to realise that a knowledgeable, engaged and aware workforce is key to the survival, growth and prosperity of the organisation post COVID-19.

The post Work Life After COVID-19: New Realities, New Possibilities appeared first on ICPlan.

Microsoft Yammer: Guiding Principles

Before we delve deeper into what else Microsoft Yammer has to offer, it’s important that we understand the main principles that guide the move towards a newer version—as well as the key areas of focus and emphasis. There are three concepts that guide the recreation of Yammer: communities, knowledge, and engagement. A lot of the changes are guided in the quest to strengthen these three principles.

It’s no surprise, of course, that these three are currently dominant in the enterprise. What Microsoft Yammer aims to empower is the development of communities within companies that drive culture and proactive action among colleagues. Within these communities, the platform aims to promote easy knowledge sharing internally. Ultimately, all of these elements create a deeper sense of employee engagement and a richer employee experience.

On a more practical level, these principles are also reflected in the cross-platform compatibility that Microsoft Yammer now strives for—not just with different Office 365 programs and applications, but also access points . As of this writing, much of the changes can be seen in the web versions of applications—such as with Outlook—but the design team has already said that a roll-out towards mobile and desktop applications is currently in the works.

They have also recently released a standalone Teams integration called Communities, which lets users have a fully interactive Yammer experience natively interact with Yammer directly from the popular collaboration platform.

Social Media With a Twist of Enterprise

Its own designers have billed it as an “enterprise social tool for community sharing” which is essentially social media for businesses. The closest comparison to an already familiar platform would be Workplace from Facebook. With the overhaul of the platform first being announced towards the end of last year, the similarities to Workplace from Facebook are striking. Just as a key component of Workplace from Facebook’s success is its familiarity, Yammer is treading the same path to good effect with a fresh focus on user experience.

For one thing, interacting with posts and announcements throws up options for rich text formatting. This allows users to put emphasis on responses however they see fit with options for bold, italic, and underlines. GIFs are easy to share with an embedded carousel to choose from. Perhaps the strongest feature is a dropdown highlighting your recent work on Word, Excel and even PowerPoint which you can readily share to any relevant thread or post.

All of these are presented in what Microsoft Yammer calls “social cards”. It’s a subtle but integral design choice that ties directly to the aim of cross-platform compatibility.  Each post is an entity unto itself. When shared via Teams and even Outlook, they look and act exactly as they would were they viewed in Yammer. It’s a critical feature that enables users who are more deeply embedded and involved with other Office 365 programs to enjoy full functionality as though they were viewing it directly on Yammer.

Enhanced Features for an Enhanced Experience

The features mentioned above are found within competitor software, but there is also a whole stack of new features unique to this new version of Microsoft Yammer itself. First among these is the Office 365 People Card. These are the equivalent of profiles in other social media and are tied directly to users added into your organisation Active Directory. These are useful for situating a person as they show where they sit in the hierarchy, who they collaborate with, events that you share with that person, and even messages and files shared between the two of you.

Another great innovation resulted from listening to their customer’s requests. The new Yammer now features AI curation when it comes to content in the feed. What it does is to filter and prioritise the content you see based on what is relevant to your job role, your position, and your interests so that they’re top of the screen. This adds a layer of relevance to what you get before you each time you check Yammer. This also applies to what is delivered to your Outlook inbox should you enable such notifications.

Other improvements sourced from users include improvements to the community section. For one, there’s the ability to post a cover photo to a community page. This can be used to better brand and can even be used to keep key announcements front and centre. Conversations too can be pinned within communities for above the fold attention — especially useful with key discussions. Within these conversations, users have the same rich options to customize responses as they do with social cards.

Microsoft Yammer in a Crisis

In times of crisis communications take centre stage in maintaining order amid the fear and uncertainty that can easily spread. Microsoft Yammer has acknowledged the critical role it plays and has incorporated crisis thinking into its reinvigoration of the platform. Empowerment is the name of the game and the platform allows for key information sharing at scale.

The ‘communities’ within Microsoft Yammer form an effective and safe gathering place for the fielding and answering of key questions and answers before, during, and after a crisis — regardless of where your employees and your HR/Comms personnel are located. The relative ease-of-use and simplicity of the platform make it easy to monitor, and the built-in AI makes focusing on common, critical issues so much easier—including mobile accessibility.

When Hurricane Irma ravaged the United States in 2017, Johnson & Johnson utilized Microsoft Yammer among other platforms. In particular, Yammer was used to create a community to facilitate communications with affected employees — even those employees that opened their homes to displaced members of the public. Key documents and files were also easily shared to employees and stakeholders. Yammer was also used by their senior leadership to talk directly to their employees and take charge of the situation.

Johnson & Johnson’s Employee Home Share initiative was a success – in part – because of Microsoft Yammer, and the team was quick to point out the simplicity of utilizing the system as a cornerstone of success. It allowed the creation of a centralized, global, and wholly online safe haven for their people. The company came out of the crisis relatively unscathed and much stronger for it. A culture of caring and mutual support emerged from the crisis revolving around the platform.

Outlook Integration Explored

Based on their own internal research, Microsoft has found that Outlook is still its most widely used service. After all, email remains relevant to employees and employers the world over. At present, in its web version, Microsoft has empowered Outlook users with a Microsoft Yammer integration that can be best described as near-native. Posts and announcements, as we already mentioned, appear exactly as they would if they were viewed in Yammer.

How you interact with the post is completely the same as what you get in the Yammer application also. For example, viewing images on a post throws up a pop-out gallery that you can scroll through. When checking on who liked or interacted with an announcement, a slider pops up from the right listing the information. You can like, respond, and even mark ‘best’ answers for reference. Polls created in Microsoft Yammer and shared to Outlook can be acted upon and monitored in real-time.

On top of that, you can easily shift to the classic, standard email view should you want to share an announcement or poll to anyone else in the ecosystem. One great feature that works in the background is that analytics work regardless of whether engagement was through Microsoft Yammer or Outlook. This makes it easy and accurate to track key data points that guide communications planning. Again, it’s on the web version for now, but they’re looking to roll it out to the mobile and desktop versions of Outlook come April to June of this year.

Microsoft Yammer Leverages the Power of Video

A study by the Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR) has found that employees are more likely to recall and retain over 95% of any particular message when it comes at them in video format. That same study has found that a whopping 93% of internal communication experts consider video to be a key tool in their arsenal. On the other side of the coin, 59% of those in senior leadership prefer watching video content over reading it in text format.

A Study in Effectiveness

It’s really a clear trend, especially on social media, with many companies and even news outlets pushing out video content for their key releases over any other — both internally and externally. One great example of this is the Alzheimer’s Society. They pushed out a new five-year plan via the launch of their own internal TV channel. This channel featured a film that expertly explained the key policy changes on top of explaining why the changes mattered. It was very successful among their 2,500 employees as well as their 9,000 volunteers.

The Video Advantage Applied

For Microsoft Yammer and its design team, their goals in improving video capabilities within the platform include building trust and authenticity in their leaders, meaningful information dissemination, and full employee engagement towards the company vision. Towards those ends, they focused their work on optimizing their work-flow through every event cycle’s natural touchpoints. All this through a platform that supports everything from professional on-site productions, semi-professional broadcasts from anywhere, and even ad-hoc mobile videos as would be the case with some executive blogs.

Professional videos are those that result in high-quality output as is the case with explainer videos, roundtable discussions, town halls and the like. Semi-professional options include coverage in the field — as would be the case in product launches or new office openings. Finally, ad-hoc can be as simple as the CEO sharing his thoughts and opinions casually and on-the-go. While each has value on its own—they can come together in a natural flow to push a full-fledged campaign.

An Example in Action

Say you wanted to run an outreach program where employees reach out to local kids to help teach them how to read. A professional video can be created to get the whole company aligned with the ideals of the program. You could even go for a live event set up for launch. At the organizational level—with the use of semi-professional setups like webinars or even local live videos—you can then reinforce the message or go deeper with tutorials on the most effective techniques for teaching reading.

Ad hoc videos can then be those on the ground—employee-made videos showing them and their experiences with the kids that they teach. Or even videos where they share their experiences and emotions as they undergo a program. There really is no need to have each tier mutually exclusive. They, in fact, work best in support of one another. That’s just one example. The central idea behind videos on Microsoft Yammer is to create meaningful connections that facilitate shared knowledge.

Towards that end, Yammer can be used to host webinars that are crafted and launched in Microsoft Teams. It’s currently set for internal users only, which makes it a powerful tool for internal comms efforts. A great thing about webinars set up through Teams and funnelled through Microsoft Yammer is that it enables for deeper engagement via company-wide chat and comments. All of the video content is stored in Microsoft Stream for easy access. Note the mobile videos are still stored in SharePoint for the moment — something that their team is looking to fix in the future.

Microsoft Yammer Compliance and Security

A final point worth looking at with the rollout of the new Microsoft Yammer are its compliance and security measures. A lot of these new integrations are to run parallel to Office 365’s existing Security and Compliance Centres. These improvements centre around Native Mode. This includes the assignment to one Tenant to one Yammer set up. It also implies that users are mapped in Azure’s Active Directory, that all groups created are connected to a single Office 365 Group, and that — eventually — all Yammer files will be stored in SharePoint.

Another important aspect worth touching on is smarter eDiscovery. Integration with Microsoft Yammer means that you can not only search by user and view their full Office 365 profile, but all their messages through Yammer are now visible alongside any others that they have sent via other platforms. These messages can be filtered based on key parameters like author, recipient, and even community. This makes it far easier to search for content as needed.

Lastly, minimum and maximum data retention parameters will also feature in the newest iteration of Microsoft Yammer. Users will have two options when getting rid of content. Archive mode will put things away into long-term storage. Delete mode will completely erase content after 30 days’ time. Also, it is important to note that deleting any groups will then result in the deletion of messages therein. All this allows finer control over the lifecycle of your content.

A New Microsoft Yammer for the Future

All of these changes represent not just the future of Microsoft Yammer, but also Microsoft’s commitment to integrating features that its user base has long clamoured for. It’s a promising move for a platform that seeks to fulfil a popular comms niche in today’s world from within Office 365’s already impressive Enterprise Suite.

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