But what about when you need to motivate your staff members to learn a new skill or make an improvement to your workflow? Do you just send a quick email and hope they’ll make the desired change?
In both cases, the goal is the same: you’re trying to promote specific behavior. And in both cases, the audience is basically the same. It’s people. Yes, one group buys from you and the other group works with you, but members of both audiences receive hundreds of requests for their attention each day. If you want the message for your employees to resonate, it needs to be crafted with as much care as your marketing copy.
Let’s say you want your team to adopt a new process. Consider sharing the interesting backstory behind that new process with them. How will it help people? How will it reinforce your company’s mission or core values? When your team understands why the change has been made - and even what’s in it for them - they’re more likely to line up behind that new process.
3 Tips on Treating Your Internal Team Like an Audience
1) Keep your content as concise as possible. That will make it easier for your staff to consume and remember it.
2) A single memo is not likely to do the job. Repeat the main idea, but in different ways and through different channels. Most people need to be exposed to a message several times before it takes hold, but not everyone learns and retains information the same way.
On day one, for instance, you might send an email about the new process. For day two, record a company-wide voicemail answering a common question about the process. On day three, talk about the benefits of the new process at the company meeting. Day four: create and share a quick video to relate a success story about the process.
3) Just as you wouldn’t spend all your time with an audience of customers talking about yourself, be sure to focus on the needs of your internal audience. Help your team cope with the new process. Answer their questions. Give them tips. Remind them how the change makes things better. In other words, deliver value in exchange for their attention.
Find more thoughts on internal communication in an article I contributed to for the Louisiana Technology Park blog. Check it out here.
