As we adapt internal communications to be more like what employees are consuming every day on social media, we’re always looking for new ways to offer up tasty little snacks of information. Here are a handful of short formats you might try that all emphasize images and minimize copy:
We all know that employees are not eager to read another ghostwritten letter from the CEO. Showcase your executive leadership as actual human beings by having them answer a handful of questions about their personal life. Favorite questions we’ve used in the past were what they had for breakfast, childhood nicknames, secret talents and first jobs.
Ask for three to five photos (with captions) that illustrate specific aspects of employees’ days, from their morning routine to after-work activities. For a cosmetics company, we invited employees to share their outfit-of-the-day and their skincare regime. In a factory setting, we asked for pics of their morning commute, their work teams and their lunch break.
These are the employees that can feel invisible, so we advocate making an extra effort to celebrate their contributions. For one manufacturing client, we do a continuous improvement feature highlighting a production or safety issue with photos of the employees at work on that challenge. It includes four bite-sized sections: Problem, Approach, Solution and Results.
Translate financial results, safety measures or sales trends into engaging graphics that use images relevant to your business. If your company is in the pet-care industry, for example, try percentages shown as dotted lines on the silhouette of a dog, a line graph using dog leashes, or a bar chart made up of rows of paw prints. Pair these graphics with conversational explanations.
Feature comments from three or four employees in a brief video of a minute or less. They might share their thoughts on a value or other cultural theme, their team’s success on a recent project, or their professional and personal goals for the coming year. Seeing the faces and hearing the voices of colleagues help build human connections across your employee audience.
