Zoomed out employees will be Zombies without these Internal Communications Tools.

Today, I'd like to share with you some thoughts about internal communications. I actually think that internal communications is going to be, to some degree, the next battleground for companies. I say this, because people are getting fatigue from doing so many virtual meetings, from separation from their classmates, colleagues, teammates, factorymates, customers, students, partners, or whoever it may be. Internal communications is an issue that business leaders now have to tackle full on, because maintaining morale is as big a part of the communications team's work as external communications. We're going to see the transition from it being considered the preserve of HR to being the area where communications specialists will come into play. I say that because internal communications is not a policy issue necessarily, nor a compliance issue, but a corporate culture issue. That's going to be a function of the company's story being told, the narrative being led by the founders, the management team, and the collective consciousness. That is going to be shared online now. It's no longer going to be the case where the building, the facilities, and so on give the entire story and the support to the brand. We're going to need to find other ways to engage with our team members, so that when they're not with their colleagues, they're still understanding and believing and wanting to deliver their very best for the company. The old water cooler and games rooms didn't really have policies. They were not platforms either. They were rooms with facilities that were really only relevant to those who were present. These rooms were dark and dead unless there were people in them. But the great thing about social media platforms is that people can participate anytime in any place. What's exciting about the way technology is moving, and we've heard about some 8,000 different martech platforms that are available, is that there are now dedicated internal communications platforms using some of the same technologies of mobile and Wi-Fi that enable companies to have their own internal conversations. We've been working with clients in China, and on WeChat, there are three different types of accounts one can have: for external, for enterprises, and for internal, where both members and the holder of the account have to receive invitations and be accepted into the community. In the West, we have a large number of tools and platforms that we can use, some of which are adaptations to the main platforms, like Facebook Corporate where we can have a Facebook group with a closed discussion. We can use newsletters or platforms like MailChimp or SurveyMonkey. We can use videos, like VideoAsk or Boomerang. We can also use conferencing systems like Microsoft Teams. But there are also some dedicated platforms for internal communications which have, by their very structure, recognized that there's a different relationship between the organization and the people that are being invited to participate with the app. These collaboration and employee engagement tools are really powerful, and I think that they are going to really move in, because as we try to move from the general meeting platforms of Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Hangouts, or the productivity platforms of Slack and Asana, we realize that they're not dealing with some of the fundamental points which take place in effectively HR and employee engagement, which are to do with recognition, rewards, policy, and restricted access. I thought I'd have a look at a couple, one of which I've got personal knowledge of, and it is a British company called Mo.Work. But before that, there is a platform called Connecteam, which was founded in 2014 by Amir Nehemia who is from Tel Aviv, Israel, and it's listed on the website as based in New York. Nehemia says, "We're on a mission to provide managers of all business types and sizes with the tools they need to communicate, operate, engage, and run their deskless workforce." He recognizes that the lines are officially blurred. It's not really internal or external in terms of location anymore. It's all frictionless communication with people who come together and work with, in this case, deskless workforces. They've just launched an app, which enables organizations to create their own branded organizational smartphone app. With that, they can do scheduling and so on. Connecteam has got some case studies on their website. One is St. John's, the medical assistance nonprofit, which has operations in 40 countries. Connecteam is used by St. John's to track its members with its GPS tracking feature. Volunteer networks are working with paid teams, so it's this blended organization which needs special demarcation between different groups. It's also got the ability to create different groups, for example, for adults and children separately, which is useful in this case for St. John's, because they're communicating with volunteers and employees using the same branded platform but with different sections of the content gated. It's all mobile, and users can also log on with geofencing. It's called logging on in local time zones. Another interesting thing is that they're using the platform to onboard new volunteers. It's becoming a crossover from the ebsite where people sign up to b ing the onboarding platform for he St. John's volunteers. The rand experience and the publ c relations that someone migh have seen and read about want ng to take part with St. John s needs to be seamless beca se, otherwise, they have one xperience from the external publ c relations and another expe ience with the internal comm nications platform. But usin a platform like Conn cteam, they're able to have an i tegrated and seamless flow. They offer a free time tracking empl yee engagement chat and empl yee directory enterprise app. And for $29, you can have 200 sers with time tracking and empl yee engagement, scheduling, work low, chat updates. They even have suggestion boxes, even s, surveys, and quizzes. I remember a manager of a r ilway company the other day t lked about how one of their c allenges right now when they h ve a team meeting on Microsoft T ams is that people are f elding questions at the wrong t me at the wrong event. If there isn't a forum for employ es to file their issues tha they're facing, they will be ra sed at the next available pportunity, which might be a strategy meeting. So, Connectea enables companies to collate i formation in the way they migh have done around the factory. ertainly when I worked for Phili s, a big part of the Philips t wn hall monthly meetings ith the CEO and HR directors was to look at what suggestio s have been put into the cante ns, for example, in Malaysia nd Indonesia, and try and creat a channel for correspon ence from the shop floor all the way to the boardroom Connecteam offers an Advanced package for $59 a month for organizations, and then it has features like live polls, anonymous surveys, triple time clocks, which enables people to log onto different time zones and track their time, as well as track where people are and communicate with them. One of the benefits of this is crisis management, where if there is an issue in a different timezone, information is released at the right time for the people that are living in that timezone. This way, Connecteam enables us to manage the ongoing content and discussion. There was a company that I looked at for a client from America that was having some issues recruiting staff in India. This company is called Mo.work. This is the one that I was looking at making a recommendation to this client, because my view was their cha lenge was not so much getting p ople to come and work for them although that was also a challe ge, but it was really because internally, they didn't have an company evangelists. W en people start to believe in he brand and the story, they be ome the best recruiters pos ible. Many companies wi l even offer a reward to in ernal staff who will invite otential new hires. I was intere ted in Mo.work, because they ve understood and put into pla e that recognition is one of th main drivers along with interes in work. According to my surveys, recognition is one of the most important drivers for people to feel a sense of belonging and support. With Mo.work, it's a pl tform which embeds peer recogn tion. I think that's very forwa d-thinking, because businesses re understanding that when peo le are at a site, they might rea ly be out of mind. So the old " ell done" when you see someon do something may now bec me completely invisible, especia ly for those members of a team t at either may be not so vocifer us, may not be so outspoken, o may not have a high profile jo . At Mo.work, they are c eating moments which bring p ople closer together at work b using a platform which m rrors some of the social i teractions that take place at w rk. A study by Gallup suggests that 85% of the world's global population is not engaged at work, and that can only be getting worse when people are getting "zoomed out," and they may well zone out as a result. What the people at Mo.work do is they allow employees to give each other recognition and create things like contests inside the organization. They use the term "moments." They find ways to create quality and frequent moments of interaction between members of the workforce, so they're better able to understand one another and truly connect. It's similar to an end of month meeting, a party, some kind of a review, or an informal conversation which takes place on a daily basis, especially through a line manager and a member of staff. Mo.work has put this in as a structure and as a system. You can see the conversation, but you can also have staff gifts, like vouchers to one another. You can allocate budgets for people to give free coffees, or coupons for food, flowers, and other benefits, movies and so on. They have this platform worldwide, so I really personally liked this a great deal for my potential client in India. Through this combination of recognition and rewards, they create the Mo.review which enables you to track the values of the company through the behavior of the people inside the company. I thought this is very, very smart. Needless to say that this is automated. It is an enabler with some measure of AI, but it's very much focused on the human interaction, and it enables organizations to truly appreciate the culture within their own organization and monitor it over time. This is important, because anyone that's in charge of internal communications is going to need to know what kind of sentiment is within the organization when a new message is going to be delivered. Sentiment analysis is what we do, for example, on external communications to see what people are saying about a product or a service, and the engagement and the pass along are just as valid, if not more so, on the internal audience. In our SPEAK|pr program, we talk about the three different

the internal, the partners, and the external. A lot of attention is paid to the external, because that's where people believe sales come from. But as we know, if you have an organization which is not energized, well organized, and engaged, then you could be bringing potential partners or customers to the organization, but losing the sale anyway. Mo.work works with clients including the NHS, William Hill, and AEG, so although it's a young company, their philosophy and their tool sets have already found some some great homes. I listened to one person today who had eight Zoom calls back-to-back with only a 12-minute break to get himself coffee, so I can just see how, eventually, people are going to get tired, and they're going to need to be able to find ways to say that without it seeming as though they're complaining. It's only by engaging with our teams that we become aware of the value of the work we do together, especially if we are now working deskless and remotely, whether we're working with permanent or impermanent members, paid employees or volunteers. Tools like Connecteam and Mo.work represent dedicated platforms for internal communications. And so, for all of us that are business owners, I think it's worth thinking about creating special tools for the special people who help us run our businesses.