Please join us this Thursday for a 30-minute webinar to discuss how to protect employees from internally-generated email noise and irrelevancies. I commented a few weeks ago here, wondering why internal communicators don’t spend more time protecting employees from internal spam and got some good feedback, which we wanted to share!

This webinar will explore some practical ways to both manage email internally and to channel noise away from email and into more appropriate vehicles.  

We will mention the SnapComms channels that we market as one possibility, but they won’t be the focus of this session. We’re talking about the bigger picture.  (If you want to get your head around our visual messaging software, book us for a demo or visit our website and check out the videos/details).

Hope you can join us!

Details: Wednesday, August 19th, 11am PST (2pm EDT). Register Here

Recently the Content Manager controls have been updated – they now provide Master Administrators 3 ways to limit sub-Administrator’s rights: by Targeting Group, by Campaign Folder, and by SnapComms Tool.  Here’s what this looks like:

1. Targeting Groups.  Master Admins can access any Administrator’s profile and specify which Targeting Groups they will be allowed to use when sending messages, screensavers, or setting up blog/forum participation lists.  Here’s what you’ll see on the second tab on their profile, called Targeting Permissions:  

This is useful if you’ve set up Admins for each division/department/geography and want to limit their messaging to their particular area.

2. Campaign Folders. If you’ve set up your content into multiple Campaign folders (organized by department, type of communication, situation, etc.) which we definitely recommend, you may want to keep some folders confidential to other Administrators, to protect time-sensitive information. Here’s the tab that lets you limit an Administrator’s access to certain content:

 

3. SnapComms Messaging Tool. The third way you can limit their activity is by limiting which of the SnapComms messaging tools they are allowed to use. Perhaps the Daily Bulletin Manager shouldn’t be sending out Alerts or setting up a Q&A Forum. Here’s what the tab looks like:

Lastly, here’s the tickbox that keeps Admins from seeing the User section and changing any of the above settings themselves:

Keep the box TICKED for your Master Admins and untick it for everyone else.

Hope this helps you!

A global company based in the UK is using the SnapTicker to broadcast internal ‘tweets’ twice a day from the CEO, according to Chris Leonard, one of the founders of the SnapComms software company.  We met up in June at the IABC World Conference in San Francisco, and he told me the story:

The company took on the SnapComms software in order to recapture staff’s attention and refresh their internal communications.  The CEO began sending short ‘tweets’ out to all employees twice a day, as a way to engage them directly. But instead of using Twitter, he sent them through SnapTicker which fires a company-branded scrolling message onscreen for a couple of minutes. 

The first time he included a link to his internal blog in the ticker (unlike traditional TV crawls, this one lets him embed links), so many employees clicked through that I.T. had to quickly scramble to accomodate the sudden and significant increase in blog traffic! The outcome far surpassed their expectations.

For this company, the SnapTicker has proven to be a powerful way to initiate regular interaction between the CEO and staff, especially those outside of their head office.

Hearing stories like these is great, because content still is king. It’s how the SnapComms tools are used and what content you put in them that takes them beyond being just another cool gadget, right?

So how would you use the Snap Ticker in your corporation?  What content/link would be worthy of an onscreen ticker?  Submit your thoughts and we’ll publish the best ideas to Twitter and our website (giving you credit and a free link).

SnapComms, the software company behind the Snap Messaging Tools for employee comms which we market in the U.S., are a Global Sponsor this year for Melcrum.

As their U.S. partner, we’re able to extend to our network and customers in North America a 25% discount on registration for the upcoming Melcrum Strategic Communication Management Summit (Chicago, Sept 22-24, 2009) (standard registration costs $1215 -$1850).

The SCM Summit has some stellar Corporate Communicators lined up to speak from companies such as Kraft Foods, International Monetary Fund, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, IBM, Pfizer, and Walmart.  You’ll also find some of the very best consultants sharing their knowledge as well, including Stacy Wilson, Chris Gay, Linda Dulye, David Grossman, and Kathryn Yates.

 

If you’re interested, call or email me by September 4th.

Cheers,

Paula Cassin

paula.cassin@cutthroughcommunications.com

Tel: 1.805.715.0300

Doesn’t it make sense for the Internal Communications function to take on the role of protecting employees from internal spam and managing communication overload?  So why isn’t it happening?

The lack of case studies, best practice writings, combined with the number of Communicators who’ve told me that they struggle to get employee’s attention due to internal overload, makes me think no one’s doing it.  Very few seem to be taking action beyond gatekeeping email distribution lists, consolidating the news and publishing an email etiquette guide that nobody reads.  

I’d also wager that most internal communications departments focus primarily on  what comes out of their department and don’t get around to investigating communications overload. They often have low visibility and/or influence over what hits employees from other departments, divisions, segments, etc. Few have the big picture on whether communications overload is occuring and to what extent.

They don’t know: 

• What’s scheduled to be broadcast to employees (from ALL areas – HR, Sales, CorpComms, Execs, Depts, Regions, etc.)?
• What’s the employee experiencing in terms of comms overload?
• Is the content consistent across the organization?
• How much is quality information and how much is internal spam/unnecessary noise?
• Are messages being communicated in a way that is easy to process? 

I thought I’d better remind myself of what the core Internal Comms function is all about (have I got it wrong? Maybe it’s function is more limited than I imagine.) So I pulled out my copy of Shel Holtz’s book Corporate Conversations and ran across Chapter 10, “Managing Communications Overload”. 

An entire chapter on establishing a “message mission control” and what can be done to change the messaging culture inside a company!  He gives some good ideas on how to manage this kind of ongoing project.

Shel also gives me an answer as to why it’s not being addressed (p.181) : “Management doesn’t think it is worthwhile. Managing how employees pass messages among themselves is seen as off-radar, something that simply happens. Targeting resources…to help employees message effectively is just busy work and doesn’t grow the bottom line.”

Is this still the reason today, in your opinion? What do you see in your own organization?

Or maybe I’m wrong and Internal Communications IS starting to act as “Message Mission Control”.  Let me know.