How HR & Internal Comms can work together to create great content
HR understand and know their staff
HR works incredibly close with employees. It is their job to make sure that the employer-employee relationship is a strong and positive one. They measure employee engagement, job satisfaction and try to resolve workplace conflict, they fully understand their staff and what makes their work experience a positive one.
Why should internal comms care?
They want to write engaging posts that employees want to read and the only way they can do that is by fully understanding the audience they are writing to. By working with HR they can find out the results of employee engagement and job satisfaction measurements to shape their content according to employees feelings.
For example, a job satisfaction survey may find that employees are not satisfied with their role due to lack of notice with shifts. The internal communications team could send out a post for the attention of managers, this could be about how to effectively plan your rotas to ensure enough notice is given. This would, in turn, improve employee's job satisfaction.
HR holds close relationships with employees at all levels
HR is a department that talks to everyone including senior-level staff. If the company is facing any trouble or crisis HR will be the first to know about it. To maintain a good employer-employee relationship it is essential, to be honest, and open to all employees during times of trouble.
Why should internal comms care?
In our recent blog post about "How to write your internal comms like a journalist," we discussed how good internal comms professionals should always give the good and the bad news to gain respect from their employees. To always get the full picture of the bad and good of the company, they should work closely with HR to deliver relevant and timely posts for crisis management.
HR is responsible for training and development
HR departments are responsible for ensuring employees get the relevant training to do their job to the best of their ability. It is also their job to ensure all staff are compliant and up to date. However, this can be a difficult task as it is hard to get employees to actually read and listen to things they don't think are relevant to them.
Why should internal comms care?
They have the power to change the perceptions which employees have through the power of their words. In our article "How to write the best internal communications" we discussed how you can change 'boring' compliance or training posts into something that employees actually want to read. If you make the title about the employee then they will be interested to find out more, for example instead of saying “Updates to the rota processes policy” you should say “Get more flexibility and ownership of your shifts. Policy update.” This transforms the title from being about you to telling staff how you can help them, obviously ensure that it’s not misleading.
