Remember when “YOU” was the person of the year in 2006? Well, I think employees should make the cover in 2017. And my rationale for their ever increasing importance is threefold:
- According to the 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer, employees are now more credible than CEOs when talking about many aspects of a company, including operations, issue management and how employees and customers are treated.
- The recent explosion of enterprise applications that make employee engagement effective, affordable and manageable. Dynamic Signal*, for example, is a fantastic tool for activating employees as ambassadors.
- Senior executives increasingly understand the importance of internal communications and are willing to invest money to do it right.
Now, more than ever, we have the tools, support and permission to create extraordinarily effective programs. So, what makes good, great? Our Employee Engagement team has starting collecting a list of attributes that we believe characterize the future state of employee engagement.
Some of my personal favorites are surprising – wooing and wowing employees to win their attention; collaborative — co-creating with employees and creating integrated programs with other functions (HR, external communications, IT); and porous – acknowledging that information fluidly flows between the external and internal communications environments and proactively equipping employees to represent their employer.
What trends are you seeing – either as a recipient of internal communications or as a practitioner? We’re building our list and would love your contribution!
Meghan Barstow is an executive vice president with Employee Engagement.
* Edelman strategic partner