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Are your employees not reading important messages you send them? Need strategies for effective communication?
It’s Tuesday. You’ve just spent two hours drafting an email to employees explaining an immediate policy change and what steps they need to take. You hit send. You post the same information on your messaging platform. A few employees reply with questions. A couple send you a note of thanks. Rebecca responds with the custom heart emoji she always uses. Then Friday morning rolls around, and one of your managers DMs you, saying, “Heard a rumor about a new policy change. What’s the deal with that?”
That manager didn’t read your message. Others didn’t either, no doubt.
It’s frustrating but understandable. Communication is hard, especially in environments with a lot of it. Things get missed. Employees see messages come in, fully intending to give them time and attention later, and then get distracted. Or they feel overwhelmed with all the places they’re supposed to check and all the messages vying for their attention. All that may be tolerable when the information sent isn’t actionable. Still, it becomes a big problem when you need employees to respond in some way, and there are negative consequences for inaction.
You can increase the likelihood of employees receiving and acting on the information you send them by being strategic in your approach to communications. The right strategy depends on the type of communication you’re sending. Here are tips for three messages employers typically send employees: news and updates that require no response or action, timely notices they need to take action on, and emergency alerts that require an immediate response.
1. News and Updates Needing No Response
These messages keep employees informed about important matters but don’t require them to do anything specific in response. They could include meeting summaries, company financial updates, new hire announcements, new revenue wins, news about voluntary events, or the annual holiday calendar. It might not be good for employees to miss out on these messages, but it’s also not disruptive. Everyone can still do their jobs and know what’s expected of them. You’re under no pressure to verify that everyone has received the information.
You could send these messages out through multiple channels (email, collaboration software, an internal newsletter), but be careful not to overwhelm employees by sending them repeatedly. More importantly, employees know where to find this information and can easily search for it wherever they receive it.
2. Timely Notices to Take Action
These are the messages you share when you need employees to act on something in a timely manner. Think open enrollment, required trainings, performance reviews, and handbook updates that require a signature. When employees miss these messages, you can end up with a lot more work to do, and sometimes, as with open enrollment deadlines, failure to act on time can mean the loss of benefits or other undesirable outcomes.
These messages should be clear and concise, with easy-to-follow instructions and easy-to-spot deadlines. Draft a plan for delivering these and verifying that they’ve been read, understood, and followed. Include reminders and enlist managers to follow up with their direct reports, especially if certain employees haven’t done what you need.
As with the news and updates discussed above, it’s helpful for employees to have an easily accessible and searchable location to find these time-sensitive notices. But, for these messages, it’s also important that they stand out somehow and not get buried in unorganized inboxes or multiple collaboration tool channels. It can be effective to flag them as urgent and use specific language in the subject lines or titles. Tagging the whole channel, usually a feature in collaboration tools, can also be a good tactic if it’s not overused.
3. Emergency Alerts and Urgent Messages
Sometimes, you’ll need to alert your employees to some danger, serious risk, or disruption so they can take immediate action or avoid an unsafe situation. Alerts of this sort might address severe weather closures, warnings about scheduled outages, or phishing scams targeting employee emails.
Employees need to receive and read these messages right away. Use of ALL CAPS and bold might be useful in these messages if you’re not using them in other message types. If you’re using email, you can generally flag messages as urgent or high priority and request a read receipt. Perhaps dedicate a specific collaboration channel for these messages and ask employees to pin or save them to favorites. Whatever stylistic and technological approaches you take, your wording should indicate that the alert pertains to an urgent or emergency situation. For messages of the highest importance, you may want to send them as many ways as possible to improve the chances they’ll be received — think email, instant messaging, intercom, text, and even posters if there’s time.
Tailor Your Strategy
If you’re comfortable receiving feedback, consider asking your employees for ideas about what would help them keep up with the messages you send them and prioritize them appropriately. You might poll them anonymously on their pain points, whether they feel like they receive too many communications from you or too few, what communication methods they prefer, and whether they have enough time in the workday to check, respond, and act on messages. Address common issues as much as you can.
And, remember, a time-tested way to follow up on a message that’s gone unanswered is to stop by the employee’s desk or call them and politely ask, “Did you receive my message about…?”
Consider an Employee Communication Portal
Enable your employees to stay connected, share ideas, seek feedback, and collaborate – all while improving productivity and boosting performance. Share & Perform, part of GTM’s isolved payroll and HR platform, enables multi-directional employee communication that drives toward a transformative company culture. Built-in employee recognition and performance management tools allow employees and managers to maximize business success. Request a free quote to learn more.
