UK manufacturing last year expanded at its fastest pace since records began, according to data from the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS). At the same time, employment in that sector rose at the fastest pace ever recorded. Clearly, then, manufacturing is crucial to the UK's recovery.
That started me thinking about the role internal comms should play in sustaining that positive momentum, and the challenges of engaging ‘non-wired’ employees like those typically found in manufacturing environments; as crucial as any other workforce segment, but without access to intranets or blog any time of the day. Given the buzz around Social Media (and the irony of writing this online!), there’s perhaps a risk of forgetting the importance of non-wired channels to engage with these communities of employees.
Through the Strategic Communication Research Forum, we’ve explored many ways that organizations can make ‘non-wired’ comms work but – if I was to give some basic guidance – I’d start with the list below.
1. Know your demographics. Is your audience predominantly male or female? What generation do they belong to? What languages do they speak?
2. Understand how people spend their working day. What’s their work environment like? What hours do they work? Do they have downtime between shifts, or only if a machine breaks down? When and where do people gather together for breaks?
3. Identify how people prefer to interact. Do you have a workforce full of tech-savvy people who spend their lives outside work skipping between YouTube and Facebook? Do they use mobile phones? Would they prefer a print magazine to read during breaks? Is the best you can hope for to put eye-catching posters next to coffee machines?
4. Establish when and where you can communicate face-to-face. For example, your company might have a monthly ‘live’ briefing process designed to help improve employee understanding. But is the core approach actually working with this group, or do you need to modify it to meet time and/or space constraints? Should you establish informal lunch gatherings where people bring their own lunch and discuss new messages or share best practice?
5. Understand what people are interested in. Are people ambitious and interested in knowing about the company and the competition? Or are they focused purely on anything relating to their job and their team – do they only come to work to earn a wage? Do they just want short, action-oriented bullet points? Or do they want to know the detail?
6. Learn who people trust. Do they see communication from the senior team as useful and honest or as corporate propaganda? Do they trust their line manager? Would peer-to-peer communication work more effectively, and if so, who are the influential team members?
Some of these elements may sounds simple, but it’s suprising how often we can lose sight of these fundamentals which – at the end of the day – would probably help us with wired teams too!! So how can we go about surfacing this information? In our research, we’ve profiled a variety of organizations using some of the following approaches to gain insight into these 6 factors.
Surveys
Consider online surveys in combination with paper-based questions or short pulse surveys by mobile phone, asking people to text back their responses. Talk to line managers to find out the best way of making sure the survey actually reaches people.
Focus groups
Watch for opportunities where people are being brought together for an event or training. You may be able to tag one or two focus groups on at the same time, as some of our member companies have done.
Individual one-to-one feedback
Be prepared to invest more time to carry out one-to-one telephone interviews, perhaps. Some internal communicators are now building time into their weekto ‘walk the floor’ – physically moving around a plant or office after important announcements, asking “Have you seen the results? What did you think?”
Champions and forums
Several of the companies featured in our research are successfully using networks of staff members to help them design approaches that are fit for purpose.
Job shadowing
A tough one this, in terms of the time we have at our disposal, but still perhaps worth contemplating if this really is a major challenge for your business. Physically spending time in the working environment and watching how the day pans out can be extremely helpful.
Existing data
Perhaps obvious, but do we know who else may have data that could help us? Your HR team, for example, may be able to provide you with information about aspects such as org structures, engagement data, length of service and pay levels.
Developing a communication strategy for a hard-to-reach team follows the same process as with any other employee segment – it requires careful planning, and channel and resource analysis. But there are distinct issues in connecting with these kinds of employees, as we know from conversations with many of our Forum members. I’m pleased to say that we have a variety of tools, case studies, and templates if this is an ongoing challenge for you – from tools to map who and where these hard-to-reach segments are, to check-lists for prioritizing resources and identifying who needs to be involved in developing the ‘plan of attack’. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you’d like to learn more about them.
