To help these folks out our team pulled together some of our recent greatest hits: data, case studies, stories, reports, etc. Resources that clearly paint the picture of the value of advocacy across marketing, sales, comms and recruiting. Advocacy can be applied to ANY person or team, and the beauty of it is that it directly impacts the things that are MOST important to any company: revenue and people. And fortunately, after more than a decade of supporting the world’s largest advocacy programs we have plenty of data and examples to share!

Sales: Driving Revenue

I’ve been an honorary salesperson all my life. You don’t have a choice when you’re a founder or CEO. And I’ve loved doing it. I love talking with prospects and customers. If I had to sum up what I’ve learned about sales over the last 20+ years it’s that being seen and heard, participating in the conversation and giving, contributing value is really the key. We buy from those we know, we like and we trust. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about buying a pair of socks or some multi-million dollar technical solution, the equation is fundamentally the same. That’s why social is SO important for salespeople. And contrary to what some salespeople and leaders may think, it’s not complicated. Your buyers are on social. Salespeople need to be talking with those buyers, they need to be engaging with them. Period. As the saying goes, 80% of life (of sales) is simply showing up (on time, with something to contribute).

Sales use case resource: Case study and data on how the use of EveryoneSocial + Linkedin Sales Navigator by sales teams led to increased pipelines, win rates and deal sizes.

Marketing: This Is Word Of Mouth

Marketing is the bread an butter of the advocacy world. This is where it all started and it’s still a core pillar of how advocacy drives ROI. I mean look, it’s really simple, advocacy is word of mouth marketing! This was the idea that drove us to start EveryoneSocial so many years ago, the idea that all of us, the PEOPLE inside companies were connected with everyone we wanted to reach as a business: customers, prospects, partners, candidates, etc. There isn’t a CEO in the world who hasn’t asked his team to share good news with their networks. Advocacy is how you do that repeatably and at scale and it’s the reason why Ogilvy called out advocacy as the #1 influencer trend for 2025.

Marketing use case resource: Ogilvy report highlighting advocacy as the #1 influencer marketing trend for 2025 (featuring EveryoneSocial customers!).

Recruiting: Winning The Talent War

If you’ve talked with me before you know that recruiting and employer branding is one the strongest use cases for advocacy. Honestly I would say that if you could only choose one way to use advocacy, use it for this. Why? Everyone you will hire is on social media. All of your current employees are on social. Everyone who has been a member of your team is on social media. Further, people LOVE sharing about their work, what it’s like to work at your company, and open opportunities to join the team. Further, there are LOTS of people looking for their next opportunity (something like >50% of the global workforce is open to new opportunities). Just a single example for you: the average job post (a link, leading to your company’s career site) shared from EveryoneSocial generates 36 clicks. Advocacy for employer branding and recruiting just works and there is NOTHING more important, there is NOTHING your CEO cares about more than people. The people are the business.

Recruiting use case resource: Comprehensive guide and data on why advocacy + (employer branding + recruiting) are a match made in ROI heaven.

Comms: How You Activate Your C-Suite

I think comms plays a way more important role at most companies than maybe it gets credit for. This is coming from me and I’m not a comms professional, but we’ve had the opportunity to work with comms teams and leaders and this is why I say that: unlike marketing, comms is crenated on people. They’re not afraid of people. Their job is to get messages to employees and get messages to key audiences outside the company. That’s advocacy! Advocacy is just a tool for them. AND they hold the ace, which is they’re the ones that support the senior most executives, the C-suite. And in 2025 the C-suite are quite possibly the most important advocates you can activate at your company. This is really the #1 trend amongst our customers right now and it makes sense. Activating your C-suite is absolutely critical. They can grow their networks faster than anyone at your company and the content they share will reach a bigger audience than anyone else. Perhaps most importantly (and unlike in the past) your C-suite knows they need to be seen and heard on social. It’s a critical pillar of any advocacy strategy in 2025.

Executive comms use case resource: Data on how your C-suite (especially your CEO) positively impacts all areas of your business when they’re active on social media.

The post The ROI of Advocacy in 2025: Resources, Case Studies, Data appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

Sounds like a good thing, right? 

Sure seems so until you consider this: The average knowledge worker must process the equivalent of 174 newspapers worth of information on a daily basis, according to Columbia Business School professor Sheena Iyengar.

That’s a lot. It’s no surprise then that so many people suffer from information overload and that more than 65% of employees say it negatively impacts their work.

While access to all this information certainly has its benefits, today’s employees need help overcoming information overload so they can do their best work. Read on for tips and tricks to help you and your people do just that.

What Is Information Overload?

Information overload is the state of being overwhelmed by the amount and/or frequency of data available. An excessive amount of information, as well as the constant inundation of data that we experience in daily life, impedes our ability to function effectively.

Information overload makes it difficult to complete tasks and make informed decisions. In fact, it may result in paralyzing us from making a decision at all and ultimately lead to burnout.

Plus, the negative effects of it in the workplace can be exacerbated by an outdated communications strategy, a lack of alignment among teams, and time constraints that don’t allow workers enough time to process all that information.

Why Is Information Overload a Problem?

Information overload results in much more than just decision-making difficulties though. It also contributes to the following:

Stress-related health issues

Being overwhelmed by too much information to process — combined with the stress of tasks, deadlines, and the expectation that you reply to every email that comes your way in a timely manner — takes its toll.

Just take a look at the stats:

• A quarter of workers report significant stress and poor health due to information overload.
• 36% of managers experience negative health effects because of the amount of the sheer data they must process.
• Email causes stress for 40% of knowledge workers.

In fact, studies have found that we actually experience what’s known as “email apnea” — unconsciously holding our breath or failing to breathe in a normal manner — just due to the stress of email.

Reduced creativity

Information overload and frequent interruptions reduce creative activity, according to Harvard Business School research.

Even young workers, who are more accustomed to the constant bombardment of data and switching from one device to another — are affected.

Strain on work relationships

Dealing with all that stress negatively affects employees’ relationships with their co-workers as well.

In fact, 68% of managers report that information overload is harmful to both their professional and personal relationships.

Drop in IQ

Information overload and workflow disruptions can actually lower intelligence, according to a study commissioned by Hewlett-Packard.

The research concluded that employees distracted by the influx of information from email and phone calls suffered from an average 10-point drop in IQ.

Loss of productivity

Sorting through and processing immense amounts of data — much of it irrelevant, according to an Intel survey that found a third of work messages are unnecessary — affects productivity.

It’s not just the information itself, but also the interruptions that occur when new messages arrive in our inboxes or ping in Slack.

Those interruptions are near constant, with knowledge workers interrupted every 3 to 11 minutes. And, on average, it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to refocus on a task after that interruption…so the likelihood of staying focused on the job is challenging, to say the least.

Add in the fact that employees spend about 30% of the workday searching for information they need to do their jobs, and it’s hardly shocking that information overload costs the U.S. economy at least $900 billion annually in lost productivity.

Impacted employer brand

The stress and other negative effects of information overload also impact employee morale, engagement, and satisfaction as well.

This contributes to an overall atmosphere of frustration and unhappiness that can hurt company culture, as well as diminish employer brand.

5 Ways to Beat Information Overload

Clearly, information overload is tough on people and organizations as a whole. Here are some steps you can take to overcome it.

1. Recognize the signs and take action.

The first step in overcoming information overload is realizing when it’s happening.

Recognize how it feels to you. Do you notice a difference in breathing, a headache coming on, frustration creeping in, a tightening in your shoulders, etc.?

Learn to notice these signs, acknowledge them, and name them. This is a practice known as emotional labeling that psychologists recommend to help you distance yourself from what you’re feeling.

When you recognize these feelings and address them head on, you’re less likely to experience the stress-related symptoms associated with information overload.

Also, take regular breaks — don’t wait until those intense feelings of overwhelm kick in. Step away from your desk, take a walk, meditate, or whatever activity clears your mind and calms you down.

Finally, fuel your body and your mind by staying hydrated and eating regular nutritious meals. Your brain needs water and glucose to function properly, so give your mind what it needs to combat information overload.

2. Be selective with information and your time.

Your brain works constantly to store the right information that you’ll need immediately in short-term memory, while it files other data away in long-term memory. So help it out.

For example, if your manager stops by your desk and gives you instructions, take notes and ask questions, so you have that information to refer back to.

If, on the other hand, your manager outlines what she wants in a Slack message or via a presentation you can refer back to, recognize that you don’t have to commit everything to memory at this moment.

Take a similar approach to how you invest your time.

You have no shortage of projects to complete, messages to return, and Zoom meetings to attend, and that can get overwhelming fast. So make it a habit to check in with yourself, regularly reassess your priorities, and ask whether something is truly worth your time.

Maybe it’s not a priority right now, but it will be in the future. Maybe it’s a task you can delegate or one you need to request an extension on to allow yourself time to do your best work.

3. Put a time limit on information gathering.

With all the data available to us today, it’s easy to slip into information overload, so set the scope of your information gathering before you begin.

Iyengar, who’s an expert on choice, says to be strategic about this.

“For some of us, you might decide that it’s more important that you spend one or two hours exploring lots of different things — that’s your time to really add creatively to your knowledge base,” she said. “For others, it may be a time to create focus and only search on that topic during the allotted time.”

4. Invest in the right tools.

While too many tools can result in its own form of overwhelm, selecting the best ones for your organization can help immensely with combatting information overload.

Employees spend about 2.5 hours every day searching for information they need to do their jobs. One way to alleviate this is to rely on knowledge-management software that allows you to create a company wiki and organize information like processes, documents, and more.

There are numerous knowledge-management solutions available, including Tettra, Confluence, and Slab, just to name a few.

Of course, I can’t help but mention EveryoneSocial as well. Curate all the content you want employees to share in one place, making it easy to find, engage with, and post to social.

What’s great about this method is that when employees open EveryoneSocial they’ll immediately see the most important news and updates. Everyone, regardless of position — including remote and frontline workers — will have access to everything they need — and nothing more.

Is certain information for the C-suite only? Just for customer success or marketing? No problem. Simply create a group.

Are some updates internal only and not for social sharing? Toggle a button to keep it internal. It’s as easy as that.

Plus, you can rely on admins and moderators to ensure the right information is shared, and you can even set up alerts and highlight the most important announcements and encourage your people to engage with them.

Or as technology consultant Jerry Michalski puts it, “Trust your community to filter and flow the right things to you when you need them.”

5. Be strategic about communications.

There’s a reason why 2 in 3 employees ignore company emails: There’s too many. In fact, the average knowledge worker receives 121 emails every single day.

One of the best ways to overcome information overload is to be more strategic about not only what information needs to be distributed, but also how it’s shared and how often.

So before sending a message, think about who really needs the information and avoid unnecessary CC’ing and BCC’ing.

Also, try segmenting content based on topic, priority, employees’ roles, and more. Also, develop a strategy for how that information will be communicated, and if you can put it all in one central place, even better.

EveryoneSocial is a great solution for this because it allows you to curate content in one central location that can be tailored to individual employees’ role and permissions. They can access the EveryoneSocial feed via desktop or app.

Plus, admins can set up a content newsletter in EveryoneSocial in a matter of minutes and schedule it to send at regular intervals. Each newsletter will be customized to the individual employee, delivering EveryoneSocial content they haven’t yet engaged with directly to their inboxes.

Let EveryoneSocial Help You Overcome Information Overload

We’ve only just gotten started with all the ways EveryoneSocial helps organizations combat information overload — and it does so much more than that.

There’s a reason why companies from Qualtrics and Vidyard to Adobe and Dell rely on our platform to keep employees informed, increase reach and engagement, improve employer brand, and much more.

Start using EveryoneSocial today for FREE, or schedule a demo to see all the ways it can revolutionize your workplace.

The post Information Overload: What It Is and 5 Tips to Beat It appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

In fact, 95% of people say it’s their primary communication method, and 50% of workers actually use email more frequently since the pandemic began.

It’s no surprise then that employee newsletters remain an essential tool for communications professionals.

That’s why we put together this definitive guide, complete with sixteen employee newsletter tips to keep your workforce informed and engaged.

But before we outline all the ways you can create a top-notch employee newsletter, let’s take a look at what an effective one can accomplish.

What is the Purpose of an Employee Newsletter?

At one time, employee newsletters were simply used to inform workers about company news and events.

However, today, employee newsletters can have a variety of objectives, depending on the organization’s needs and goals.

A newsletter may be used primarily to convey information, for example, but it can also be used to engage employees, celebrate accomplishments, contribute to company culture, and more.

Companies may even send several different employee newsletters each with a distinct purpose.

Just take a look at the variety of things an effective employee newsletter can achieve:

• Inform employees about company updates, events, and milestones — which is important since 74% of workers say they miss out on important company news.
• Educate them about policies and initiatives, open positions, competitors, and more.
• Invite them to company events and training sessions.
• Connect remote employees.
• Collect employee feedback.
• Showcase employee-generated content.
• Aid in employee advocacy efforts.
• Contribute to knowledge sharing and management.
• Reinforce company values and culture.
• Develop employee thought leaders.

Regardless of the purpose of your employee newsletter — whether it’s to inform workers about an upcoming lunch-and-learn or to entertain them with a blooper reel from the company conference — all newsletters should aim to engage the workforce.

Engaged employees have higher job satisfaction, are more productive, and better contribute to the business’ growth, but to reap these impressive benefits you first need to craft communications that employees actually open.

Employee Newsletter Tips to Improve Email Performance

Seventy-one percent of employees don’t read company communications, and engagement with employee newsletters remains low, according to Ragan research.

Why?

Because 62% of emails workers receive aren’t important and because communications professionals aren’t doing everything they can to make employee newsletters relevant, useful, and easy to consume.

But we’ve got numerous employee newsletter ideas to do just that.

1. Follow employee newsletter best practices.

Before you hit “send,” make sure you’ve done the following.

Designate who the email is from.

Instead of sending your employee newsletter from simply the company name or a generic “no reply” email address, use the email of an actual employee.

This could be someone on your communications or marketing team, but you can also customize the sender based on the email’s content. For example, company news could come from the CEO, while a hiring update could come from the HR director.

Sending your newsletter from a real person increases the likelihood that employees will open it and read it.

Include images.

Adding images to your employee newsletter makes the email more engaging and it ensures that it looks different from a regular text-based email.

A common guideline for text-to-image ratio is 40% images and 60% text, but experiment and see what works best for your audience and your brand.

Images can include the email header, photos, graphics, illustrations, employee pictures, and more.

Just ensure the image file sizes are small, so the newsletter will actually arrive in workers’ inboxes, and don’t include too many images to avoid your email landing in spam folders.

Keep the file size small.

Aim for your employee newsletter to be under 102KB.

This ensures it’ll pass through spam filters, and it’ll prevent Gmail from “clipping” your email and not displaying all the content.

Ensure it’s mobile-friendly.

Mobile accounts for nearly 42% of email opens, so it’s essential that your employee newsletter have a mobile-first design.

Preview and test.

Before sending your newsletter, preview it and send yourself a test email. Most email platforms, including popular ones like Mailchimp and Hubspt, have this option.

Check the overall design and formatting of the newsletter, click every link to ensure they work, look for typos, and see how your subject line and preview text display.

2. Focus on providing value.

Now that you’ve got the basics down, it’s time to take a big-picture look at the content to include in employee newsletters.

As we established earlier, newsletters can have a variety of objectives, but regardless of whether your newsletter is intended to convey information or contribute to company culture, it’ll fail to do either if employees don’t bother to read it.

The best way to get people to open your employee newsletter and read it is to ensure that it provides value in some way.

So before crafting an employee newsletter, ask yourself how it benefits the reader and identify ways to make your communications more useful and relevant to the individual employee.

One surefire way to do that? Customization.

3. Customize employee newsletters.

Not all company news is suitable for every employee. While a new HR policy may apply to everyone, the latest technical update from the engineering team may not be relevant to your marketing team.

Also, not every employee consumes content in the same way. Frontline workers may be more likely to open newsletters on mobile or at different times of day than desk workers, for example.

That’s why it’s so important to utilize customization and segmentation.

You can send communications to only employees in certain departments, for example, or craft department-specific employee newsletters.

That can be a lot of work, of course, especially if you’re part of a small comms team, but EveryoneSocial makes it a breeze to deliver individualized content directly to employees’ inboxes.

You can set up a content newsletter in EveryoneSocial that’ll automatically pull trending posts, specific group updates, and employee-generated content for each individual. The employee will receive a personalized newsletter filled with content that’s relevant to them — and that they haven’t yet engaged with.

This automated approach to employee newsletters allows content to go out regularly (+ you only have to set it up once!) and it ensures that every worker is aligned on the most important, relevant news.

4. Write engaging subject lines.

Of course, if you want people to read those employee newsletters, you have to get them to open the email first. That’s why you need a compelling subject line.

Here are a few employee newsletter tips to craft a subject line that’ll send your open rate skyrocketing.

• Personalize them. Adding the recipient’s name increases email open rates by 26%, and your email platform likely already has a feature to make this a cinch.
• Foster a sense of curiosity, urgency, or FOMO (fear of missing out). Craft subject lines that make recipients want to open the email and learn more. For example, try something like “This hack will save you time” or “Only one day left to sign up” vs. “Learn to save time” or “Sign up for training.”
• Add emojis. Simply including an emoji in the subject line can increase the open rate by 29%.
• Keep it short. Limit your subject lines to 60 characters or fewer to ensure your subject lines don’t get cut off in mobile inboxes. 

5. Include employee-generated content.

Photos, videos, blog posts, and any other content created by your workers is a great way to add a personal touch to your employee newsletter.

Sharing employee-generated content, or EGC, has numerous benefits, including increased employee engagement and job satisfaction.

Plus, when you share EGC, it begets more of this valuable content because it encourages employees to share their own thoughts, ideas, and experiences.

6. Invite employees to attend events.

Whether you’re hosting an internal training session or sponsoring an external conference, invite people to attend via your employee newsletter.

Some email platforms have event-management features that’ll even allow you to embed invitations and let people RSVP.

You can even further engage employees by encouraging their participation. Invite them to submit ideas, volunteer, or apply to be speakers or moderators.

7. Make the newsletter part of your change management strategy.

Employee newsletters are often sent at regular intervals, such as weekly or monthly. But you can send these informative messages whenever you need to tell team members about significant news.

This is especially important if the company is undergoing a major change such as a merger or acquisition. In these cases, your employee newsletter should be an essential part of your change management strategy.

But do more than simply convey information — make it clear how employees are impacted by these changes. This makes them feel valued and appreciated and leads to greater overall employee engagement.

8. Highlight employees.

There are numerous reasons why employee recognition is valuable in the workplace — it improves retention, increases trust, and improves morale, just to name a few.

And yet 82% of employed Americans say they don’t receive enough recognition at work.

Highlighting team members in the employee newsletter can change this though.

Showcase people’s work accomplishments, but also recognize personal achievements and news, such as volunteer efforts, vacations, birthdays, marriages, births, and more.

9. Share open positions and hiring news.

Use the employee newsletter to keep workers informed about job postings and new hires.

Invite them to promote open positions and refer candidates. And introduce them to the latest team members.

Keeping workers in the loop about how the company is growing will help them feel more connected to their teammates and engaged with their work.

10. Add video.

People are 75% more likely to watch a video in an employee newsletter than read text, so make it a point to include videos from time to time.

These can be purely informative, such as the HR director explaining a new policy or benefit, or they can be lighthearted and fun ways to showcase company culture, such as a skit from the marketing team or a highlight reel from a company event.

And be sure to include the word “video” in your email subject line since this can boost open rates by 6%.

11. Include CTAs.

Increase engagement with the employee newsletter by including calls to action.

Invite people to learn more, provide feedback, sign up, RSVP, volunteer, share their thoughts, and more.

CTAs don’t only increase your click rate, but they also help employees understand the “why” behind the content you’ve included in the newsletter.

12. Summarize key takeaways.

No matter how engaging or informative your employee newsletter is, not everyone is going to read it.

But you can quickly communicate your most important points by including a bulleted list summarizing the content at the top of the newsletter.

13. Ask for feedback.

Employees want to feel comfortable voicing their opinions and know that their thoughts are valued, so ask them for their feedback on the newsletter.

Ask what they’d like to see in the future, what employee newsletter tips they have, and more.

The employee newsletter is also a great way to distribute pulse surveys to gauge employee satisfaction and engagement.

14. Plug your employee advocacy program.

There’s a reason why the world’s top brands like Facebook, T-Mobile, and Dell invest in employee advocacy — it works.

But the key to continually winning at advocacy is to expand your program and keep workers engaged, and employee newsletters can help you do that.

Use your newsletter to invite more people to join your pure play employee advocacy solution, suggest content for sharing, highlight the numerous benefits workers can reap by participating, and promote contests and feature your top sharers from the leaderboard.

Your employee advocacy solution should also have newsletter capabilities — that’s why it’s a central feature of EveryoneSocial.

15. Experiment and have fun.

As we’ve said, the employee newsletter doesn’t have to be simply an avenue to deliver company information — it can also be used to entertain, to improve morale, and to contribute to company culture.

So don’t be afraid to have a little fun with it.

Use GIFs, tell jokes, share anecdotes or silly moments from around the office.

You can also play games like trivia, feature a contest or giveaway, make recommendations, share recipes, and more.

16. Analyze email performance.

It’s essential to know what kind of subject lines entice your people to open a newsletter, what links they click, and so on.

This data shows you what content resonates with employees and empowers you to take steps to continually improve your employee newsletter performance.

Yet 60% of communications professionals don’t measure the effectiveness of their internal communications efforts, according to the International Association of Business Communicators.

Luckily, most email platforms make it easy to track these metrics for you.

For example, you can see how your EveryoneSocial content emails perform at glance.

“I love that I can see the number of recipients, the opens, and the clicks with the EveryoneSocial emails,” says Shannon Ma, Instructure’s global email marketing manager. “I can easily look at the data, get it exported, and see exactly what people are interested in.”

Get the Best Employee Newsletter Solution

Clearly, there’s no shortage of employee newsletter tips. However, we understand that communications and marketing professionals also have no shortage of tasks to complete on a daily basis.

That’s why EveryoneSocial’s content emails are a great way to augment your employee newsletter or even serve as its alternative.

You can set up a content newsletter in a matter of minutes, schedule it to send at regular intervals, and trust it to keep everyone up to date on the most important items shared in EveryoneSocial.

Content customized to each employee will land directly in their inboxes. And you won’t have to design, update, test, and send constant employee newsletters, freeing up your time for all those other tasks on your plate.

But that’s not all EveryoneSocial can do!

Book a demo to see how our platform can revolutionize your internal communications and so much more.

The post 16 Employee Newsletter Tips to Engage and Inform Your Workforce appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

You’ve come to the right place.

We created the definitive (and not boring-as-heck) guide to everything employee-app related. You’re just trying to set your team up for success and we just want to set YOU up for success, too!

First off, here are some things to keep in mind throughout the decision-making process, including while you’re reading this:

• What are you using the app(s) for?
• How many employees will use it? How many separate departments?
• What features are “must have” and what “would be nice”?
• How much of a budget are you working with?
• Are there integrations with other apps you’re already (or would like to start) using?

And, perhaps most importantly:

• Is the platform whose app you’re considering dedicated to both continually improving their product AND helping your organization succeed?

Just some food for thought. Let’s dive in, shall we?

What is An Employee App?

An employee app is a tool that enables employees to receive personalized and timely information from the organization on either company or private mobile devices. This allows employees to stay connected and in the loop from anywhere in the world. 

With the proliferation of remote work, the most effective employee apps have a mobile version of their platform as well, enabling people to access content from anywhere at any time!

That accessibility works in both directions, by the way — mobile apps also allow organizations to reach employees via messages, push notifications, etc.

Depending on the context they’re used in, employee apps can range from intranets to messaging services to employee advocacy platforms (and more).

Why Mobile Employee Apps Matter

In 2019, the average adult spent three hours and 43 minutes on mobile devices every day. 

The Covid-19 pandemic increased the average to more than four hours in 2020, and in this 2021 survey, 46% of respondents spend five to six hours on mobile each day.

You wanna know the crazy part? None of those numbers even account for work — they’re just talking about personal usage.

Nowadays, mobile accounts for 54.8% of global web traffic. I feel the need to repeat the word GLOBAL. As in, over half of the internet activity in the ENTIRE WORLD is happening on smartphones and tablets.

The last piece of data that I’ll throw at you (for now) is this: a 2019 Pew Research Center survey found that 82% of U.S. adults get their news online at least sometimes, with 57% of respondents saying they “often” get it via mobile.

In other words, bringing information or resources to where your employees already spend their time makes it easier to keep them informed and connected!

6 Reasons Your Company Needs An Employee App

Let’s take a look at why your organization needs an employee app.

1. Modern organizations shouldn’t tie people to their desks.

We mean that literally and figuratively.

Jokes aside, we’re living in an era of unprecedented technological advancements, so throw a bone to your hardworking employees! Nowadays, nearly everything you can do from a desktop computer can also be done from a smartphone or a tablet, so why not just let them?

More than 2.7 billion people in all various industries, from agriculture to healthcare, are already deskless employees. But of the $300 billion business technology market, only $3 billion is directed toward the deskless.

If you’re even half as rad of a company as we are, you’re probably pretty flexible with travel and time off. The few employees that want to check their work apps before boarding a plane or while gassing up on their road trip are gems and should absolutely be enabled to do so.

Employee apps are also fantastic for keeping frontline workers in the loop, and considering they’re the face of your organization, that’s…important.

2. They promote regular interaction among employees.

As bad as it sounds to say, it’s pretty easy to not care that much about your co-workers. I’m not saying that’s how it should be, but let’s be honest here.

One of the best ways to combat that kind of toxic, apathetic environment is to simply get people talking more!

Cross-team discussions help illustrate the impact each team has on the company as a whole, and I’m speaking from experience there.

Even if it’s not work related, just chatting helps too — if anything, it’s even more beneficial for building camaraderie than shop talk is!

And in our opinion, the more pet photos, the better.

3. Employee apps reduce instances of “Oh, I didn’t see that email!”

It’s frustrating when you send out an announcement only to have, like, less than 30% of your workforce aware of it even weeks later, right?

Make that a problem of the past by adopting an employee app that allows you to notify employees whenever you need (and in especially important cases, even if they have other notifications turned off ).

Whether you’re letting your employees know about new policies or inviting them to an upcoming lunch-and-learn, this is a valuable feature. 

It’s also super beneficial in instances of crisis communication when your organization needs to let everyone know about something ASAP. 

As we saw at the beginning of Covid-19, virtually every company on the planet had to pivot extremely quickly and employee apps help facilitate those changes.

4. They allow employees to quickly and intuitively create their own content.

This point is fairly straightforward: If you make it easy for your people to create and share content, chances are pretty high they will!

Maybe they’re just sharing out a link to a study or an article, maybe they’re creating a mini blog in the app platform, maybe it’s something else entirely.

Whatever it is, the ability to customize that content with things like rich text editing tools, for example, is key.

5. You get an accurate feel for what your people care about.

If you’ve spent any amount of time doing research on psychology, you’re probably aware that people often don’t self-report accurately.

If you’re trying to figure out what kind of content resonates with them, however, that’s not particularly helpful. 

Well-built employee apps can provide analytics and insights into what people are engaging with and which posts they’re actively sharing, so you can figure out the common themes yourself!

6. They give organizations customizable, airtight information security.

(security designation compliance, restricted access, private groups, authenticated users)

Finally, employee apps give you control over your company’s information. 

For example, you can prevent certain kinds of content, like internal policy revisions or product roadmaps, from being shared while still using them to keep your people informed.

Private groups and authenticated users are other ways to make sure that sensitive information doesn’t get accidentally disclosed.

On top of what you can do yourself, it’s quite common for platforms themselves to be held to various security & compliance regulations, especially when it comes to social media or communications.

What are some examples of employee apps?

Really, any app that’s used in the workplace could be classified as an employee app, but below are some of the most common categories.

And yes, there can be some overlap between these, but let’s not be too nitpicky.

Employee Communications Apps

These kinds of platforms are ubiquitous in the business world, and there’s a good chance your organization is already using some of these! 

Nowadays, staying connected with your team is crucial for project management and effective collaboration. Consequently, there’s a pretty wide variety of software options available to choose from that cater to all sorts of uses.

Video conferencing? There’s an app. File sharing? Of course there’s an app for that. Here are some great communications apps that you can use to keep your team more organized and efficient.

• Apps for virtual meetings and messaging: Slack, MS Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet
• Apps for project management and collaboration: Trello, Monday.com, and Jira

Employee Development Apps

Keeping your employees learning is crucial for their long-term success. Professional development should be an ongoing process at your organization, and there are lots of apps you can use to facilitate that!

Ongoing training has been shown to increase employee performance and by utilizing a corporate LMS (Learning Management Systems) or Digital Adoption Platform, you can smooth out your onboarding process as well.

While a lot of people are vaguely aware of LinkedIn Learning, many businesses fail to encourage their employees to actually use it! Here at EveryoneSocial, we make sure to do exactly that.

Other great employee development platforms include: Udemy, Moodle, BetterUp, and Skill Pill!

Employee Engagement Apps

If you want your employees to be more satisfied with their jobs (which you most definitely should!), then you’ll also want to consider using an app to help keep your employees engaged.

Also known as employee advocacy platforms, these apps help keep employees connected to both each other and the C-suite, regardless of their location.

That’s just one reason that companies with remote workforces or dispersed employees have gravitated toward using platforms like EveryoneSocial.

Using platforms like these enable you to build a sense of community, but they also have the benefit of serving as word-of-mouth marketing channels.

Activating your employees on a platform that encourages them to create and share relevant content to their social media channels makes them active participants in your company culture AND turns them into brand advocates.

We’ll cover this in more detail a little bit further down, don’t you worry.

Employee Evaluation Apps

Tracking employee performance is especially important when it comes to conducting annual reviews, giving raises, and more.

In a blog post from a while back, we mentioned that you shouldn’t rely on your memory during these reviews, so why not help yourself out by using an app?

Not only do these platforms provide a way for you to ensure employees meet expectations, but they also provide personal systems for goal tracking, too!

After all, these aren’t mindless drones we’re talking about— they’re professionals with their own aspirations and expectations.

Giving them the tools to hold themselves accountable removes your temptation to micromanage them, leading to a better workplace culture overall.

Popular apps used for evaluation and goal-tracking purposes include Lattice, PerformYard Talent, TrakStar, and SageHR!

However, you can also consider letting your employees evaluate you in return, by encouraging them to leave an anonymous review on platforms like Glassdoor.

Employee Portal Apps

Last, but certainly not least, employee portal apps are VITAL for organizations looking to make life easy for their workers.

Most often, these are the kind of platforms where employees can see things like payroll information, HR policies, company calendars, and so on.

If you’ve ever used an intranet, then you’ve interacted with a company portal, but that’s kind of a “a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn’t always a square situation.”

In other words, intranets can serve as company portals, but that doesn’t mean your portal app will necessarily be a full-fledged intranet.

We use an app called Zenefits here at EveryoneSocial, and it’s quite handy. I can log in and check out my pay stubs, tax forms, and health insurance information. Plus, I can see the entire organizational structure. 

Smartsheet, Jostle, and Boardable are a few other options that are available to companies in need of a portal.

Managing Employee Apps

One thing that’s important to highlight here is that you should be careful about having too many different employee apps.

If your organization uses 20 different tools to communicate, collaborate, and engage, you risk overwhelming people. That’s why you should try to pick a few that 1) serve multiple purposes and 2) play nicely together!

For example, EveryoneSocial can serve as a hub for content storage, sharing and creation. It’s also great for internal comms purposes, and for generating engagement among your employees! 

Our integrations list isn’t too shabby, either.

Use EveryoneSocial as an employee app

You’re probably wondering where we fit into this equation, right? Well, our platform is quite versatile, and can meet several needs simultaneously.

As an employee advocacy platform, EveryoneSocial excels at getting employees more engaged with their organization, and it’s pretty dang good for social selling, too.

Say you’ve got a company post coming up that you want to help get some early traction. Why rely on the social media algorithms that nobody REALLY understands when you could just whip up a quick “Engage” post in EveryoneSocial?

For example, if you’re looking to up your recruiting game, EveryoneSocial can help.

Did you know that employee referrals are likely to be some of your best candidates? In fact, only 7% of job applicants come from referrals, but they account for 40% of new hires!

As I’ve stressed repeatedly throughout this blog, keeping your employees in the loop is important for a healthy workplace environment. In fact, 85% of employees say they’re more motivated when management provides regular updates on the company.

You know something else EveryoneSocial is really good for? Making sure that everyone on your team sees important updates.

We actually have the option to mark a post as “important” so that your people get push notifications and an email alert, as well as see it flagged in their feeds! You can even pin posts for extra visibility.

I could keep going with these examples, but you probably have other things to do today, so I’ll wrap it up here. That being said, feel free to check out these links if you do want to know more about using EveryoneSocial in specific scenarios!

• Using EveryoneSocial for Internal Communications

• Using EveryoneSocial for Marketing

• Using EveryoneSocial for Sales

• Using EveryoneSocial for HR & Recruiting

• Using EveryoneSocial for Channel Partnerships

• Using EveryoneSocial for Frontline & Retail

Like what you’ve seen so far? Well then, check out our sweet new product tour page while you’re here!

The post Employee App: Keeping Employees Connected in a Digital World appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

Think about the different versions out there right now that are pretty common: personal brand, employer brand, internal brand, etc. 

These variations are all similar in some ways and may even overlap when it comes to strategy. However, each term has important differences, and they’re all equally important for your organization. 

While employee brand is a strategy that might not be a priority compared to the other brand “family members,” it’s become increasingly critical for your company and employees to succeed. 

I know, I know. There’s already so much to keep up with and now you have to learn about employee brand! 

Let’s dive in.

What Is Employee Branding?

Simply put, employee branding is the process of getting employees on board with the mission, values, and vision of your organization — which motivates them to help convey those messages to customers, stakeholders, prospects, and other employees. 

Think of employee branding as the external perception of your organization that’s created by employees and future hires. 

Why does this all matter? 

Well, the employee voice is 3x more credible than the CEO’s when it comes to talking about working conditions in that company, according to Edelman Trust Barometer.

So if you want to influence how people perceive your organization, you need to get your employees talking about the company — and communicating the kind of employee brand you want.

Employee Branding vs. Employer Branding

But wait a minute, this sounds like employer branding…is it not the same thing? Yes and no. 

Employee branding and employer branding do have some overlap when it comes to their definitions and goals. However, they also have some important differences that are worth noting and understanding.

How are they similar? 

If you’re familiar with employer branding, then you may have already noticed the similarities. But let’s take a quick look at how these two terms are similar.

Both strategies:

• Influence how your organization is perceived by potential hires.
• Help you attract better talent to boost company results and reduce turnover.
• Influence customers (and potential customers) to be more trusting and excited to work with your company.

How are they different? 

Now, the main question you might be asking is, “How do employee branding and employer branding differ?” Below are a few key differences.

• Employer brand is mainly driven by your human resources team and the company executives who guide the direction of the brand, mission, and values.
• Employer branding primarily focuses on work culture, company perks, career advancement opportunities. 
• With employee branding, the focus is on the communications and experience employees have with the organization and their work. 
• Employee branding is guided by employees’ experience, emphasizing what it’s like to work for the company, how excited employees are about the company, and if these workers are organic brand advocates. 

Employer branding, as well as the internal culture, are important to work on and it significantly influences how well your employee brand will do. 

While effective strategies for internal work environments are within your control, your employee brand is ultimately created by employees. 

Building an Employee Branding Program

Hopefully, the importance of employee branding makes sense to you and your organization already prioritizes it. However, when creating an employee branding strategy it takes time and refinement to truly get it right. 

Whether you’re starting from scratch or need a complete reboot of your existing process, here are some tips to help you build an effective employee-branding program. 

1. Live and breath your company values

I know, I know. Hearing about company values or mission statements might make you roll your eyes a bit. But it’s critical that every company has a mission statement detailing what they stand for and the values the organization believes in. 

If employees don’t know what those are, don’t understand them or, even worse, don’t see leadership practicing what they preach…building an employee brand won’t be easy. 

Defining these values and promoting them within the organization is a great first step to building an effective program. 

If people in your company don’t know what the organization stands for and believes in, how can they connect to the company, its culture, and its leadership? How will they be your best brand advocates?

Hint: They won’t. So educate employees on your brand!

2. Improve the candidate experience

How often do your human resources and recruiting teams review the candidate experience during interviews and onboarding? Do they even ask employees about that experience? 

Maybe your organization consistently does this, but maybe it’s been slacking on this important step.

To build an effective employee branding strategy, you must understand the candidate and employee experience because it has a major impact. 

Employees should feel empowered — and trusted — to share their feelings about the brand, both good and bad. Especially the bad.

Create and launch company initiatives designed to help increase employee satisfaction, improve retention, and get people hyped to work for your company.

This makes it easier to recruit top candidates and get outsiders excited about your culture. Plus, employees will be more motivated in their work and become trusted brand advocates. 

3. Create consistent employee communications

Communication is important, no doubt, and most organizations generally have some strategy for reaching their employees. But how effective are your organization’s current internal comms? 

• 60% of companies don’t have a long-term strategy for their internal communications. (Workforce) 
• 74% of employees feel they are missing out on company information and news. (Trade Press Services)
• 72% of employees don’t have a full understanding of the company’s strategy. (IBM)

So yeah, communication is still a struggle.

Your messaging needs to be clear, frequent, and consistent to help spread the company mission, its values, and what its brand is all about.

This is done through a combination of HR activities, developing an employee communication strategy, and implementing technology that employees want to use. 

4. Leverage brand training

If you truly want to get your employee branding to the next level, it may require your company to leverage brand training. 

Your employees should love to learn; giving them opportunities to not only better their work, but also improve their career trajectory and develop themselves professionally is important. 

The reasoning behind some kinds of brand training, like recurring workshops, is to help employees learn how to communicate about the brand and be more effective brand ambassadors. 

The truth is, not everyone in your company will be comfortable engaging in either of those activities without undergoing some basic training first. Plus, this kind of education can encourage the more hesitant employees to engage. 

5. Utilize the power of social media at work

Social media in the workplace, or employee advocacy, is a powerful strategy that increases the effectiveness of employee branding. 

Once your company culture and values are clear, encouraging employees to engage, create, and share about their own work – and the company as a whole – is empowering. It not only helps employees feel trusted and excited, but it can also positively influence their colleagues. 

Additionally, these social posts help attract top talent and motivate employees’ networks to apply for open positions. After all, some of the best hires are employee referrals!

Using social at work can also influence marketing and sales, too.

People want to work with and for brands that care about their people and have a great work environment.

Just imagine a few hundred or thousand employees sharing about their work, the company, and its culture — that gets your employee brand in front of countless people. 

6. Employee feedback is critical to utilize

Building a great employee brand won’t happen unless you take feedback from your people seriously. They have the best insights and the most relevant experience of what it’s like to work for the company, so their thoughts on mission or values are critical. 

Executives, brand managers, and communication teams are often too close to the strategy and may overlook things that could make a HUGE difference in results. 

Here are a few things you can do to get a feel for how employees feel about the company: read review sites like Glassdoor or Comparably to see what employees are saying, survey your employees, and encourage open dialogue among managers and their teams.

Whether the feedback you receive is good or bad, you want to gather as much intel to help build a strong employee brand.

7. Harness technology to keep employees connected  

Building an employee brand also requires using the right technology that empowers employees through information and facilitates spreading brand messages more easily.

And there’s no shortage of software and products to choose from. 

Naturally, there’s no single option that’s best for your organization, as it depends on what you want to achieve. However, the items outlined below are important to all companies in some way. 

• Employee engagement software: Employee engagement software helps organizations solicit and track specific feedback from their employees, easily recognize employee achievements, and promote positive activity around the culture. It’s a great way to create brand advocates and boost sentiment. 

• Employee advocacy software: Employee advocacy software enables your company to engage its workforce to share branded content and information via social channels. It also helps you reach employees with targeted messaging and information.

• Survey Tools: Survey software allows users to create online surveys, quizzes, polls, and other web forms to gather intel from employees, customers, or general audiences. This is an effective way to create engaging survey content and gather feedback to improve the employee branding strategy. 

Employee Branding Examples

Before ending this post, I wanted to ensure you have some excellent examples of employee branding from companies that dedicate significant resources and time to the topic. 

Their employee branding efforts give them an edge in their markets and also make them highly desirable to potential job candidates. 

Even with this brand sentiment, these organizations still continually work on initiatives and solicit feedback to better create true enthusiasm and word of mouth.

Google

The search engine giant has built a very strong employee brand, which shines through on its about page. On it, you’ll find everything you need to know about Google’s mission and values and its commitment to users, as well as employee stories. 

This already sets a tone of excitement for the value Google brings both its workforce and the world at large. But Google goes a step further on its careers page, highlighting everything from diversity and inclusion commitments to its hiring process.

These dedicated landing pages and their transparency allow Google to set the tone for its employee brand and attract the best employees. 

Zappos

The well-known online retail company has built a strong employer brand and focuses on its employee branding strategy to attract and retain top talent. How does it do this currently? 

Well, one way is to follow @ZapposCulture on Twitter and Instagram, which allows audiences to see more about the work culture and employees. It’s a simple way to get future employees and fans interested in the company from day one. 

But showcasing company culture to the outside world is only one thing your brand needs to do. You still need an internal employee branding strategy.

That’s why, similar to Google, the Zappos team works diligently to educate employees and get them to share their experiences. You can find these examples on their careers page here. 

Adobe

Beyond building a great culture, another way to establish strong employee branding is to get employees involved in a social-sharing program. 

Adobe has more than 900 employee advocates helping spread the message about the company, its products, and what it’s like to work for the organization. 

And what kind of reach do those employees have? Over 3 million+ additional connections seeing content shared and created by Adobe employees.

You can follow their branded hashtag #AdobeLife on the major social channels to see a flood of content from employees, all sharing various content about their work and culture.

It’s pretty cool to see because this not only helps build the internal community, but it also gets outsiders excited about the brand. 

Want to drive real, authentic employee branding, and in turn help transform employees into strong brand ambassadors for your organization? Schedule your demo with EveryoneSocial to see how other brands utilize our platform. 

The post What Is Employee Branding And How Do You Build It? appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

And the need for top-notch interpersonal communication skills will only increase.

In fact, jobs that require effective communication and high levels of social interaction have grown by 12 percentage points in the last 30 years.

Demand for less-social jobs decreased by 3.3 percentage points during that same period, according to Harvard research.

Today, companies can’t afford to not hire effective communicators, and individual employees must improve their own interpersonal communication skills if they want to succeed.

What is Interpersonal Communication?

Put simply, interpersonal communication is the exchange of information among people. Information can include thoughts, ideas, feelings, and more.

This communication occurs both verbally — with words — and non-verbally, encompassing facial expressions, gestures, body language, and tone of voice.

In the workplace, interpersonal communication occurs in a variety of forms: in team meetings, on client calls, in memos and emails, during performance reviews, while giving employee feedback, and even casually over lunch or during watercooler chats.

Our individual interpersonal communication abilities are soft skills that have been in development since we began communicating as children, and these skills vary from person to person. However, we can take steps to improve our ability to communicate, and we’ll explore various techniques to do this later in the article.

Types of Interpersonal Communication

There are four types of interpersonal communication — oral, verbal, nonverbal, and listening — and mastering each of these is key to success in the modern workplace.

1. Oral communication

This refers to any form of spoken communication, such as public speaking, phone calls, podcasting, or speaking up during a staff meeting.

It involves your word choice, tone and pitch of your voice, talking speed, and even your use — or lack thereof — of filler words like “uh, “um,” and “like.”

Research shows our ability to communicate orally is even more important to helping us land a job than we may realize.

A 2015 study published in the Association for Psychological Science found that candidates were rated as more competent and intelligent — and were ranked as more hireable — when evaluators heard the candidates make their pitch instead of simply reading their written statements.

2. Verbal communication

This encompasses all types of written communication, including emails, reports, Slack messages, texts, presentation slides, and more.

But it isn’t just words alone — it also entails the various methods that we use to enhance verbal communication and make our meaning clear, such as employing GIFs and emojis.

With today’s increasingly remote workforce, it’s more important than ever for employees to possess strong verbal communication skills.

The ability to write clearly can even help us land a job more easily and get promoted faster. In fact, a Grammarly study that analyzed 100 LinkedIn profiles found that professionals with fewer grammatical errors achieved higher positions and were more likely to be promoted.

3. Nonverbal communication

This is any type of communication that doesn’t involve words. It encompasses everything from body language and hand gestures to eye contact and even what you’re wearing and what’s visible in the background of your Zoom call.

To get a sense of just how important nonverbal communication is, consider how easily you can change the meaning of a message by using air quotes or even simply saying “Have a nice day!” in a friendly way versus with a sarcastic tone.

Communicating with a visual component, such as in a video call, is a great way to ensure that nonverbal communication cues aren’t lost during transmission.

4. Listening

Listening is a key part of communication that doesn’t involve just hearing what someone says, but also actively understanding what they say.

You’ll often hear people tout the importance of “active listening” or showing a speaker that they have your attention and you’re interested in what they have to say.

Aspects of active listening involve making eye contact, nodding your head, taking notes, and saying things like “mm-hmm” to indicate understanding.

Why Is Interpersonal Communication Important?

You no doubt understand the necessity of being able to communicate well and pass information from one party to another.

But there’s more to interpersonal communication in the workplace than just effectively delivering a message.

People with strong interpersonal communication skills

• have higher emotional intelligence
• make connections easily
• maintain relationships
• understand how to motivate people
• know how to “read a room”
• make effective leaders

In other words, mastering these skills makes you more likable — and more hireable.

In fact, communication and interpersonal skills remain at the top of the list of what matters most to recruiters, according to a Harris Interactive/Wall Street Journal business school survey. In a survey of nearly 1,000 employers, the 2017 Corporate Recruiters Survey Report concluded that listening and oral communication skills are the most sought after ones in potential hires.

Workplaces that hire people with excellent interpersonal communication abilities and that work to nurture these skills in their employees also reap numerous benefits, including the following:

• They’re more productive.
• They have higher morale.
• They experience fewer conflicts among workers.
• They have higher employe engagement.
• They have less employee churn.

Interpersonal Communication Statistics

Need a little more convincing about how important this is? Check out these interpersonal communication statistics:

• Communication inefficiencies consume an average of 13% of an employee’s day globally.
• On a scale from 1 to 5, managers rate the importance of excellent interpersonal skills at 4.37.
• High performing teams that communicate increase productivity by as much as 25%.
• Companies with effective communication strategies in place are 3.5 times more likely to outperform competitors.
• 97% of employees believe communication has an impact on their task efficacy.
• Communication inefficiencies consume an average of 13% of an employee’s day globally
• 80% of employees say that employee communication is crucial to their success.

Clearly, interpersonal communication skills have far-reaching effects throughout an organization, so let’s take a look at some powerful ways you can enhance your own.

Interpersonal Communication Examples

Take a look at some interpersonal communication examples in the workplace that address the various types of interpersonal communication we use on a daily basis.

Face-to-face communication

Despite all the office tech available today, speaking with someone face-to-face remains important because it’s quick, efficient, reduces misunderstandings, and boosts engagement. Even remote workplaces can take advantage of this form of interpersonal communication via conferencing software like Zoom.

Email or Slack

Email and messaging tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams are common in modern workplaces. The have numerous advantages because they allow us to communicate conveniently and efficiently. However, they don’t always communicate nuance and tone, which can lead to misunderstandings. Plus, they require strong written communication skills.

Phone calls

Despite our numerous messaging tools — and the fact that most of us are far more likely to use our smartphones for texting — phone calls are still an important type of interpersonal communication. They allow us to more effectively communicate tone, but they do require strong verbal communication skills.

Presentations

You’ve no doubt attended — and likely given — numerous lectures, seminars, and presentations in your career. These involve several types of interpersonal communication. Plus, the speaker can use not only their words, but also tone, expressions, and gestures. And the addition of written text and visual aids can increase understanding among the audience.

Barriers to Effective Interpersonal Communication

Before we dive in to how to improve communication skills, let’s first take a look at what interpersonal barriers of communication can be detrimental to workplace relationships and the organization as a whole.

Physical barriers

Accessibility can create interpersonal communication barriers. These can be especially challenging for remote employees who aren’t in the same office and can’t physically meet in person.

But physical barriers also include connection issues, disruptive environments, acoustic interference, weather conditions, and more.

Language barriers

When we speak different languages, communication is understandably more challenging.

But even if both parties do speak the same language, they may have different levels of mastery or they may speak various dialects.

Emotional barriers

These interpersonal barriers of communication relate to how we process information and the impressions and emotions we attach to communications.

All of our communications — whether we’re the sender or receiver — are filtered through our personal experiences and the emotions tied to them, and this open us up to differences in understanding.

Learn more about communication barriers in the workplace and how to overcome them.

5 Simple Tips to Improve Interpersonal Communication Skills

Interpersonal communication is essential to both your personal and professional endeavors. After all, we all have relationships and virtually every job involves interacting with teammates, bosses, or customers.

Everyone can benefit from learning how to communicate better, so here are easy-to-implement strategies to help you do just that.

1. Consider these questions first:

• Who’s your audience? We communicate differently to different audiences. Consider how you’d address your manager vs. an intern, a new hire vs. a seasoned employee, or a native English speaker vs. someone who doesn’t speak the language as well.
• What’s your goal? Are you informing, persuading, asking for something, etc.?
• What do you want the message recipient to do? Consider the action you want the receiver to take as a result of your communication
• What’s the best way to accomplish this? Should you send an email or a Slack message? Make a request in passing or set up a formal discussion?

2. Recap key points.

At the conclusion of a call, presentation, or lengthy email, provide a quick summary of what you’ve discussed. You may also want to include action points that detail specifically what you need from the recipient.

3. Practice active listening.

When someone is communicating with you, give them your full attention. Avoid looking at your phone, try not to interrupt, and resist the temptation to think about your own response. Instead, listen closely, maintain eye contact, and nod to indicate you understand.

4. Be curious.

It’s easy to make assumptions or jump to conclusions when someone is conveying information to us. This can be problematic because it can lead to confusion and mistakes down the road. Plus, it can make the speaker feel misunderstood. So try to avoid this by practicing curiosity and asking open-ended questions when necessary.

5. Check for understanding.

When you’re communicating, what’s the easiest way to ensure your message was received effectively? Asking. This can be as simple as inquiring, “Did that make sense?” or having the recipient summarize what you’ve covered.

6. Give acknowledgement.

Listening is an essential component of communication, so show that you’re listening or that the message has been received. You can do this by nodding, asking a follow-up question, or even “clicking” like or using an emoji if you’re communicating online. A Burt Reynolds 10-4 acknowledgement works too.

7. Ask for feedback.

The best way to ensure you continually improve your interpersonal communication skills is to ask people to share feedback with you on a regular basis.

Interpersonal Communication Tips for Remote Workers

The tips outlined above can be used to improve your interpersonal communication skills no matter your work situation. However, interpersonal communication can be especially challenging for employees who work remotely and get little to no face time with their teammates — which is more than a quarter of U.S. employees.

Let’s take a look at specific ways remote workers can hone their interpersonal communication skills.

1. Learn communication preferences.

We all have our preferred way of doing things. For example, you may prefer keeping all communications in Slack, your colleague may prefer to talk on the phone.

And some forms of communication are simply a better fit for certain situations. A performance evaluation, for example, is better suited for a face-to-face talk, even if it’s via Zoom, because it allows both parties to more easily pick up on nonverbal cues.

Take both the situation at hand and your teammates’ preferences into consideration when determining the best way to communicate to ensure your talks are successful for both of you.

2. Have verbal conversations.

Even if both you and your co-workers prefer to email each other or chat via Slack, it’s still important to engage in regular verbal conversations.

So much of interpersonal communication occurs outside of the actual words we use, so taking the time to chat on the phone or talk face-to-face via Google Meet is important to keep the lines of communication open.

3. Define the means of communication.

Preferences are important to consider when communicating, but it can be beneficial to establish company policies around certain communications as well.

An organization may require that employee feedback be given one-on-one and in face-to-face via Zoom, for example. However, day-to-day communications that affect entire teams or the organization as a whole may be kept in Slack for transparency and to prevent communication silos from forming.

4. Be mindful of time differences.

Remote teams often aren’t only working in various locations — they’re also working in various time zones.

Be aware of these differences when messaging your co-workers and scheduling time to chat.

Need a little help to keep track of your distributed team? There’s no shortage of apps and Slack integrations to make it a breeze, such as Team TimeZone, which is featured above.

5. Schedule virtual ‘water cooler chats.’

Much of your remote workday is no doubt devoted to work communications. But it’s important to engage in informal talks with your teammates as well to establish closer relationships and help you both communicate and work together more effectively.

Here at EveryoneSocial, for example, we have monthly meetups called Nosh where groups of employees meet virtually for lunch.

Another easy way to get your distributed team chatting is to use the Donut app for Slack, which regularly pairs up teammates for chit chat.

Check out some other ways to engage remote employees.

The Tool to Improve Interpersonal Communication in the Workplace

There are countless communication tools available today, but only an employee-advocacy tool like EveryoneSocial creates a true workplace community.

Our unique platform connects employees at all levels of the organization, allows them to engage with another, lets them create content, and keeps everyone from the interns to the C-Suite up to date.

Take a look at how EveryoneSocial does everything from streamline internal comms to inspire your employees to post about the company.

Book a demo to learn how we can help you achieve all your communications goals.

The post Interpersonal Communication: What it is, Why it Matters, and How to Improve It appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

The pandemic also caused a significant shift for many companies, a majority of which were not prepared and faced new challenges when it came to having a communications plan for global remote employees. 

However, communication barriers existed even before the pandemic. In fact, 74% of employees feel they miss out on company information and news. In that same study, 85% of employees said they’re most motivated when management offers regular updates on company news. 

So how does a modern organization identify communication barriers and overcome them? Let’s dive deeper into this topic and help your company get on the right track this year. 

What Are Communication Barriers?

Communication barriers are anything within your organization that prevents people from receiving or understanding messages, ideas, and information. These barriers can also prevent messages from being sent effectively, causing a disconnect within the company. 

When there is no identifiable plan (and solution!) for addressing these barriers, it starts to negatively impact multiple areas of the business. It trickles down from executives to managers and from managers to their teams. 

Miscommunication can quickly create issues, leading to a negative impact on morale, productivity, employee engagement, trust, and revenue. 

According to SHRM, “A survey of 400 companies with 100,000 employees each cited an average loss per company of $62.4 million per year because of inadequate communication to and between employees.”

Yikes! 

3 Types Of Communication Barriers

Although there are plenty of communication barriers to address, there are three extremely common ones we want to address quickly. These might already be familiar to you, but they’re important for your company to understand.

1. Emotional barriers

Emotions that may create barriers to overall communications. Employees process things differently and may have a fear or social anxiety related to sharing or connecting. 

2. Language barriers

This represents both verbal and nonverbal communication and can trigger barriers internally and globally. 

3. Physical barriers

How accessible other employees and company leaders are can create communication barriers. Think remote work, desk-less employees, different offices, etc. 

While these tend to be the big three that many organizations prioritize, there are other communication breakdowns happening, too.

Let’s look into some of the additional causes and how you can start to remove these barriers. 

12 Additional Communication Barriers

It should be no surprise that organizations face more than a few communication barriers, but you may not initially realize these are other key areas you can work on.

4. Communication skills

Employees all have different skills and approaches to how they communicate. This can cause issues in how information is received or passed on based on an individual’s skills. 

The challenge here is that most organizations don’t prioritize communications from a cultural level or on a performance-review level. 

5. Hybrid work

Although remote work has been growing in popularity, the pandemic changed the way many companies do work. 

Some businesses became completely remote indefinitely. Others now do hybrid work where some days may be employees are in an office setting, and other days they work from where they want. 

This is great for company morale, but it can also create communication barriers as sometimes people are in close physical contact and other times they’re elsewhere and communication technology is needed. 

6. Psychological

Another common barrier to communications is psychological, which can impact not only how people communicate, but also how they process information. Different factors can contribute to these barriers like stress, social anxiety, anger, and self-esteem. 

These all play various roles in how willing and open employees are to share or how they take specific news or feedback. 

7. Disengagement

Employee engagement may sound like an industry buzzword, but it is talked about so much because of the impact it has across organizations. 

It impacts how well communications are sent and received. If one side is disengaged — or even both — communication will be negatively impacted. 

If your company wants to become a modern workplace, then you’ll need an effective employee engagement action plan.

8. Organizational structure

Communication and information sharing can be broken due to the organizational structure of your company. This is often a barrier for larger companies because there are many hierarchies of managers and executives, plus outdated or confusing communication systems in place. 

Information gets lost or miscommunicated, causing frustrations and misalignment on goals or work that needs to be completed. 

9. Lack of trust

Nearly two-thirds (64%) of employees say trust has a direct impact on their sense of belonging at work, according to Business Wire. Yet, many organizations have trust issues on both sides of the business. 

Employees want to be in the loop and feel open discussions are allowed, otherwise it can cause speculations and rumors that foster misinformation among teams. 

10. Infrequent information

In our Employee Feedback Report, we surveyed customers over two years. One of the questions we asked was: “Do you feel that you have increased your learning related to work and your industry as a result of consuming relevant content?”

78% answered with “Yes!” 

Your people want to be consistently informed about your company, through content that will make them more engaged and connected to their work. Too often communications are infrequent or inconsistent, driving employees to feel left in the dark and negatively impacting productivity. 

11. Information overload

You might think that more information being shared at an increased frequency is the key to helping your communication barriers. Unfortunately, that can get your communications in more trouble. 

Information overload occurs easily and creates a barrier because employees get annoyed and begin tuning information out. Plus, too much communication can become a distraction and stall productivity. 

12. Lack of unified channel 

People consume and communicate differently, which means your communications can start to get complicated.

You might have multiple channels for communicating or have people that prefer different ones, which can be confusing and time-consuming for your company. 

If your company focuses too much on one channel, important information might be missed from those who are active elsewhere. It’s inevitable that you’ll have a few channels, but there are ways to streamline that from one central location, where the information can then hit most channels.

13. Cultural differences 

Just like how people prefer different channels, everyone has different experiences and cultural views that affect how they like to be communicated with.

As a communicator or company leader, if you aren’t aware of the demographic and cultural backgrounds, barriers will quickly arise. 

You’ll need to adapt and find a commonality among the organization to ensure communications reach everyone as appropriately as possible. It sounds tough, but being an effective communicator is not always as easy as people think!

14. Selective sharing

A potential communication barrier that may happen is selective sharing, which is when employees or leaders are not communicating the full-picture. 

If you receive only a portion of news or messages, it breaks down the ability to do the work properly or distribute that important news to others. Again, this causes miscommunication and a distrust in the workplace.  

15. No personalization

Too often, all communications are sent in an overly broad format. For example, it could be something related to sales teams that also gets sent to the engineering and product teams. 

For the latter two groups, it’s not related to them at all. So they tune it out and over time they may start to ignore or dismiss all communications.

A pattern begins to emerge, which is why personalizing the communications and segmenting will create a better experience. One thing EveryoneSocial does is simplify this through the use of personalized feeds and groups, as illustrated below.

But there’s still the ability to share information with everyone if there’s a company-wide communication need. 

Ways to Overcome Communications Barriers in the Workplace 

To be an effective leader and a well-tuned company, communication and information distribution plays a major role in your organization’s long-term success. 

There are a few ways you can overcome communication barriers that you have identified. But remember, you will never be able to overcome every barrier within communications. 

Each employee is unique, has various perspectives, and interacts with others differently, so it’s an impossible feat to solve every communication challenge. 

Instead, your goal should be to minimize the challenges as much as possible, make a clear effort, and find ways to streamline your communications. 

1. Recognize generation gaps and differences 

Not only will there be potential cultural differences and language barriers across your organization (depending on the size), you likely also have various generations of employees in the workforce. 

Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z are all beginning to work together more. Each of these groups have grown up and worked in very different environments, to say the least. 

Each will have different preferences and expectations when it comes to communications, which means your company needs to have options to choose from. Understanding each generation’s needs will empower you to adapt communications appropriately and prevent barriers.

2. Gather feedback from your people around messaging 

Since there are generational and cultural differences in your organization, an easy way to start figuring out how to distribute information effectively is to gather insights from employees. 

Not everyone will answer your surveys or share their thoughts, but if you can get a good sample size it will help you understand what you must do better at. 

It can be eye-opening to see where you thought your company was doing great, but is actually causing friction. Or to see things that you thought were struggling are actually working well for your people.

3. Develop consistency in communication effort

While there are multiple messages, communications, and information shared and discussed daily within your company, it’s the consistency that helps break down barriers. 

Often, it’s to get excited and emphasize the importance of something and then in a few weeks, that tapers off. The consistency that was started becomes more sporadic or random, and the momentum is lost. 

Like most things in life, results rarely appear overnight — they require effort and long-term consistency. This applies to communications and must be continued on a regular cadence. 

4. Personalize information and messages

You might have noticed a theme here, but tailoring your messages, how they’re received, and how they’re sent is critical to connecting with everyone at your organization. 

This means you need more personalized information that’s relevant to the right people, at the right time. You also have to deliver that information in the format people want — whether that’s audio, video, text, images (gifs, memes), etc.

While you can blast your entire internal database with an email, it’s not quite as simple as that. Plus, that causes employees to disengage or tune out the information.

So, to the best of your ability, personalize and segment information based on how your employees individually consume it.

EveryoneSocial, for example, has a feature that allows admins to send regular emails to employees that contain only content that each individual hasn’t yet engaged with, such as the example above.

5. Use technology and data to improve communication

Understanding the data around your communications is critical to finding gaps and seeing what is working well. Yet, too much technology can cause information overload and confusion of where to find the right content. 

Your organization will inevitably have multiple communication tools, but you want to find a way to streamline it all in one simple way like EveryoneSocial does. 

While Intranets, for example, have been a way to try and engage entire companies, in a survey, it was found only 13% of employees reported participating in their intranet daily. Thirty-one percent said they never do.

So what can you do? In the next section, we’ll dive into the technology side a bit further. 

6. Encourage more two-way information sharing  

Naturally, company leaders and managers distribute news or information quite often. However, communication is a company-wide need and information must flow from the top-level down and from the lower-levels up. 

Not only should executives and managers be able to reach every employee or target audiences, but employees should also be able to effectively communicate info or needs to others.

Overall, it should be apparent to everyone that communication is valued and encouraged.

The Right Technology Improves Communication Barriers 

It can be a tricky balance for organizations when it comes to technology. There are so many products and platforms to choose from and use that best fit your goals and company needs. 

This is good from a communication standpoint as you have better ways to connect employees, no matter where they are in the world. 

However, the challenge is when different divisions or locations of the company start implementing too many tools, many of which may have some overlapping features. Additionally, your leaders and comms teams might send other various forms of information differently.  

While inevitably, every team, employee, and executive will have preferences for sharing and consuming — you can find ways to keep it simple and get everyone on the same page. 

With the right technology, organizations can improve communication, engagement, and trust.

Here are some examples of what good communication tech can do: 

• Easily distribute content, company news, and team updates
• Reach every employee, no matter where or how they work 
• Segment information for more personalization
• Enable content and info delivery at optimal times
• Customize newsfeeds for employees based on their interests and needs
• Integrate with other important comms tools to reach people’s preferred channels
• Show the impact and reach of internal communications and engagement 
• Analyze the information, data, and content that’s most engaging
• Make it easy for people to share ideas, interact with teammates, and build a rallying point for employees to build trust with each other
• Possess features that help the message reach employees in various ways: newsletter, push notifications, tagging, integrations to Slack and Microsoft Teams, etc. 

Luckily, all the above (and more) can be done through an employee advocacy tool like EveryoneSocial.

If you want to see how employee communications and engagement can be improved — plus all the other additional benefits to marketing, sales, and employer branding — schedule your demo! 

The post 15 Communication Barriers: How to Overcome Them This Year appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

However, giving and receiving evaluations can be awkward, uncomfortable, and downright unpleasant for everyone involved.

It’s no surprise then that 44% of managers say delivering criticism is stressful and 21% of them admit they avoid giving feedback altogether.

But shying away from sharing feedback robs both managers and their teams of learning opportunities. Plus, when done right, giving feedback improves performance, job fulfillment, engagement, productivity, and retention.

These eight tips will help you navigate your way through this potential minefield and deliver effective employee feedback. Let’s get started.

Best Employee Feedback Tips

1. Provide frequent, timely notes.

Don’t wait around for a scheduled performance review to give employee feedback. Instead, share critiques, suggestions, and advice in real-time.

This is what 94% of workers want; however, 69% of companies still rely on annual or bi-annual reviews alone.

While you can certainly set aside specific times to give feedback, waiting six to twelve months can be problematic for several reasons.

For one, it doesn’t give people timely opportunities to make changes or improve their performance. And what may be a minor issue now could become a major obstacle if the problem isn’t addressed immediately.

Delivering feedback so rarely can also hinder progress because people may be defensive when their mistakes or shortcomings are pointed out months or years later.

Plus, annual or semi-annual assessments can be challenging for the reviewer as well because you have to rely on memory when providing feedback. This further complicates things because of distance bias, which essentially means that more recent events are fresher in the reviewer’s mind.

In other words, the employee’s performance in the previous week may have a greater impact on their review than their performance over the entire year, creating an unjust feedback system.

2. Give employee feedback in person.

Whenever possible, share both constructive criticism and praise when you’re face to face.

Ninety percent of communication is nonverbal, involving tone of voice, facial expressions, gestures, body language, and more. So it’s easy for a message to get lost or misinterpreted if the recipient has to rely on written communication alone.

Speaking in person allows for both parties to glean additional context from the conversation.

For example, hearing a manager’s empathetic tone can soften the blow of a critique, or seeing a team member’s confused expression could clue a manager in that they need to be more clear in their delivery.

Delivering employee feedback in person can be difficult for remote workers, but you can set up time to talk via video conference so that everyone in the conversation can benefit from seeing and hearing nonverbal cues.

3. Consider power imbalances and unconscious biases.

It’s difficult to give someone feedback even when you’re on equal footing, but when one of you holds a senior position — such as a manager with the power to hire and fire — it can further complicate the employee feedback dynamic.

Lower-level employees may not feel comfortable challenging feedback they find unfair, for example.

And there are more influences at play than just power alone because we all have unconscious biases.

You may have preconceptions about team members based on race, gender, and more. For example, a manager may assume that a male employee is more assertive, making it easier to recall instances when he took charge.

Similarity biases also exist, making us more likely to have an affinity for people we consider to be like ourselves. For example, an employee who reminds a manager of a younger version of herself may inadvertently receive better reviews or coaching opportunities.

You can overcome these biases and deliver more effective employee feedback by fostering psychological safety in the workplace and providing opportunities for upward feedback.

It’s also important to evaluate employees on more than just your opinion alone. Instead, use multiple sources to assess them, including managers, colleagues, and reports.

4. Give praise first.

One of the reasons employee feedback is so difficult to receive is because our brains are wired to remember negative comments and experiences more than positive ones. So start off your conversation by telling the employee what they do well or what you appreciate about their work.

Be specific and genuine in your praise. For example, instead of saying, “You did a great job,” try, “I appreciate the work you’ve done on this report. It’s clear you’re an expert on the topic.”

Sixty-three percent of employees say they don’t receive enough praise, and Deloitte research has found that employees who go unrecognized are more engaged and have 31% lower voluntary turnover.

Plus, leading with appreciation makes employees more receptive to constructive criticism.

5. Be specific.

If there’s a matter that needs to be addressed, use clear, precise language to describe the problem, give examples, and explain why it’s a problem.

For example, instead of telling an employee that they’re inconsiderate to their colleagues, mention a specific instance.

You could say, “During Tuesday’s meeting, Susan tried to speak up, but you interrupted her several times. We want everyone to feel comfortable sharing ideas.”

When you’re specific, your message is more likely to be received and understood.

6. Practice empathy.

Before delivering employee feedback, take a moment to think about how your colleague might feel during your talk. Consider their background and experience and try to understand their unique perspective.

For example, if you plan to discuss an employee’s recent missed deadlines, examine what factors may have contributed to them. What other tasks are on the employee’s plate? What might be going on in their personal life?

Also, how might this person feel when you provide your feedback?

When you meet with the employee, communicate that you’re giving feedback to help them grow and because you want them to succeed. Starting off on this positive, empathetic note will put the employee at ease and help them be more open and receptive to your notes.

It can also be useful to ask questions before diving into employee feedback.

Queries like “How did that go?,” “What did you think of the meeting?,” and “What have you learned from working on this project?” can give you valuable insights and help you tap into empathy.

These questions can also make giving and receiving feedback easier on both of you because the employee might voice the very concerns you plan to discuss.

7. Frame employee feedback as advice.

People tend to provide more useful information and suggestions when they focus on giving advice instead of feedback, according to Harvard research.

Why? Because feedback emphasizes how an employee has performed in the past, while advice focuses on providing constructive information for the future.

In other words, try to deliver feedback with suggestions for future improvement instead of simply evaluating past actions.

8. Ask for key takeaways.

You may have heard that it’s best to sandwich criticism in between praise and compliments. However, this technique can come off as insincere.

Instead of ending your talk with a generic “Keep up the good work,” or “Thanks for all you do,” ask the employee to share the specific takeaways they’re leaving the conversation with.

This will ensure that your feedback was understood. It’ll also give you the opportunity to correct any misunderstandings or reassure the employee if they seem to have an overly negative view of your feedback.

Recognize your employees with EveryoneSocial

While you’ll want to save criticism for private employee feedback talks, you can use a platform like EveryoneSocial to regularly give recognition and praise.

This won’t only increase employee engagement, but it’ll also boost productivity. In fact, 69% of people say they’d work harder if their efforts were better recognized.

See how EveryoneSocial can help your team. Book a demo today!

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