Unconnected Workforce?
Why Internal Communications Are Not Working

At the heart of people engagement, performance and retention is effective communication.

Despite the best intentions, current communication methods compete for attention, needing to cut through increasing amounts of workplace 'noise' and ineffective channels. Even when messages do land - they very rarely stick.

Consider Jordan, a frontline worker in a distribution centre. Amidst machinery noise and thousands of packages processed each day, they also receive safety updates, shift-change notifications and company-wide announcements from daily toolbox standups or their cluttered notice board. There are many workplaces like Jordan's, where due to the daily demands of the job, messages from management are missed or soon forgotten. In a survey, Jordan told management that they felt misinformed and disconnected from the company.

Despite Jordan's managers best intentions, they themselves were dealing with inadequate communications methods. Emails sent from upper management saturated their inboxes and digital conversations overwhelmed their Teams channel. Vital information was lost in the digital clutter, leading to a breakdown in communications to the frontline workforce.

With competition for skilled front-line staff intensifying, and the lack of effective communication impacting employee retention and engagement, the company's leadership took decisive action. Their first priority, Jordan and their non-desk peers.

They launched a communication channel that reached employees during their downtime, delivering relevant, timely, and visually engaging content at optimal intervals. This strategy prevented information from becoming repetitive noise, while vastly improving message retention. Jordan and their frontline peers reported being much more connected with their business direction and purpose while managers saw a far more engaged workforce.

Jordan's story illustrates a common frustration found in the hard-to-reach workforce. It highlights the impact that ineffective communication is having on employee engagement, performance, and information retention, and is especially needed in a high-paced environment with a hands-on frontline workforce.

Our extensive research on learning behaviours indicates that successful internal communications depend on delivering concise, relevant messages that are visually compelling and distributed at well-spaced intervals. For vital information to be retained, it should ideally be presented 17 times over several months before it will influence a behaviour change.

Using the right channels for the right audience is vital. And we get it. Creating fresh, engaging content, delivered with the right level frequency is time-consuming and expensive, but it doesn't have to be this way.