Written By: TMSA Staff | Jan 11, 2020 12:00:00 AM
As with any successful business, companies in transportation and logistics continue to look at ways to effectively communicate with and engage their workforces. With 45% of TMSA members directly responsible for communications and another 8.5% for HR/driver recruitment, many look at internal communications and engagement strategy to be the glue that holds together the company.
In fact, according to the 2020 TMSA Marketing & Sales Metrics Study, 62% of respondents have departments or individuals with internal communications roles (although most of these involve companies medium to large enterprises with a minimum of 500 employees). But of those companies that do have internal communications professionals on staff, 54% have 1 full-time employee (FTE), 20.5% have 2-3 FTEs, and 5% have 4-5 FTEs. Clearly, companies in transportation and logistics are making the investment in internal communications and engagement when it makes sense for their operation.
If you’re company values such initiatives, what ideas should you be taking into account in order to make sure your organization is effective in its employee communication and engagement?
Is this the case at your company? This is perhaps the number one question when it comes to the approach to take in your employee communication and engagement strategy. Young businesses—especially start-ups—place more and more value on company policies and culture. Why? Because their workforce demands it.
Gen Z and millennials are looking for companies that align with their values, commitments, and aims. In fact, many HR leaders of any company size consider culture and engagement their number one challenge. Consequently, the bond between internal communications and these core values has been growing stronger. It’s therefore not only important to include core values in your internal communication strategy, but to highlight the ways in which your organization can best execute them.
Ruan Transportation Systems is one good example of company leveraging communications and event strategy to effectively engage its employees. A TMSA Corporate member, Ruan is an asset-based 3PL headquartered in Des Moines, IA, with 5,600 team members (4,600 of whom are professional drivers). Their mission is to employ the best team in the industry to move their customers’ business safely, efficiently, and on time – every time.
Ruan was born July 4, 1932, when John Ruan hauled his first load of gravel. Every July, the company honors the memory of its founder and his philanthropic spirit with Founder’s Days. Nationwide, its Founders Days events focus on supporting communities, recognizing team members for their contributions, celebrating teamwork, and increasing engagement.
Ruan’s Founder’s Days events includes several components, both large and small. Ruan’s marketing and communications team manages all Founder’s Days activities and communications, including:
Through these coordinated and planned communication efforts, Ruan is on a solid course for success in the marketplace – and there’s a sense of pride in within the company as they celebrate, recognize and support their team members. In fact, Ruan earned a TMSA Compass Award in 2019 in the Events Category for it’s “Founder’s Day” initiatives.
Internal and external communication are inextricably linked, regardless of where your teams sit or to whom they report. And that includes marketing, HR/talent management and driver recruiting and retention groups, sales organizations, and operations. It’s essential to keep in mind all audiences that are important to these groups when crafting your messages, even if you’re forced to alter your tone or focus.
In a recent study, the Pew Research Center showed that people under the age of 35 feel “the need for instant gratification” and the “loss of patience.” As Internet speeds increase, people are less willing to wait for websites to load, videos to buffer, and colleagues to respond to their messages. While the idea of instant communication isn’t new, the reality of its meaning has changed because of the hyperconnected lives we live today, where so much is happening all at once.
Internal communication in the workplace is no exception. In order to connect and reach the new workforce that consists mainly of millennials and Gen Z, messages need to be brief and precise, and ideally they are no longer delivered over email.
Speed allows for more and better targeted operative updates, which means that communication can no longer cascade from one person to many, but instead must be dispersed simultaneously. It’s not a bad idea to empower and enable local, part-time editors who can share day-to-day updates and deal with questions and feedback. Make sure the development of your content (and the channels through which you communicate) are quick and easy to digest.
“A picture is worth a thousand words” is a popular saying, but did you know that one minute of video content is in fact worth 1.8 million words or the equivalent of 3,600 pages of text? Posting a video not only increases the likelihood of views and shares but also raises the understanding of your product by as much as 74 percent. In addition, a consumer behavior survey by Hubspot showed that more than half (55 percent) of their users report consuming entire videos, compared to 33 percent for interactive articles and only 29 percent for blogs.
When asked what kind of content they would want to see more of in the future, employees stated the following:
Holland, part of the YRCW family of brands, earned a 2019 TMSA Compass Award for its “Dock to Driver” campaign. The industry, as a whole, is in critical need of drivers. This recruitment video shares how Holland offers a program to earn your CDL license and be paid during the process. An employee can come in with no driving experience and move up from dock-to-driver.
The tone of the video is engaging and compelling. Earn a full-time job as a Holland driver with exceptional benefits. This is a six-month program with one-on-one training. It’s not easy to make up your mind what you want to do in life, but with the Holland dock-to-driver training program you are paid to learn and grow. You can develop your career path at Holland. People come into the program, work their way through it and find a future – all while getting paid, getting a CDL license, and getting set up for a successful career.
In line with the video trend, millennials and Gen Z also have a high demand for authenticity. Like company culture, this quality has come to identify the employer brand. Authenticity can be implemented through employee-created content.
Employees are becoming the most important voice a company has to offer. Social advocacy programs encourage staff to share their thoughts, updates, and ideas, while also providing them with a powerful voice.
This voice is not only more authentic than that of any manager, but it also gives different locations and employees worldwide the opportunity to express themselves. Additionally, content shared by employees receives eight times more engagement than content shared by brand channels; brand messages reached 561 percent further when shared by employees.
Turning your employees into content creators supports the decentralization taking place in the workplace and it adds a peer-to-peer level to the top-down culture in communications. Putting your employees first will improve your employer brand.
In order to encourage your employees to share and take part in the conversation, your internal communication channels should focus on spreading content that directly affects and interests them (which is all the more likely when it comes from their own ranks). In addition, make the communication interactive by enabling comments, sharing, and likes.
In addition, internal communication departments should work on supporting such peer-to-peer collaborations by rewarding teamwork, encouraging sharing, and setting team goals. Additionally, team events that promote your company culture will also create feelings of unity and encourage interpersonal relationships. As a bonus, these kinds of relationships are proven to make work as enjoyable as our free time!
According to a recent Ruder-Finn report, only 16 percent of companies are satisfied with their ability to measure the effectiveness of their internal communication. Measuring internal communication and engagement is difficult, but with both of these topics increasing in importance, so is the need to accurately gauge their efficacy and quantify your return on investment.
Finding ways to measure your internal communication will help you target and increase efficiency. Live metrics have been gaining in importance, and we’re now able to measure a whole range of topics more directly and precisely than ever before. Think incoming requests, intranet usage, and reach.
In addition, measured results can be used in two ways: to convince managers about a topic’s importance—making its strengths and weaknesses more apparent—and to better understand the interests of your employees. And most importantly, having numbers at hand will give you valuable evidence to support your concrete actions.
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Tags: Strategy
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