Everyone believes that their announcements are crucial and applicable to everyone. That’s not a bad thing; that’s the job of department leads ― to be laser-focused on their team’s objectives and then make sure those outcomes and learnings are shared.

Think about the sheer amount of e-mails, DMs, and other communications the average employee gets during a day at work. Staying on top of everything can be difficult, but this is exactly where proper internal comms practices can come in handy. It’s the job of internal communications professionals to synthesize and translate the information/knowledge they want to communicate so all employees can understand it.

At Guru, we use three essential questions to ensure that when knowledge is communicated, it’s relevant and actionable instead of just adding to the "noise" of work:

• Who is it relevant to?
• Is it time-sensitive?
• Is there an action required?

Capturing, collaborating, and improving content

Our Internal Communications team sends employees a company-wide newsletter via the Guru announcements feature every two weeks. Collaboratively crafting this newsletter with the help of Guru's AI tools like Assist and Answers has sped up the drafting process and made it easier for teams in different time zones to contribute content. Over the past few months, the AI consistently improved the announcements by simplifying language, condensing the content, and adjusting the tone. As a result, our company-wide announcement read-rate increased from 68% to an average of 89% over a four-month period.

Our internal communications team can further enhance the knowledge we share by acting on the announcement and engagement data.  For instance, we review in-product engagement data on employees who haven’t confirmed that they read the newsletter and conduct qualitative research to understand why they aren’t engaging with the updates. With the support of generative AI and our collaborative content editor, the team is able to make more informed decisions about what, when, and with whom information is shared.

Team specific communications

Once team leaders have been educated on the logic and process of internal communications, which involves ensuring that communications are reviewed and approved through internal channels, they are encouraged to transmit relevant and actionable announcements to their respective teams. An excellent illustration of this scenario is when leaders distribute a "pre-read" document ahead of a product enablement session at Guru. This practice enhances the quality of synchronous conversations.

One of Guru's revenue team members said that receiving an announcement with pre-read material helped them prioritize consuming all the information they needed to understand the true purpose of an upcoming meeting. In this case, a manager helped their team with volume control and gave them material they could refer back to when joining a meeting vs. just following along in real time. This layer of manager-led prioritization helps create team-specific accountability, rituals, and information recall.

Comprehension and alignment

Scheduling announcements ahead of time has also been a game changer. 受信者のためのコミュニケーションをスケジュール設定する能力は、儀式とリズムが信頼を築き、突然のコミュニケーションによる感情的な圧倒感を減らすのに認知的に有益です。 従業員は、育成セッションまたは企業会議の24時間前に常に材料と更新情報を受け取ることを知っています。 逆に、忙しいチームリーダーは、アナウンスメントをスケジュールすることで非同期コミュニケーションの利点を活用することができます。

理解のないコミュニケーションはただのノイズです。 ノイズとデジタルの雑音は圧倒感と負担へとつながります。 負担が燃え尽き症候群につながります。

2021年のHarvard Business Review reportによると、仕事に強い目的感を持つ人々の25%が燃え尽きを経験していないことがわかりました。 コミュニケーションの優先順位を理解し、行動を起こし、集中時間に戻ることができると、業務の意義深い部分につながります。  「既読」をクリックして通知を消音し、恐れられる赤い点を取り除く代わりに、従業員は今やチームと企業の知識を非同期で消費しています。 これらの儀式により、従業員が知る必要がある内容、行うべきこと、いつやるべきかが明確になります。