Strategic Internal Communications

Learn why video should be your go-to source, to communicate, connect with and motivate your employees–and what goes into creating effective, efficient and engaging videos.

In this hands-on workshop, you will learn the foundations of effective video content development along with proven strategies, practical approaches and useful tips to creating content that engages employees and keeps the door open to ongoing interaction,including how to:

• Know the questions you should be asking before you create an ongoing online video content strategy
• Explore best practices for developing compelling, audience-engaging content
• Address expectations regarding engaging with and sharing video content and “viral views”
• Develop cost-effective video content for multiple distribution channels: both internal and external
• Create a phased strategy for developing content, measuring success and achieving acceptance
• Apply these approaches to your specific content needs

Denise McKee, COO, AboutFace Media

As a communicator, you can produce more effective employee communications just by developing a deeper understanding of your audiences.

Using an audience-centric approach which employs a collaborative mapping technique that harnesses the collective insight of your communication and design teams, you will leave with tools to help you:

• Apply the basics of the audience-centric communication planning methodology
• Integrate thinking models from change management, learning, and communications design
• Discover new ways to identify and meet the needs and preferences of your audiences and stakeholders
• Select and integrate new technology into your organization’s culture, based on specific learning styles and audience concerns
• Build multi-dimensional campaigns that sustain mindshare and momentum, and change attitudes and behavior to meet business objectives

Attend this hands-on workshop to learn how your organization can take advantage of new ideas in internal brand planning that yield stronger employee engagement and commitment that will ultimately save you time, money and improve effectiveness.

The approaches discussed in this session will provide you with more enthusiastic employees, a greater understanding of the company’s vision, improved commitment and new employee behavior that supports the company’s goals, in addition to:

• A step-by-step framework for effective internal branding (theory, messaging, tactical planning, program management & measurement processes to track results and impact)
• The process of creating a message architecture–process of building a comprehensive internal message that is clear and understood, relevant and personal and suggests the right behavior one should adopt
• Making internal branding effective to your audience in a meaningful way by understanding the importance of tactical resonance and message relevance
• Creating a message matrix–understanding the value of communicating the right message, to the right audience, at the right time
• Methods for tactical planning and group brainstorming that yield greater employee participation and internal buy-in that are fun and engaging
• Criteria and methods for measuring results
• What gamification is and how to include it in the tactical mix

Allan Steinmetz, CEO & Cofounder, Inward Strategic Consulting

In many organizations, a revolution is brewing -- mobile technologies, business velocity, collaborative engagement, advanced analytics, and unified communications have blended to deliver social success. Organizations that miss the shift from transactional systems to engagement systems will face dire consequences.

By attending this forward-thinking interactive workshop you will gain an understanding of the practical steps to real culture change and techniques that get sustainable social tool adoption, including how to:

• Excite and inspire users, show your employees how SharePoint supports their daily work
• Match your business needs to SharePoint abilities to deliver solutions
• Identify training needs and how to meet them
• Groom internal champions who will talk up the business benefits of SharePoint
• Establish SharePoint for on-demand learning, knowledge-sharing and higher level technical assistance
• Create an adoption roadmap that speeds change, empowers users and enables knowledge-sharing
• Transform your organization and truly engage the troops

Jeff Willinger, Director of Social Computing, Collaboration & Intranets, Rightpoint

Your employees and volunteers are going to talk about your brand online. Are you equipping them with the resources they need?

American Heart Association | American Stroke Association knows the most passionate advocates for its brand are those closest to the brand. Learn how they’ve connected with their employees and volunteers to amplify the brand’s messages online.

This session will provide you with the tools to empower your teams to talk about your organization in a transparent and authentic way, including:

• Learning the ropes: Best practices for employees to talk about your brand online
• Engaging leaders in your organization: Help your leadership understand their role in social media – whether it’s talking to teams to leading the charge as thought leaders
• Creating a groundswell: Amplify brand messages through an employee/volunteer program

• Align your strategy with the challenges you face in communicating
• Foster engagement within your company, develop a better understanding of the interests and culture
• Learn tips and tactics on rolling out a new, social communications vehicle

• Secure executive support and buy-in by aligning communication efforts with your company’s strategic priorities
• Galvanize efforts across a highly distributed company 
• Develop an ongoing dialogue so employees are engaged in the effort before, during and after launch
• Make the most of all your communication channels to ensure internal (and external) audiences know what you’re up to

Adrienne Alesandro, M.A. & Director, Internal Communications & Employee Engagement, 
Blue Coat Systems

Your employees are your company’s strongest advocates and best storytellers.  Are you leveraging their stories to tell the real story about your company?

Walmart recognizes that its employees have a story to tell about what it means to work at Walmart and more. Learn how they are maintaining a vibrant pipeline of stories to amplify the voices of their employees and help its internal and external audiences to better understand Walmart.

This session will provide you with the tools to build your company’s story assets with authentic and real stories, including how to:

• Develop a roadmap for storytelling that will put your employee stories to work
• Identify the top priorities and demands for stories to ensure the most effective use of those stories
• Collect stories to drive story sharing for omni-channel execution and delivery
• Create collaboration with a multi-channel storytelling community and process that will be on the pulse of company events and happenings
• Extend the impact and reach of your stories through a ‘story multiplier effect’

Ultimately, employee stories help humanize your company, enhance your company’s reputation and connect your associates to each other and the business.

Today’s workforce, despite technological advancements is, in many ways, more disconnected than ever. According to Gallup’s annual Employee Engagement survey, only 31.5% of U.S. workers were engaged in their jobs in 2014.

This disengaged climate presents a growing challenge to those looking to strategically communicate and engage their workforce—around both critical messaging (i.e., crisis communications) and the day-to-day information that can drive company culture and productivity. This challenge is confounded by the fact that many employees no longer work in an office setting.  Rather they are on the road, in a factory or working remote from home. Many are finding that long-used tools like intranets and emails are largely ignored or are too overwhelming to provide true value.

Discover why mobile technology represents a new opportunity for you to directly connect with your employees no matter where they are, including how to:

• Prepare for challenges being faced today, particularly focusing on how technology is changing the employee engagement game
• Develop an internal communications strategy across content, user and platform
• Embrace mobile as it is a rapidly growing segment for internal communications
• Create a mobile communications strategy to meet your organization’s internal communications needs

Leanne Budolfson, Employee Communications Manager, The Cumberland Gulf Group

Jeff Corbin, Public Relations Consultant,  theEMPLOYEEapp

This highly informative session will assist you in gaining employee engagement in business driven changes by finding innovative ways to connect people with the reasons behind the change. Once people see why a change will occur, even if it doesn’t benefit them personally, you can involve them in the steps to make the transition easier. Better engagement scores can be linked to higher employee performance and overall satisfaction with the workplace – as well as better business results.

Following this discussion, you’ll gain an understanding on how to successfully:

• Gain insight into the challenges of working in a global environment and ways to bridge the cultural gaps 
• Understand change from an employees perspective and speak their language when crafting messages 
• Reach beyond email campaigns to create richer, two-way dialogues with employees about changes that affect them

Michelle Lutz, Change Leader, Genentech

What happens when a company nearly doubles in size in just five years, with most of the new hires located outside of the corporate headquarters? How do you convey the company’s history, values and culture in an ongoing, creative and non-budget-breaking way?

This discussion will provide numerous examples of how Qualcomm connects and engages its diverse employees across 40+ countries and how you can do the same through online platforms, contests, storytelling and more, including how to:

• Capture your company’s history and create a platform to share it with new employees in a compelling way
• Use storytelling to capture the employee voice and help new hires create a personal and emotional bond with the company
• Design low-cost contests (photo, video … even dance!) to engage employees and provide your internal and external communications teams with assets they can use for recruiting, social media and more
• Launch interactive platforms that connect employees across teams and geographies

Geeta Chinai, Director of Employee Communications, Qualcomm

You have some cool digital tools in your toolbox, an intranet, internal blogs, internal social networks, and mobile apps. This session will discuss how you can use each digital tool for its unique purpose to support a single message... without repeating yourself.

 Following this discussion, you’ll gain an understanding on how to successfully:

• Understand how you can use each digital communications channel to its full advantage
• Create content for each channel that supports a single message without repeating the message
• Plan and organize your content for each channel to ensure you’re engaging each audience in a variety of ways

Marketing, Human Resources, Operations…. the home of the internal communications professional are many! What’s working best and why? How can you do great work, regardless of where you’re assigned?

Hear how one organization has found the best place for internal communication to reside, and how you can discover where that place is for your organization, including how to:

• Prepare for the common pitfalls and advantages of common placements
• Get the latest thinking on what works, why, and how to apply it to your organization
• Thrive – on any team

Julianne Lewis Maguire, Communications Manager, Benjamin Moore & Co.

As mobile devices, tablets and interactive touch screens dominate the workplace, content strategies are essential. Keeping your employees engaged, but also informed, is key.

Learn how to create and manage content that will appear on your website as it is accessed from different types of devices including mobile phones and tables. You will also learn how you can keep your website relevant as social media websites dominate, including how to:

• Create websites that respond to the devices from which they are accessed such as smartphones, tablets, desktops, etc.
• Keep your websites visually engaging and with relevant content to maintain and increase traffic
• Maintain a brand presence on popular social media platforms that will link back to your main website

Allyson Ward Neal, Corporate Communicator, Chevron Business and Real Estate Services

Data breaches and hacking sadly seem to be becoming a fairly common occurrence, whether for consumers or companies. While actions such as creating secure passwords may be inconvenient to us as individuals, imagine the precautions corporations that are in the business of managing and securing some of the government’s most sensitive information must take.

A large part of those preparations is having a plan in place in the event of a breach, and communications is no different. Press offices must proactively plan for the range of small blips to worse case scenarios, sharing the facts without putting customers, their information and national security at risk.

In this session, we’ll discuss how Lockheed Martin handled a breach in 2011, which has been recognized as a best practice. You’ll gain an understanding on how to handle a cyber attack successfully, including how to:                                                  

• Respond in the event of a cyber attack
• Gain support in advance for process and actions following a cyber attack
• Engage your employees in the fight against cyber attacks

Jessica Nielsen, VP, Communications and Marketing, Lockheed Martin