Ask any HR or marketing communications expert about one of their biggest frustrations and at the top of their list will most likely be getting internal communication messages read, especially if they require a timely response. Employees are too busy to read emails and get too many of them, might not be in the office to read the newest company poster in the kitchen, and will likely ignore important company-wide notifications that don’t have a specific action for them to take.
As a result, many companies are now turning to “digital enterprise media channels” to ensure that all employees receive and respond as needed to critical messages. This focus on digital is part of a bigger transformation. According to the CMSWire, many businesses are moving toward digital maturity by taking several actions including “…developing omnichannel strategies to create seamless experiences across all platforms.”
This is where a mass notification system can be used for more than just emergencies. A mass notification system sends multi-modal messages via text, email, voice, IPAWS-OPEN, WebEOC, digital signage and more, within a few clicks. It also has the ability to collect and validate data from other systems, providing human resources with information they might not have already such as an updated employee mobile number.
Here are 7 Internal Communication Messages to Send Through Your Mass Notification System
- Annual Compliance Trainings: Employees might start to tune out routine compliance or ethics training messages, but by targeting multiple communication channels, they’ll most likely see the message and get their recertification done.
- Company Meeting Announcement: If you have an upcoming company meeting, sending out the details through an email and as a post on an internal company portal would help in getting employees to notice the announcement.
- Leadership Changes: Announcing promotions or departures of key company leaders through as many channels as possible helps to avoid confusion amongst employees, after the news becomes public.
- Office Moves or Closures: Employees on the way to their office might not see an email about their office being temporarily closed because of a water pipe break, but they would be able to listen to a voice message with the announcement.
- HR Enrollment Periods: Sending out messages about deadline-driven initiatives such as annual enrollment periods can be done easily and polls can be used to target employees that haven’t yet re-enrolled.
- Employee Surveys: Asking an employee for 5-7 minutes of their time for company feedback might not be the first priority on their list, but by using multi-modal notifications, you can send follow-up emails to those who haven’t participated.
- Holiday Reminders: If you have international offices or offices that celebrate certain holidays, you can easily target messages to wish your employees a nice holiday or to remind others of office closures.
Tap into Employee Engagement Data
In addition to sending out important internal communication messages, you can leverage engagement data to not only view real-time updates of message delivery success, but also understand which types of messages resonate with your employees. With detailed “by recipient” reports, administrators can view message content, any responses, success/ failure by delivery method and recipient contact, as well as method-specific information, such as busy calls or answering machines. The reporting dashboard shows overall system use to help strategically improve message effectiveness across your organization and track engagement around corporate initiatives.
Avoid Alert Fatigue
A common concern with using a mass notification system for both emergencies and non-emergencies is causing what’s called alert fatigue, which is defined as “how busy workers…become desensitized to safety alerts, and as a result ignore or fail to respond appropriately to such warnings.” Mass notification administrators have found a few solutions to prevent alert fatigue including:
- Using pre-set templates to distinguish certain types of messages: One simple way to prevent alert fatigue is by using specific senders for certain messages, so that an employee can easily distinguish emergency and non-emergency messages. Setting up generic templates such as “Building Closure” also helps not only expedite the messaging process, but also provide consistency in the look and feel of the message.
- Limiting the number of messaging modes by authorized users: Others have found limiting the number of messaging modes by authorized users has also helped. For example, giving health and safety managers the authority to send through all communication modes in the event of an emergency and only letting HR managers to send through voice message and email.
Leveraging your mass notification system for non-emergency internal communication messages is possible and can help you understand how employees best engage and respond to company-wide messages.
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