How to Build a Business Case for an Effective and Innovative Digital Employee Experience

Alex Graves:

Hello everybody and welcome to our webinar on building the business case for digital employee experience with me, Alex Graves. I am the Chief Visionary Officer at the Microsoft 365 partner Silicon Reef.
And I’m delighted to be joined by our partner from AB and also IC expert, Katie Macaulay. Katie, over to you for your introduction.

Katie Macaulay:

Hello everyone. Yes, thank you very much Alex, for inviting me to speak to this webinar. Yes, I am the Managing Director of AB. AB has a quirk of fate and we are the world’s oldest internal comms agency. So 2024 is a special year for us – we’re 60 years old this year. We get to experience inside lots of different organisations what the digital experience is like.

I have another hat that I wear on the side of the desk in that I’m also host of the Internal Comms podcast. So for the last five years, I’ve heard a lot of people reflect on the digital tools and channels they’re using to connect with their people.

So in a nutshell, Alex, that’s me.

Alex Graves:

Fantastic. So, as you said this is something that Katie and I talked about as we were planning this. We decided to put this webinar together because many of our customers that we’re having conversations with, it’s often about digital audits or channel audits or doing more with the tools that they have access to.

Sometimes this is driven by cost initiatives within the business, or perhaps even IT looking to consolidate platforms, or even businesses realising that they need to innovate and they need to change how they communicate in a hybrid world.

So that’s really the topic of this conversation, and we’ll be covering more around what digital employee experience is by our definition shortly.

I’d just like to do a bit of housekeeping so that everybody knows the format of this.

This is going to be a conversation. We will not be doing any presentation, so no death by PowerPoint today.

But we would like to invite you to use the Q&A throughout the conversation. You’ll see in the ribbon at the top of the Teams there, you’ve got Q&A and please use that to ask us questions. We’ll use it during our conversation to feed into the conversation, or if you would even like to raise your hand and actually come off mute, we would encourage you to use that as well.

So just use the raise hand feature, but also we would like you to use the chat. Chat is there for you guys to interact with each other so you can get to know each other, but also to just to comment on what we’re talking about here. If you can empathise, you felt the same or if you have a view and we would like you to connect with each other as well.

At the end of the conversation, so at about 40 minutes in from now, we will be covering off the Q&A. But also allow you to come off of mute as well to join us in further discussions that you would like to have.

Again, this isn’t meant to be a monologue from both of us. We’d like this to be as interactive with you as much as possible so that you can get as much out of this as you can do.

Also you have the reactions. I think that everybody’s used to Teams reactions now. So if you agree with us, you use the heart emoji or the clapping hands. If you disagree, use the shocked face emoji. I’d like you to try and get as interactive with us as much as possible as well.

That’s the housekeeping part done. So let’s kick off into it.

Katie, things that you and I have been talking about recently with some of our projects that we’re doing and customers that we’re speaking to. We know the term employee experience is something that’s been emerging over the last few years. When we were talking about the title of the webinar, something that I think you raised to us – perhaps actually people don’t really understand what the digital or (DEX) digital employee experience is and why it differs between employee experience.

Can you tell us a little bit more about the relationship between employee experience and digital employee experience and why both are crucial for the modern workplace?

Kate Macaulay:

I completely agree. I think we’ve got very used to talking about CX. We all know what that means. The customer experience.

When you talk to me about the digital employee experience, I was like ‘oh, do you know what? I don’t even think that’s a phrase I’m hearing a lot of at the moment.’

Always talking to clients about their channels, their tools, their platforms. Sometimes their channel suite. But a lot of organisations that I’m speaking to haven’t yet got to a place where they can see the complete employee journey and experience. From the moment that they enter an organisation, and that digital experience around on boarding and getting started, through to every key significant moment of their life cycle with an organisation, and then becoming an alumni as well.

Now inside all organisations there’s a digital aspect to every one of those stages. But the problem is, no one usually owns the whole of that. It’s owned by different people at different times. No one can necessarily take full responsibility of it, but when we’re talking about the employee digital experience, I think we’re talking about all of those things.

So I see it as, broadly speaking, several building blocks at the top. The tools that I use to do my job – there’s often ERP tools, procurement tools, they’ve got to be good.If they’re frustrating, that’s a pain point.

Then further down, you’ve got the communication tools, which as IC folk, we’re all very familiar with.

Then further down you’ve probably got some collaboration tools that you use for knowledge sharing and insights, that innovation point you mentioned.

And then you’ve also got, of course, HR platforms and tools. Where I put my expenses, things like that. Workday, for example, are very good at.

Now the digital experience encapsulates all of those things.Do they talk to each other? Do they provide the same experience?Are they integrated? Are they seamless? Probably not inside a lot of organisations, if we’re being really honest today. But that’s the Holy Grail, I think.

Alex Graves:

I think about it in terms of, remember the term digital transformation that’s been around for like the last 15-20 years? I’m still hearing it. There are still many organisations that are on that wider digital transformation journey, and I think within that you have to layer in digital employee experience. Really it’s about how people are interacting with the tools, like you said, and in those different layers.

A transformation program has to think about it more from an experience perspective than a ‘we’re here to do an upgrade of our IT or our landscape and a consolidation of things that we’ve been working on’.

When you think about it, what’s the experience of the people that are going to be using it?

For me, digital employee experience, it focuses more on the people and then the tools. Yes, the tools are really important, but it’s selecting the right tools that match the needs of the people. I think that’s the experience part of the digital journey that is transformation.

When you think about who needs to be involved in those conversations to make sure that you’ve got your digital channels working really well. Who needs to come to the table to have those conversations? To get those people around the table to say we’re on this transformation journey, we’re going somewhere, where are we going and who needs to be at the table with us to make it happen?

Katie Macaulay:

That’s a really, really good question. So where would I start?

First of all, one thing that’s going through my head is please don’t go and talk to your most senior IT person in the business – your chief technology officer – at the moment that you need to upgrade, introduce something to an audit.
Don’t do it then. Do it way before. Do it when you join your organisation. Go and find that lovely person and say what are your plans? How are you planning to upgrade the employee experience, the tools and the channels that you use every day? What are your cyber security worries? What are your security concerns? All of those questions.

I would say find that friend, make that connection really early on. Build a bridge first before you go and need to ask to do something.

A really important building block for all of the work that we do, and we have a kind of five step methodology, is we do one-on-one interviews with every member of a senior leadership team first. I want to understand where is your business going before we talk about the digital employee experience.

Where is this business going? What are its priorities and goals? What’s the competitive landscape like for this organisation? Where are you going to win? What are the obstacles to success, both internal and external? And then I can start to think about the business journey and where that needs to go in terms of the brand, the culture, the values inside the organisation.

This is all starting to build a picture of what that digital experience should be like, and I haven’t talked about a channel or anything to do with that at the moment.

I’m speaking at quite a high level to get those things crystallised in place. Often what happens, we walk into an organisation and we all know the importance of aligning our work in comms to the business strategy.
But honestly, so often that strategy doesn’t exist, or if it is written down, it was written by one person. Everyone else doesn’t necessarily align against it.

So get under the skin of where your business is going. There are clearly some very key stakeholders in this. Obviously IT, obviously HR, obviously strategy. But please, let’s not forget our business functions, divisions and areas.

I was interviewing a very senior practitioner the other day. She said to me, a head of a business function came to her recently and said there’s all these IT transformations being thrown at me. I’ve still got to concentrate on my customer. You see everything through the lens of a business or HR transformation problem. Can you see it through my lens of how do I serve my customer better?

So invite those business leaders into the room as well, because there’s only so much down the pipe that we can force for them not to fall over as well.

There’s a lot of people that need to be involved. We’re the linchpin in the middle, but I would say that, wouldn’t I?

Alex Graves:

You said at the very start of that, don’t jump to the top, go to the people and do those one-to-one interviews.
Is that because the person at the top is generally the one that’s published that strategy? And it’s almost done blindly, without really listening to what’s going on within the business? Is that the reason why you do that, so you can challenge the preconceptions that may be there and to challenge that roadmap? If there is a roadmap which I’ll come to again shortly.

But thinking about those preconceptions, which perhaps have got you into a bit of a mess to start with as to why you are where you are today. What are the benefits of starting with those one-to-one interviews with those people?

Katie Macaulay:

If you go to the audience, if you go to the workforce, they will always find and want a better way of doing it. And they should. They are your primary, most important audience.

You don’t have an organisation without your workforce. They can always tell you a better way of doing it.
So you absolutely have to listen to your workforce. And I would say listen in a very segmented way. Build a segmentation model of your workforce. Be very clear about the people that are mobile workforce, that are deskless for example, versus more functional staff that are always in front of a screen.

You might want to segment by audience persona. There’s so many different ways and psychographic tendencies. I’m just going to leave that to one side at the moment because I think that’s all very, very important.

My observation over the years is that there needs to be someone at a senior level that cares enough to drive it forward.
I had a senior leader who used to talk about the burning platform. There has to be some kind of burning platform. Otherwise, honestly, as an IC leader you are going to feel like you’re hitting your head against a brick wall.

Find out who wants this. Who’s going to champion it for you? Who’s going to lead the way for you? Who’s going to have those backroom conversations to unlock budget, to unlock investment opportunities?

Because you can go to your audience and you can make all kinds of promises, but unless your leadership team is behind you and really wants to drive this through, you’re going to have a problem.

That’s just my perspective.

Alex Graves:

It’s something that we wanted to definitely drill into a bit more in this webinar. I think that’s one of the biggest challenges about identifying those people that are going to bat for you, right? Identifying those people that become your allies.

Often one of the blockers that we hear is that I’ve been asked to present a business case. I’ve got to create a business case. I’ve got to do that from scratch. Everybody’s verbally told me they think this is a great idea. But I still have to go and do a business case.

What do you think are the stepping stones in building that business case with the successful outcome?

I think you’ve touched on the one: get some allies. Get people around you who can say, we know this is a challenge in our business.

But what is that key to that unlock? Which is a successful outcome in presenting that business case.

Katie Macaulay:

This is a really interesting question. When you say business case I’ve got in my mind about 10 different documents that I’ve seen over the years. Some businesses, some boards want it on two sides of A4. If you can’t prove it to me on two sides of A4, I’m not interested. Others may be on the more professional services end where they’re used to 52 deck PowerPoints. They want everything to prove, then the whole return on investment bit has to be completely nailed down before they’ll even think about it.

What I would say is go to your finance director, your finance team and say can I have a couple of examples of some successful business cases from the last couple of years? Use those as your template.

I wouldn’t go to Chat GPT and ask for a business case. You need one that is going to work for your culture and your organisation.

Then of course, yes, align it. I’m not telling anyone that what they don’t know, align it to your business strategy.
I’ll give you two classic examples at the moment. Two things.

We’re working on one in a business that’s growing through acquisition. They’re in a situation where the sum of the parts don’t equal more than the whole at the moment. They’ve got a very fragmented, disjointed comms and digital experience landscape. So that’s obviously a business driver. How do we make all these acquisitions add up for us?

Another one is a business and manufacturing business that’s worked out that the only way it’s going to compete in the market is through collaboration. Is through the different divisions sharing their knowledge and expertise. And so that’s one of the drivers: better connection and collaboration between employees.

I think you’ve got to work out, OK, where’s this business going? How does the digital experience need to support that?
And then you’re developing, if you like, once you’ve done the current state. Because you then need to do the currents, where are we today? What’s the current tech stack? How does it look and feel? What are the pain points? And not just the pain points. When we do audits. I think sometimes we can focus too much on where the problems are. And that’s obvious. Ask people, can it be improved, they’ll always say yes.

There will be parts of your organisation that are doing things brilliantly today. There might be just small pockets, but learn from that. Best practice? It’s already happening inside your organisation.

Then you want to propose a solution that’s costed, and that’s got some kind of implementation and change plan at a high level attached to it.

I would say business cases often miss out best practice externally, so you’re looking inside.

What do we have? What do we not have?

Sometimes I think looking at the landscape more generally, the comms landscape, maybe your competitive landscape as well, could be quite useful.

And one of the things I think is very, very helpful is a vision and a five-year vision.

Let’s be realistic here. You’re not going to change everything in six months. You’re probably not going to change everything in 12. So can you, as an IC team, develop a compelling, if possible, measurable vision for where you want to get to with your digital employee experience?

I think that would be very, very powerful as well within that business case.

Alex Graves:

And in your experience at AB, how often do you get involved in helping a customer write that business case? Because you and us, as external third parties, we have the benefit of seeing that best practice around many different sizes of organisations, similar industries, similar verticals.

Do you often get asked to help to contribute to help those things, and if so, what’s been your experience of working with somebody in an IC team to help them do that? Because from my perspective, I think it would be really valuable.

Katie Macaulay:

I think you’re talking about two quite separate things here. We get involved when we need to write business cases just to do the audit. The audit alone could cost a sizable chunk of money compared to most IC budgets are pretty tight at the moment and resources aren’t great.

So we will get involved just to say we should look at this. We think it could be improved and we need to take stock of where we are today, work out what needs to be improved and come back with a series of recommendations, full stop.
All we’re doing at that point is coming back with a series of recommendations. That business case should be quite easy to do because you’re talking about quite a high level.

We shouldn’t be talking about 10s and 10s and 10s of thousands of pounds. It should be a piece of work you could get done in three to four months if you were focused on it. So that business case should be quite easy.

The second business case, which is our now know what we’ve got to deliver, what we’ve got to change, where the transformation needs to happen. I’m going to plot that out as a series of quick wins, longer term initiatives, I’ve got to attach a cost to all of that. That you can’t do as an external person alone. Because there’s going to be onboarding costs, there’s going to be off boarding costs, there’s going to be all sorts of security considerations. There’s going to be some integration considerations and the rest of it.

So that’s where I think what we bring to the party, in both instances I think, is objectivity. Particularly AB. We are completely agnostic when it comes to all this technology, so we’ll work with what you’ve got or what you haven’t got. It really doesn’t matter. We’ll make whatever you’ve got work.

Also, and everyone will know this because they’ll have employed a consultant to do it over the years, we can say what you’ve been trying to say for years, but not necessarily being properly heard. It’s massively frustrating to the in-house person whose leader turns around says, I think I’ve just heard what we should do.

You’ve been saying it for years, but all of a sudden they’ve heard it from someone they know how much their daily rate is, and then so we can play. I think a really, really useful role bringing in external best practice, being that third party advisor and coach. I think we can be for both of those business cases. We can play quite a helpful role, I think.

Alex Graves:

One of the biggest things that I hear as part of the writing a business case where they want a return on investment calculation. I know that you’ve experienced before.

What’s your feeling and take on providing an ROI calculation to senior stakeholders, so that internal comms and the channels that you’re using, is seen as more value creation within the business than just the cost?

Katie Macaulay:

So in communications, I always talk about two ways of measuring what you can measure.

One is purely output. This many people liked shared, commented, used, adopted, whatever. That’s very easy to calculate. Your IT function probably give you a lot of those stats. You yourself as an IC function can probably look at all of those things too. Output functions are a way of calculating that.

Then the harder thing, and I think the real cost benefit to the organisation, is what it feels like. Then you have to look a bit deeper to say, OK, what am I going to measure in order to prove this?

Then we’ve got to get into things like attrition rates. So have a look at your exit interview data. Is poor technology ever turning up in your exit interview data? “I’m just so frustrated by the way that I can’t do X, Y or Z.” Because there’s a cost to recruiting every single member of your workforce.

You could calculate that cost productivity, quality assurance, customer satisfaction. Is the technology getting in the way of people being able to provide a good customer service?

You have to dig a little bit and you have to use a little bit of imagination to think, OK, where could this be impacting the organisation? What does this organisation care about? What’s the cost of that and what’s the technology component? The technology component will be huge.

Honestly, it’s interesting to me because you can go back with numbers and numbers. I was involved in a very big global brand enhancement rejuvenation a few years ago and we had to for this board, this very impressive board. We had to calculate the value of the brand as it stood and the value of the brand. Now this was a brand that had been around 350 years, in the banking sector. That was a very difficult thing to do and it took months and months and months.

What I started to realise was that we were never going to win with the numbers. We were never going to win. The organisation wasn’t ready for it. It wasn’t that they didn’t believe the numbers. They didn’t believe in the idea. So I just say be a little bit wary if you’re forced to go back again, back again, back again.

No, we find those numbers, I don’t believe that it might just be a sign that your organisation isn’t quite ready for it.
I would say I think intuitively we understand the importance of the digital experience in keeping that customer happy, keeping them loyal. I’d like to think intuitively we’re at a place where we’re starting to understand how exactly the same works for employees. Fingers crossed.

Alex Graves:

What you described there in that employee listening piece, where you have to go out and you look at the data that you’ve got from your annual or biannual employee listening survey. That’s HR owned, or people and culture. And there’s teams that own that data before you can do this digital employee experience journey, or even a layer on that employee experience journey.

That’s why you need those people at the table, because that data alone is really valuable to helping you understand where you’ve been, where you are today, and influence where you would like to go.
So I think that’s just testament to the fact that you can’t progress. There’s no way of progressing without getting those people around that table.

And the ROI calculations, they’re a tricky thing, right?

You’re not always going to get that right. But if you map the, ‘this is where we are today and this is where we’re going’ based upon that data that you’ve got from your employee listening, the growth data that you can start to look at and measurements that you can put in place for ‘oh, we can see in our exit interviews people are talking about my laptop kept on dying, the phone you provided me was a piece of junk and it never connected where I wanted to.’

Perhaps an engineer out on the frontline and I don’t really feel connected to the organisation and they had the sorts of things where metrics are there, but it’s that real kind of qualitative data that you’re picking up from listening to people.
What’s your experience of working with frontline workers or deskless workers in that digital employee experience? And how are they included, or in your experience perhaps excluded, from digital employee experience and being involved in that?

Katie Macaulay:

It’s been an interesting journey with the deskless workforce over the years.

I’ve worked for many organisations where they’ve had a very large deskless employee group. I’m thinking particularly for example, of Royal Mail.

130-150 thousand people, most of the men and women walking the streets of the UK, some of them don’t even have work emails or certainly didn’t 10 years ago when we started to work for Royal Mail.

It’s interesting, isn’t it. What you find, in my experience, with deskless employees is let’s just forget digital for a moment. That touch point with your team leader is so important and you may only meet them once a day. Once a week. We know, and again you shouldn’t be saying this in a webinar about digital, face to face is the most powerful form of communication.

Whether that’s like this or ideally in real life, but it’s very rich, it’s a rich form of media. We get a lot from it. We get the tone of voice and behaviours and all that sort of stuff.

For the deskless workforce, there were only really two things for many, many years. One was that face-to-face interaction, and for many decades, actually, and this is going sound bizarre to a lot of people, print.

That’s how we used to connect with people. Sending them to their homes, sending regular publications to their homes.
Now, obviously, thank goodness times have changed and now there is a plethora of wonderful apps out there and within the Microsoft Suite as well. Social enterprise tools that you can connect with this workforce so that they can feel like they’re part of a community and so much easier.

The only thing I would say is that we’ve still got to make sure, and this is another thing that goes against just looking at the channels and the pipe work, I find it quite hard sometimes to separate content from channels. In my experience, you can invest a lot of money in an IC app or some sort of digital channel that connects your many 10s of thousands of deskless employees.

It can be bright and shiny, but if the content doesn’t resonate with that workforce, isn’t written for them, in their language, about things they care about, they’re not going to use it.

So yes, we’ve come a long way, but I still think the basics of ‘Does this resonate? Have I co-created it with the audience?’

All of those things that we used to do in print years ago, all of those things are still, I think really, really important.

Alex Graves:

You touched upon a point there about shiny tools. Everybody wants a new shiny tool and a new shiny thing that’s going to land and hit the mark with people, right?

One of the things that I’m seeing in that ecosystem consolidation because everybody’s being asked to do more with less now, right? It’s a phrase that I’ve heard more and more for the last couple of years. That consolidation of tools perhaps into a single provider like Microsoft, for example.

We’ve also just recently seen Meta, their Facebook for workplace is now something they’re deprecating that. They’ve sliced that one off. Perhaps that was a tool that was really used to engage that remote workforce. But they’re now having to shift. They’re now having to shift to a new set of tools, a new way of engaging.

I can remember being in organisations 15-20 years ago where you’re thinking about, ‘but we’ve been told that we can’t use Vimeo. We’ve been told that we can’t use YouTube. They’re actually blocked, IT block us from accessing these things.’ As an internal communicator, you want to try and select the channels that are appropriate for your audience because you just said the content is king. The content, the language, the tone of voice that you’re using and mapping that to an appropriate IT tool as part of that digital employee experience.

What are some of the challenges that you’ve experienced overcoming the tool selection within organisations? Because I think we’re about to see a big shift from everybody who’s on Workplace into a another tool. We were in conversations with lots of people about Viva Engage, rolling that out in place of it.

What are some of the challenges that you’ve seen in perhaps convincing people that this is the right tool you should go for?

We know that it’s the right tool because I’ve used it in another organisation. How can you convince those stakeholders that you know the right tool? What have you done in the past to help people do that? Whether it’s like tests or pilots or trials, so they work and how do you structure them?

Katie Macaulay:

They do work. First of all you need to do that needs analysis. What is it I need? Forget the tool for a minute. What, in an ideal world, would I be looking for?

Going into the market, because otherwise you’re going to be swayed by someone who’s got the jazz hands. So don’t do that.

Come up with a complete needs analysis.

It must do this, this, this. This would be a nice to have if it did this, it would be absolutely wonderful, but it’s not necessary. That’s what I need.

You go to the market and you’ll find there will be 3, 4, 5, 6 different ones that you’re going to use, that it’s possible to use. But then you’ve got to think about what is going to be most important to me?

For example, is it the back end. The way that I upload content. Is it the analytics that’s going to be really important to me? Is it the ease of onboarding? Is it the support I’m going to get from this SaaS provider?

There’s lots of different criteria for choosing the right one. I would say the criteria in that instance for me would be, do I feel like I’ve got a long term relationship with this supplier? I think that’s critical because there’s going be upgrades. It’s going to be things you need to change. There’s going to be things coming out of left field and you want to feel like you’ve got a partner, a true partner, as a tech provider.

One of the things that used to happen years ago, it’s not so much now, I’ve forgotten how many times it used to happen. You’d go in to do an IC audit, and they’d look at all the channels they’d had. Of course, they got an intranet and it was built on something that had a very strange name. The person that built it left five years ago. The other person that knew how to update things has left as well and they’re in this awful situation.

Thankfully, nowadays we’re talking about off the shelf tools many people know how to use. You can be trained in them. So things have improved radically.

I love a test and a pilot. I think if you’ve got two competing solutions, a small test with a diverse sample – and it doesn’t have to be a big sample of users – I think you’ve probably got to run that test for at least three to four months. Because I think you’ve got to actually see what it’s like.

But you’re not talking about ‘Oh, I love it because it’s blue’ or ‘I love it cause it’s shiny.’

You’re talking, ‘I love it because we said it needed to do XYZ and it’s doing those things.’

The other small thing I’d say is that what tends to happen is everyone lumps everything together. So IC apps, Microsoft, Workplace as one thing. They are not one thing at all. So Microsoft is a complete suite of communication tools, right? And you can pretty much find whatever you need within that.

Broadcasting news, you can do within that, social developments of community we can do within that. And Staffbase, for example, it’s largely an intranet with something social built onto it. Workplace was just really a social channel. So I’ll give you an example of what I mean by that in practice.

If I’d spent two weeks on holiday and I wanted to find out the latest news that I’d missed about the company, I wouldn’t have opened Workplace. I would have got lots of lovely messages from groups that I belong to, but I wouldn’t necessarily find ‘this is what you’ve missed.’ Whereas with Microsoft, if you’ve got a fantastic hub of the truth, the content hub, then you know where to go to find out everything you need that you’ve missed.

I just think separating them out, don’t see them all the same.

Go back to what is it we actually need for this organisation and for this audience. Do a pilot and the users will tell you what they like and what they don’t like.

Does that sound right, Alex?

Alex Graves:

Yeah it does. And I’m actually going to tie it back to the conversation that we had at the beginning about getting the people around the table and the road map. The digital transformation journey of where you’re going.

Because some organizations, when you’re selecting a new tool, perhaps if you don’t talk to the IT team, the HR team, you won’t know that they’re already looking at that larger digital landscape.

Often, I’ve seen examples where what we sometimes call shadow IT can creep in. It sneaks under the radar because there was a need within a pocket of people over here, and they often use WhatsApp for business or something like that.
I think it’s a case of bringing it back to that table and going well. We need this. What’s the plan? Where is that plan? If that plan is not transparent, clearly visible, well communicated, I think this is where IC folk have a really big part to play at being at that table. They need to understand to be part of that workplace transformation. That journey that you’re going on so that they can share in. Like you said about really plain simple language to the people, this is what we’re doing. This is why we’re transitioning.

If Meta’s Workplace is disappearing, well this is disappearing because they made a decision. We’re transitioning to this tool. We would like to invite some participants in to trial it. That could happen, or the converse. We’d like you to take part in those studies, to get that analysis of why we’re doing this.

I do understand that sometimes it can be kind of IT led. We’ve already got a license for this. Back to that, doing more with less though, right? Because sometimes that’s really important. But let’s make sure that we’re using the tools we’ve got and maximising them before we invest in something new.

So I do think there’s definitely something down to it’s an IT responsibility to make that road map transparent. And for comms to be really tightly, closely knit with them to go, we’re here to help you transform and help you understand how you communicate that out. I’ve seen lots of times where investments have been made in tools that should never really make it into the organisation because it was never part of a bigger plan.

But somebody’s got the ear of somebody who can push it through. And it happens. It happens all the time.
But in terms of that digital employee experience strategy and a getting a business case, getting everybody on board to that and agreeing it and aligning it. A piece of that puzzle for me is making it clear, making it visible so everybody knows what you’re doing and where you’re going and how are you going to get there. Because otherwise, that transformation won’t happen fast, and you’ll have a blockers.

But also you get that shadow IT creeping in as well.

Katie Macaulay:

Just doubling down on one thing you’ve said there, and I checked this stat this morning. Tech providers, tech companies reckon that the average customer is using 20% of the features and functionality that they have built. 20%. 80% of it not properly being used, or not being used at all.

So before you jump to the conclusion that we need something new, just check that the thing you’re using doesn’t actually provide that, because it really might. I think that’s worth remembering.

And the other thing is, the very first thing, and I’m giving this away for free. The very first thing that happens after every audit, which is the quickest win because it can be done in 24 hours. And apologies if everyone on this call has absolutely got this in place but I meet so many that don’t, is 1 pager that says we use this tool for this.

This tool for this this tool for this. This is the purpose of each tool, this is how to use it. If we’ve got a regular channel that comes in on a Friday, this is why it comes in on Friday and this is what it’s for.

So just get that clarity.

I often think a little bit about in our world, Alex, about wayfinding and this is going to sound really weird. But you walk into an airport, even an airport you know, and you are told exactly where the toilets are, how you depart, where the prayer room is, it’s an art form and a science. Wayfinding.

Do we do that enough as IC folk when it comes to the landscape, the digital landscaping? I’m not sure that we do. It’s just an observation. It’s just a thought.

Alex Graves:

It’s a very topical and clear observation. I’m speaking to three or four organisations at the moment where onboarding. For me you should cover that off on in the employees’ onboarding and every year there should be an update or a campaign.

You could even run an internal comms campaign about this. What to use when and why. You could call it wayfinder – how to find your way within the organisation.

And you said it earlier on, Microsoft are so guilty of having Teams, email, Yammer, sorry, Engage, SharePoint all these things that can do the same job. But I don’t really know what to use when and why.

If there was clarity and clear structure that says I’m looking to do this and I want to communicate out to this audience, in which case I go and do that here or that’s the channel for that. And being really clear about those channels.

I think that would help people measure as well. I think if you’re if you’re really clear to people about what to use when and why, and you’ve got those measurements in place to measure how all those channels are performing, I think it’s a really good opportunity.

Like you said, you’re giving it away for free, but you know you can really just go and say, well, actually it’s an adoption and change thing.

We could do very quickly and will make such a big difference to engagement as well.

Katie Macaulay:

Just on the measurement piece and the purpose. Honestly, I don’t think you can measure the effectiveness of a tool or a platform unless you’ve got its purpose written down. Because satisfaction is not the same as effectiveness.

I can say I’m highly satisfied with my team briefing process because my team manager makes me laugh every day. But the purpose of it is not to make you laugh. It’s to help you do your job, for example. So those two things are not the same.

If I’m going in and I’m auditing a series of channels or platforms, I need to know why have you got this and what is it supposed to be delivering? That’s what I’m going to ask people about. Does it effectively do this thing?

So it is just good practice to, as you say, do that map of what have we got and what do we use it for? That’s a starting point and share that with the world.

Alex Graves:

That’s a really good tip. I’m just going to take a moment just to encourage anybody who would like to ask a question in the Q&A to do it now or use the chat. We’re just going to come into the last 15 minutes now, so we’re going to make sure that we’ve got an opportunity to ask questions. Anybody that has them.

So, Katie, I think as we start to summarise and think about what people can take away from this webinar in terms of how they can actually get that senior stakeholder bought in and also aligned to a business case, what are some tips that you can give people?

I know you’ve already given one for free, just then about the adoption and change approach. But what are some things that you would summarise from this and your overall thoughts?

Katie Macaulay:

So go back to the business strategy. Go back to what your organisation is all about. What does it see as it’s role and purpose in the world? What lights a fire up against your senior leadership team about its priorities?

Really, really, understand.

Ask them what is the single most important thing that I, as an internal comms professional, can do to support this organisation. 10-1 it’s going to come back to something to do with a channel or a platform.

But start at that point there. I think we can get very excited about a bright shiny new tool, but I think we do just need to link it back. Have this really clear understanding of where your organisation is going and those business priorities.
The thing about an audit is it can be a big exercise and it can take up quite a bit of time. I predict that what’s going to happen in the next three to four years is we’re going to have much better listening channels inside organisations, always on listening channels.

You are not going to need to do this mammoth audit because you’re constantly having in front of you a dashboard through various listening mechanisms to tell you this audience is feeling unhappy about this. The sentiment is dropping here. We’ve got early signs of something here. If you can start to think not just about the big audit, but how and when am I listening? What am I listening for? Going back to those communication pain points as well.

The final thing is just get under the skin of your audience. Really, really, get to know your audience.

I can always tell a good IC person because they are out and about the whole time. Walking the shop floor, walking the offices, walking the corridors. I’m getting to know the audience and the different pockets of the audience. They’re clear on their audience personas and who they’ve got in front of them, just as a marketing person would.

And just to double down on that for a second. If you said to a marketing person, ‘You’ve got five minutes a day in front of your customer. Whole five minute. You’ve got five minutes a day in front of your most important customer.’ The marketing person will go ‘oh my goodness me, fantastic. Well, I’m going to speak to Carol. She’s married. She’s got three kids. She’s got a labrador. She does a part-time.’ That marketeer would know that customer segment.

We’ve got to be the same, because we get more than five minutes often. Employees will give us more than 5 minutes.
So let’s be very clear with our five minutes. Who we’re going to target and how we’re going to target them. Let’s know them intimately. Then we’ll have this fantastic connection with them.

Alex Graves:

That’s brilliant. Also, I think when you know your audience, writing that business case to do anything with them, it becomes so much easier because you’re able to effectively voice their concerns, voice their feelings in a business case.
And like you said, the narrative needs to be really accurate and true to who they are, where they are today. But understanding their pain points of where you’re growing towards in the future as well.

Something that I just want to summarise. I think for me it’s that digital employee experience road map. It needs to be really clear to everybody. That transparency and visibility of it through the internal comms team is absolutely paramount.

Before you start to jump into something, I think piloting things is really important as well. We’re doing a lot of pilots with organisations on Viva Engage premium, Viva Amplify and Microsoft love to know when their customers are ready to do these things. They’re happy to help you for free to pilot these things.

I think testing out listening, measuring. That can even come before a business case in some instances because you can actually just test it out. Does it work for us?

Because then we can form a business case around taking it to the next step. Sometimes it may be seen as cart before the horse, but actually it’s just testing the water.

Like you said there’s loads of tools out there. Let’s understand what’s available and what’s out there and try it out. Give it a go. We can do that listening and measuring.

I think we’ve had a couple of comments. Catherine, I think you’ve been sat on her shoulder, Katie, as they going through their business case process is one thing she says there.

Katie Macaulay:

I’m glad it resonated.

I really like Jenny’s point, actually. If I did one thing perfectly well, then everything else is mediocre. What would that one thing be? That’s brilliant.

My observation is post COVID there’s a lot of demands on internal comms teams at the moment. Budgets haven’t got bigger and team sizes haven’t got bigger. So we’re being forced to prioritise and work out the important from the urgent. I need this tomorrow really urgent, but this is the important thing. Doesn’t necessarily have a deadline, like improving in digital experience.

So that question I think is it enables you to really hone in on prioritising what you need to do as a team. So really love that a lot.

Alex Graves:

Hopefully other people can take that question and ask their senior exec that same question. I think that’s a really good one.

So I don’t think we’ve got any anything else in the Q&A, but if anybody would like to come off of mute and ask anything please do so. I’m just going to make sure that we’ve got that set up to do that. If you want to come off mute.

Katie Macaulay:

I’d love to know what people’s experiences of this has been like when they’re looking across their digital landscape. And some of the challenges that they’re, and how they’re feeling, are they feeling excited by the opportunity?

For a long time we struggled in internal comms, our channels and tools were not good. Everyone, if they’re old enough like me, can remember a time before email, before intranets, before the Internet, when we stood around a fax machine. We’re in a very, very different world.

Are people excited by the opportunity or are they a little bit apprehensive because actually now there’s too much choice? I’m not sure. It would be good to know.

Alex Graves:

If you please use the chat just to feed in any of that, I can’t see whether anybody’s typing. I think if I do a wrap up, if I give people the opportunity to type anything. Just in terms of wrapping up well, thank you, Katie again for the engagement that you provided and the insights you provided.

We will be sharing this obviously on our channels afterwards for you to follow up.

I know we had some people sign up from New Zealand. I don’t think will be attending right now because of the time zone. Hopefully they’ll be watching it back and we will be following up with a document for you about how to write the business case for something like an intranet as part of your digital employee experience.

Katie, I know that you’re recently launching some IC focused modules.

Do you just want to tell everybody a little bit about that as a teaser, go for it.

Katie Macaulay:

Yes. Two years. Two years. Alex,

This is so kind of you to let me mention this. Two years in the making.

After about 30 years in internal comms, I thought I haven’t got another book inside me and I can’t write another book.
But could I create an on demand masterclass program to help internal comms practitioners, in-house internal comms practitioners?

It’s launching in a few weeks time, www.icmasterclass.com, it’s about 7 or 8 hours of content, 8 work streams. I’m very, very excited about it. All the lessons learned the hard way. I’m hoping to share with people the easy way in a self-paced learning journey.

We will make sure that we get that shared along with anything we share with everybody as well, Katie. Thank you.
I’ll bring it to a close there so people can get off, go and have their lunch, if that’s your lunch time. Thank you very much, Katie again for joining it. And thank you everybody for your interaction and look forward to speaking with you soon.

Katie Macaulay:

Thank you everyone.
It’s been lovely.

Alex Graves:

Cheers, Katie.
Thank you. Bye.

Katie Macaulay:

Thanks.
Bye, bye.