6 corporate communication trends in 2022

Corporate communication is undergoing constant changes, but in recent years they have been especially fast. It is important for any leader, HR and internal communications manager to have current priorities, to be aware of trends to take the right steps. In this article, we've rounded up 6 things to focus on in 2022.

Corporate communication, or internal communication, is a key part of running any business. Errors in the process of internal communications lead to the failure of the company's business processes. The inability of a company to transform and adapt at any time, but especially during a pandemic, leads to problems such as lowered engagement, reduced employee performance, slow adaptation and high staff turnover.

The main thing to keep in mind when working with internal company communications is integrity. When planning your strategy, don't forget any of these things:

Company values
If your company doesn't have a well-defined list of values that employees should live by, then 2022 is a great time to make one. Corporate values are a set of rules and principles that must be followed. Values form relationships both within the company and with customers and partners. They are necessary to create a comfortable and predictable working environment between employees, as well as to design the external image of the company.

Inclusiveness and versatility
For an internal communications strategy to be truly effective, it must be kept in mind when planning that all employees are in different circumstances and have different preferences. Someone actively uses mail at work and it is convenient for them to read news in mailing lists, while someone does not log into the mail client often, but constantly uses the corporate messenger. It is important to first conduct research and find out the methods and formats of communication popular among employees to use only the necessary communication channels and not leave anyone in an information vacuum.

Communication format
Of course, mail remains the most popular way to communicate with a wide range of employees, but the newsletter format itself is too outdated and now employees are not interested in reading large plains of text. We advise you to explore new formats that are better suited for universal consumption, which are convenient and easy to read and watch from any device: computer or smartphone, regardless of operating system and time of day. The more convenient it is for employees to read your messages, the greater the read rate, and hence the engagement.

Content plan
Maintaining a content plan is a good rule that all communications professionals should practice. If you send messages at different times and at different intervals, it will be difficult for employees to get used to them. We recommend that you regularly create and update a content plan for a month, and preferably a quarter. It is not necessary to plan the exact topics and content, but it is essential to always know the exact date and time of the next news release.

Goals
You need to initially understand what goals you want to achieve through internal communications. This will allow you to understand what metrics you need to track and how to measure the effectiveness of the work being done. How to choose goals for an internal communication strategy? Examples of well-chosen goals are increasing employee engagement, increasing corporate content reach, reducing staff turnover, and the completion rate of employee surveys.

Efficiency analysis
If you have done a lot of work planning communications for the year, you should take care to evaluate its results. Conducting surveys and internal research should become a regular activity in your company. It helps not only evaluate the success of the internal communications department but also monitor the mood and attitude of employees towards the work you have done. You can learn more about conducting surveys in our article.

Even if you have a communications plan in place, it's worth aligning it with current industry practices to stay on trend and retain valuable employees who may be unhappy with outdated communication approaches in your company. Here are 6 trends that will help you with this.

In difficult times, employees want to hear from their leaders, those who make key decisions in the company. The CEO and key executives should communicate regularly with subordinates and share information about the state of the business, explain the decision-making process and show the company's openness and willingness to dialogue.

Unfortunately, it is often difficult to convince a boss to take a more active role in the communication process. The reasons for this may be lack of time, oratory skills, anxieties. But the openness of the leader can be a real reason for increasing loyalty, employee retention and helping retain key staff members.

But how do you convince the CEO to get involved in corporate communications? We have a couple of tips:

1. Choose communication topics that will appeal to the manager and fit with your internal communications strategy.
2. Use unique formats. We recommend recording video messages. This option can be especially suitable for companies with a large number of remote employees.
3. Make it a regular practice to issue CEO addresses at least every quarter.
4. Be mindful of the manager's preferences and adjust the format accordingly. For example, one manager may be comfortable holding open Q&A sessions with employees, while another may not accept this format.
5. Remember that this initiative has two main goals - to allow the CEO to comfortably speak up and share plans and motives with subordinates and to show employees the openness of management and a willingness to dialogue. It is necessary to strike a balance so that both parties understand and are comfortable with the chosen format.
6. It is important to show employees that the manager is the same person and their colleague. Do not fight with manifestations of emotions, personal thoughts and experiences.

What is the most addictive and engaging communication format we know? Of course, Stories! But what attracts us to them? Let's figure it out.

Firstly, authenticity and simplicity. Stories do not contain long introductions, long paragraphs of text. It is easy to perceive information in Stories, they require no more than 10 seconds from the viewer, but at the same time, they contain a capacious message that is understandable without preparation.

Secondly, the convenience of content consumption. You can watch stories anywhere and anytime. All you need is a smartphone and some time. This is important because the stories correspond to modern internet standards, according to which the user does not search for content, but receives a personalized suggestion at a convenient time.

Thirdly, the teaser format. Often a person wants to be "teased", interested. Surely you notice that when you go to a social network, instead of scrolling through the feed, you find publications of interest through Stories. If you need to share voluminous news or a document, then you should prepare a small teaser, a summary of the main content that will interest the employee or introduce him to the course even without reading the main text.

Fourth, interactivity and dynamism. Stories are often short but engaging videos. Furthermore, social networks allow you to actively use interactive features - polls, replies, comments, likes. The implementation of these mechanics will allow your employees to feel connected with the company and in the future, they will be more likely to be interested in your content.

How can these principles be put into practice? Try to make the communication channels in your company more modern: instead of long texts, share short summaries and give a link to a big post, publish more videos, use the maximum interactive features.

Many companies are still using outdated solutions for maintaining internal portals. Confusing and non-intuitive interface, outdated design, poor compatibility with mobile devices are all problems that stop your employees from using bad communication channels. At the same time, the same internal portals have advantages that cannot be denied. These are security, centralization, they are often used in a company for a long time and come bundled with other accustomed business solutions.

We believe that your corporate communications strategy in 2022 must include a corporate portal. But instead of a source for finding information, it should become a place to store it. There are many ways to get around the inconvenience of the inner portal. For example, use other channels to distribute information in a brief but convenient form, and direct employees to the corporate portal only to display full texts.

A good solution would be communication channels that allow you to show different types of content on multiple devices, controlled from one place. Such advanced content management systems (CMS) allow you to use targeting (show only to the right employees), integration with your other platforms (for example, automatic import of sales data and sales metrics from CRM), work with different types of devices and allow you to collect statistics and feedback.

In a situation of a hybrid work mode, in which some employees are working at home, while the other part goes to the office, the usual communication channels have ceased to be effective. General meetings, conference calls and mailing lists do not always help convey important information. This is where personal relationships come into play. In any team, there are opinion leaders who are known and respected by many colleagues. One of the trends in 2022 is to use these employees for your communication strategy.

• Find the right people. They should be motivated, involved in the development of the company, have a wide range of connections among employees and are ready to help you.
• Convey to the selected opinion leaders the reasons, the benefits of the transformations being made, the need to communicate this information to colleagues. It's also important that your internal influencers collect feedback so they can give it back to you.
• Let them use the company's communication channels if they would be more convenient and effective.
• Allow these employees to choose topics for communication with colleagues through corporate channels. Your task here is to give them a platform for communication and convince them to discuss topics important to the company.

In recent years, the number of messages on behalf of companies has steadily increased. It is necessary to share important news, changes in the mode and schedule of work, requirements and rules with employees. But perhaps you should rethink the frequency and volume of messages.

There are various reasons to reduce the number of corporate messages. Sometimes it can be an inopportune moment because of the news in the country and in the world. Sometimes you yourself may notice that the number of messages has become too large and intrusive. Also, we advise you to ask questions about the quantity and quality of communications in your regular surveys in order to immediately monitor for possible kinks.

Another reason may be too many communication channels. Of course, in a modern large company, several formats for communicating with employees will be used. But it is important to remember that if an employee receives the same messages from 3 different sources every time, they will soon get bored and will want to protect themselves from this information as from noise. If you notice such a situation, it is better to take a break and rethink the information delivery channels used, the format of delivery and the frequency of use of each of them.

We think that the key point that will determine the quality of internal communications in 2022 will be the right communication strategy. The main thing to remember when working with it is integrity, try not to forget the important sections of the strategy, but remember that any strategy can be changed and optimized on the go.

Also in 2022, company communications should become more human and less formal. Increasing the role of managers, using internal opinion leaders, searching for more natural and employee-friendly interaction formats.

Try to put yourself in the place of employees in order to understand what kind of content they would like to see and how it is more convenient for them to watch it. Surveys and personal conversations with colleagues help with this. Also, keep an eye on the amount of content so as not to create unnecessary information noise for employees. In 2022, it's worth optimizing your existing communication channels and considering introducing new ones that will help bring together disparate unintegrated formats.

The Workstories platform allows you to combine corporate communications in a company using the Stories format. Corporate Stories are easy to create and broadcast on any device: computers, smartphones and TV panels in the office. It is convenient for an employee to view stories in a few seconds, which will save time on getting acquainted with the main news while allowing them to be aware of important events and changes. And thanks to the pop-up teaser format, important information will never go unnoticed!

Interactive Stories will increase the engagement of both office and remote employees, which makes Workstories a great tool for hybrid teams. You can also conduct surveys and tests, and follow the results in the built-in engagement and feedback analytics.