Employee Communications in a Virtual World
To get to where we are now, I suspect that communications with your people has been strong, consistent and heartfelt. There will, no doubt, have been constant updates telling employees what to do about work, setting out safety guidelines and, for some, the hard decision to communicate employment status changes as businesses temporarily close their doors.
After the initial surge of communications with your people, now is not the time to stop. You have the extraordinary power and responsibility to help your teams through this time in their lives. Your actions now can impact their day-to-day locked down lives and strengthen resolve to overcome challenges that lie ahead. Your actions don’t need to be heroic, but the small stuff will make a difference.
The most important thing you can do is to keep communicating – more regularly, creatively, and with purpose.
To go beyond the morning ‘how are you all doing today?’ WhatsApp greeting, here are some daily themed ideas to get you virtually recreating team spirit and employee engagement.
Start the week with ‘Meet Up Monday'
It’s the most basic of rules, but if you aren’t already, use Microsoft Teams, Google Hangout, Zoom etc. to make sure that you connect regularly with people. If you normally have a monthly meeting, make it a weekly meeting during this period, to keep people connected.
If you all normally work together in the same office, then the morning will be a good time for saying hello and talking about what you did the evening before. This informal but important team bonding time will be missed, so recreate that daily ‘hello’ virtually.
If you don’t need to have a full team meeting every week, just do something quickly, like a Quick Cuppa session and all sit down together with a tea or coffee and have an all important 15-min catch up to keep everyone focused.
Inject some fun by having a theme for each meeting, such as all wearing a hat on the call or silly glasses. ‘Pass the baton’ to each other so that someone comes up with a new theme each week.
Keep senior leaders visible too by inviting them to join for a ten-minute low-down on key points and success stories. It will help keep the team connected to the organisation and visible leadership will keep the team reassured.
Instil a ‘Training Tuesday’ in your weekly comms!
Learning keeps the brain engaged and helps us to feel a sense of accomplishment. How often have your teams said they don’t have time to do some training? Well, now is the time to invest in your team development.
There are lots of online short courses running for free at the moment, so encourage your teams to up-skill themselves. One of my favourites is Future Learn.
Learn together as a team by all watching the same TED Talk on a relevant topic and discuss it together afterwards. A couple of ones to start you off: Arianna Huffington on getting more sleep and Matt Cutts on trying something new for 30 days.
Keep teams positive and in the know by sharing some ‘Wednesday Wisdom’
Share a relevant article about something happening in your industry, or a thought leadership piece to inspire your colleagues.
Share a good quote about resilience, coping in a crisis or working through change.
Create a book group to read and discuss a worthy business book together. Break it down into chunks by reading a chapter at a time. Thought leaders like Simon Sinek are taking part in book group discussions, take part here
Let the social events continue with Thirsty Thursday
Your organisation might be one with a highly active social scene, or maybe the after work drinks always gets cancelled because people have to rush off to collect kids, go to the gym, or to another social engagement; whatever your existing workplace social culture, now is a perfect time to invite colleagues to bring a beverage of their choice to an ‘after-work’ virtual drink.
Finally, keep that Friday feeling going with ‘Fun Fridays’
There are loads of funny memes, videos and quotes going around at the moment, but constant sharing can be irritating and distracting for some, so consider having a ‘Mad Half Hour’ 30-minute slot, where everyone shares the best things, they’ve seen that day.
People need some moments of magic right now in their lives, so don’t forget about all the things you can celebrate, like birthdays – especially if you would have had a card or a collection in the office. A virtual rendition of Happy Birthday perhaps? Many weddings and baby showers have been cancelled or scaled back so, if this affects someone in your team, make sure you do your best to help them celebrate or cheer them up.
There are many virtual games you can play from Virtual Charades to Two Truths a Lie (each person tells two truths and a lie about themselves, and the rest of the team have to guess which the lie is)
That should keep your week busy! We’ll be posting more ideas over the coming weeks.
Enthuse, an award-winning Manchester engagement agency, is here to help. Contact us today on 07812 343 310 or via email at andrea.law@enthuse-comms.co.uk.