Podcast: The digital Employee Experience

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Last year all the buzz was about ‘moving to digital’, as employees around the world switched to remote working. But now that companies have adopted ‘the new normal’, what’s the next hot topic?

Join Simon Field to find out. Unless you’ve read the title, in which case you might already have a clue as to what this year’s focus is for Internal Comms. You can listen or watch the podcast, or scroll downwards to read the transcript – whatever makes you happy :)

The Internal Communication Podcast_Episode 24.mp4 from Happeo on Vimeo

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The crisp, clear employee experience

Simon Field: You're absolutely right. I think this phrase, ‘employee experience’, has been gaining currency in the last couple of years and it had probably pre-COVID pandemic already gained ground as a key selling point in the employer experience, that fixation and dedication to the employee experience is something that marked out the really good companies.

But I think with the advent of COVID-19 and the experience that we've been through as individuals in companies in 2020, 2021, I think about that phrase and everything that it encompasses has taken on a new urgency.

Digital Employee Experience – where IT meets IC

Jonathan Davies: I've been noticing over the past two years that the IT departments that I've been speaking before, the heads of those departments have increasingly been impressing me with the idea of ‘Yes, but what does it mean to our employees?’ That there really has been a shift in thinking on their side.

How much can you personalize digital Employee Experience?

Jonathan Davies: But I think therein lies a very big challenge because Internal Communications will need to figure out likely together with IT, how we can make the case for personalization to begin with.

What about communication channels?

Jonathan Davies: We're approaching the end of this podcast, but I want one more recommendation from you because you're completely on the money, as I would say, in terms of also how I see this. This is a really interesting conversation to have.

Simon Field: I'm not a technologist, so I can't give you any specific examples of how this can be achieved, but I can give you a metaphor. In digital and print media we understand that the white space is as important as text. When you place a white space around a sentence, a piece of communication, it helps you to focus on the thing that the author is trying to help you to focus on.

Up until recently, we haven't been providing that white space to employees inside companies. We've just been layering text over text, over text, over text, over text, whether it's by a reduction in the total number of channels, signposting the channels that we think as a company are the best for us, enabling people to curate their own digital workplace...

Conclusion

Jonathan Davies: Simon, I think you've just coined the term ‘white space communications’. I'm going to be using this for a very long time now. Thank you very much for that! That is absolutely brilliant.

We've unfortunately reached the end of our time during this podcast, but I absolutely loved this conversation and you make so many really good points that I really hope that Internal Communicators who are listening to this right now are going to sit down and figure out how we can start creating catering, personalizing this digital employee experience that we have now.