Internal company podcasts are a great way to engage employees, encourage employee share of voice, and keep the workplace informed about important company updates.
The popularity of podcasts has been increasing rapidly in the past decade, and they are one of the most favorite mediums marketers and thought leaders use to promote their company’s offerings and increase brand awareness. The majority of Americans aged 12-54 (53%) have listened to a podcast in the last month, and roughly 79% are familiar with the medium.
Internal company podcasts are yet to gain popularity, but more and more HR and internal comms professionals are introducing internal podcasting initiatives in their organizations.
In this blog, we will talk about the benefits of internal podcasts and how to launch an internal company podcast to reach and engage employees.
What Is an Internal Company Podcast
Internal company podcasts are live or prerecorded audio sessions organized specifically for internal purposes.
Internal company podcasts are becoming more and more popular as a channel to communicate with employees. They can be used to keep the workforce informed and aligned, to onboard employees in a more engaging way, to keep the employees connected with senior leadership, to drive transparency in the workplace, and to create an open company culture where employees can speak up and share their voices.
Remember, your goal with podcasts should be to create a frictionless listening experience that provides the best employee engagement.
But how can you use internal podcasts, and why would you want one in the first place? Keep reading to find out!
Learn how Haiilo can help you run successful company podcasts!
Why Should You Implement an Internal Company Podcast
Internal company podcasts have been gaining in their popularity because of the 2 obvious reasons:
Convenience
One of the main reasons why podcasts are so popular today is their convenience. Compared to webinars or live events, podcasts can be listened to on the go, without the need to sit at a desk, look at a screen, or read slides and other materials.
This can be particularly useful for enterprise organizations employing a high volume of frontline workers without a designated working space, or mobile workers who are always on the go.
Even for remote workers, podcasts offer an opportunity for employees to go for a walk or engage in another activity of their choice – enabling employers to promote better employee well-being and work-life balance simultaneously.
Engagement
Because podcasts are so convenient, they have much better engagement and listenership than other internal communications mediums.
According to a podcasting agency, while many forms of internal communication have employee engagement rates below 20%, internal podcasts have a much bigger potential. The average podcast episode has an 80-90% listen-through rate, according to Podtrac. This underlines the high level of loyalty and commitment of the listeners. Evaluations by the corporate audio platform Hypecast show that corporate podcasts have a listen-through rate of 93%.
Due to the extensive information overload, inboxes filled with emails, and channels full of messages, it can be hard for HR and IC professionals to cut through the noise with important company updates that must reach and be consumed by every employee.
Since podcasts allow for multitasking, it’s easier to find time to listen to them.
Also, podcasts can be much more efficient because they leave less room for interpretation than written communication.
5 Steps to Implement an Internal Company Podcast
If you are planning to implement an internal company podcast, these are the must-follow steps.
1. Get your leaders on board
Employees want to hear from your company’s leaders. When they see that the leadership and C-level executives are engaged, they are more likely to become more engaged as well.
Hence, if you are planning to introduce internal company podcasts, the leadership must be on board.
Moreover, your CEO should be, whenever possible, the host of your webinar. Here, proper leadership communications are critical. They need to act as role models and are responsible for ensuring that the entire workplace is aligned with where the company is today and where is it heading.
2. Create a monthly podcast calendar
When preparing your internal company podcast, you need to have a good idea about the topics you want to showcase. Preparing a monthly podcast schedule and editorial calendar is critical for efficient planning and execution.
The best way to start is by thinking about your company’s ultimate goals and the challenges your company is facing today.
If your organization, for example, is facing high turnover rates, you could have a podcast with an open discussion about what your employees care about or are motivated by.
If you are unsure about how to get started, you can always ask your own employees. Distribute simple company-wide surveys asking employees about their preferences for different podcasting topics. Learning from your employees is the best way to make the content more engaging.
3. Promote your podcasts internally
Good internal marketing is necessary for better podcast listenership and employee adoption. Use various internal channels to reach your workforce and promote the new initiative.
Send an internal newsletter, and post it on your company’s intranet, and other communications channels such as Slack, MS Teams, email, and others.
📹 Proper internal communications are critical for ensuring better success with your podcasts. So check out our Masterclass: Best Practices for Managers to Improve Internal Communications
4. Get the right technology
Proper workplace technology can help you make your internal company podcasts more successful. For example, social intranets like Haiilo can help you easily segment your audience for better podcast targeting. Remember, relevancy is critical for boosting employee listenership and engagement with your podcasts.
Next, it can help you streamline podcast distribution using a multichannel communications strategy. With just a few clicks, you can distribute your podcasts to multiple internal communications channels your employees use daily.
Also, with the Hypecast plugin for Haiilo, you can create your own audio infrastructure for your company with just a few clicks. This allows your teams to listen to the content anytime and anywhere, just as they are used to in their private lives.
Last but not least, the platform enables you to measure the success of your podcasts, track engagement, and use valuable insights to keep improving your podcasting initiatives.
5. Ask employees for feedback
To keep your podcast successful, you must engage your employees and get feedback from them regularly.
After every podcast, you could send employees a 2-question survey asking what they liked and what they thought could be improved.
If you consider your employees’ share of voice, you are guaranteed to produce podcasts and content that they will want to listen to.
5 Internal Company Podcast Ideas to Help You Get Started
Not sure about the topics to cover on your company podcasts? Here are a few ideas.
Company culture podcast
Most enterprise organizations know what their core company values are. To nurture them, it is important to keep reminding people of them. So consider a quarterly company culture podcast with one of the senior leaders as the host.
During the podcast, the main goal should be to talk about the alignment with the core company values and what can be done to achieve better alignment.
The best way to encourage certain behaviors and alignment with company values is by showcasing real examples. If there are situations where a certain employee showed that they truly live by your company’s values, they should be highlighted in this podcast.
💡Take a look at how we do it at Haiilo 👇🏾
Training and onboarding podcasts
Internal company podcasts can be used for employee training and new employee onboarding. Most companies have dozens of onboarding documents for various roles and departments, and this can make the onboarding long and not very engaging.
You can use prerecorded podcasts instead of written onboarding materials. If you are hiring a lot, you can even have bi-weekly live departmental onboarding podcasts to make the new hire onboarding more fun and engaging for everyone.
Why should you invest in a better onboarding experience in the first place? Because 69% of employees state that they’re more likely to remain with a company if they receive a great onboarding experience.
Company updates podcasts
Every company has some way of giving written company updates to every employee.
The challenge is that not many employees consume this type of company content. That means it’s probably time for you to try something new.
You may be used to sending company updates to employees via email, but emails get more and more ignored. New workplace communication statistics show that 60.8% of employees ignore emails in the workplace.
A different content format can make a huge difference. Next time there is an important change or update to be shared with your employees, consider an internal company podcast to share the news!
Q&A podcast
Having a 1-hour monthly podcast session where people can ask any questions to senior leadership can help you build a positive, more transparent company culture.
In large enterprises, teams often work in silos and they don’t have the opportunity to get answers to important questions they may have.
Remote and hybrid workplaces face the same challenge.
Knowledge sharing podcasts
Podcasts are a great tool for internal knowledge sharing. Learning from other’s wins and experiences is critical for driving continuous success and ensuring business continuity.
For example, you can create departmental learning podcasts. Your sales team could be sharing learnings, experiences, and challenges from the latest won or lost deals with the rest of the sales organization.
Your marketing leader could host a quarterly podcast about marketing achievements and learnings about the various marketing channels, while HR departments could have a podcast about successful initiatives for reducing employee turnover rates.
After all, there are no limits when it comes to podcast topics. Choose them based on your organization’s goals, challenges, and opportunities.
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