Digital Transformation Checklist for Employee Communication
Digital Transformation Checklist for Employee Communication
Preface
Nearly every industry is undergoing some form of digital transformation. Unfortunately, not all of them go smoothly. One big reason is that organizations fail to take their employees into account when making technical changes. So much of the focus is on the tech side that they often forget to keep the lines of communication open and ensure team members stay informed — leading to frustration and confusion about the changes.
There’s a disconnect when it comes to internal communication about digital transformations. According to a study by PwC, 90% of executives report that their company pays attention to the needs of their staff when deploying new technology. However, only slightly more than half of employees agree.
Digital transformations succeed only when employees embrace the technology. Preparing your team for the changes ahead and keeping everyone informed throughout the process is crucial for success.
Digital Transformation Checklist for Internal Communication
This digital transformation checklist can help you ensure your team stays in the loop:
- Create your communication plan: Decide ahead of time how and what you will communicate with your team. Ensure key decision-makers provide a steady stream of information so you can keep everyone up to date.
- Commit to transparency: Surveys by Gallup consistently show that barely more than 20% of employees are fully engaged with their work. Often, it’s because companies don’t keep their teams informed about what’s going on. Commit to transparency throughout the digital transformation process to encourage engagement.
- Choose your internal communication tool: Most companies employ internal communication software to facilitate consistent messaging, such as an employee intranet. You may want to use a tool like Haiilo, a multichannel employee communication platform that lets you share content across multiple channels, improve employee engagement, align your workforce, and increase workplace productivity.
- Dedicate resources toward employee communication: Even if you have the right communication software in place, it will be effective only if you use it properly. Not only do you want to deliver information to every member of your team, but you also want them to engage with you. This happens only if you dedicate resources to maintaining effective communication.
- Ensure timely and consistent information flow: For companies that rank among the best workplaces, there’s one consistent message: Employees overwhelmingly say that communication is a top priority. This requires a consistent approach and a commitment to keeping employees informed.
- Beware of information overload: Delivering a fire hose of information to every team member can cause some employees to tune everything out. Consider segmenting information to deliver the relevant content that specific work groups need to know. This is one place where internal communication software can be extremely helpful in creating and managing different work groups.
- Encourage engagement and conversation: The most effective way to ensure your messaging is resonating is by encouraging engagement. Promoting two-way conversations and answering questions can help your team better understand and retain information.
- Take the team’s temperature: Throughout the digital transformation, check in with your team about whether everyone feels that they’re receiving the information they need. Your communication software should facilitate polling, surveys, or other ways to gauge employees’ sentiments. You should regularly ask for feedback about your internal comms and whether you are providing the information your team needs.
- Make information accessible: Email might be a good way to get a message out quickly, but it’s less effective when people need to access resources. A better solution is using your employee comms platform as a single source of truth.
- Develop a resource hub: A dedicated channel on your communication platform can help provide the depth of information different team members need. While some may just need to know about changes, others may need insight into more technical details. Creating a hub for how-to documents, video explainers, and educational material can help.
- Make navigation easy: Within your intranet or company app, make documentation searchable so it’s easy to find. You should also create relevant channels, such as announcements, technical documents, and onboarding information. You may want to segment information specifically for work groups or remote employees as well.
- Take a multichannel approach: Employees don’t always read all of their emails or take the time to check the intranet. Make sure you are communicating across multiple channels and meeting your employees where and how they work. This requires an integrated internal communication platform to unify your messaging across channels.
- Monitor and measure engagement: Throughout the digital transformation, you want to keep an eye on what pieces of content employees are engaging with. This can help inform you about whether you are meeting your objectives.
Improve Your Odds of Digital Transformation Success
Digital transformations are challenging. McKinsey research revealed that only a third of companies reported that they fully met their goals after undergoing an organizational transformation. The most successful companies had a clear plan for how to communicate the “change story” to their teams and implemented the necessary digital tools to make information widely available, including digital self-serve technology.
Ultimately, the success of your digital transformation will rest on three things:
- The technical implementation
- The workflow and processes
- How employees embrace the new way of doing business
Organizations typically focus their efforts on the first two steps but don’t put in place a strategy for the third step. You can significantly increase your odds of success by paying attention to all three facets of the digital transformation, including keeping your employees informed, engaged, and excited about the changes ahead.
Improve Your Internal Communication
Keeping your employees up to date on your digital transformation will help make your transition smoother. Using Haiilo’s employee communication platform is an easy way to make sure your team stays informed. You can get your own communication app to share company information, target content to specific work groups, and measure engagement. You can also use Haiilo to distribute content through multiple channels and platforms, such as Teams, Slack, email, and more.