Content: The Nerve Centre of Good Employee Communication

A robust organisational culture needs effective employee communication and the most important pillar of employee communication is good content. Content energises employees and this helps drive the organisation forward. Content plays a critical role in elevating the employee connect and enhancing the workplace ambience.  

Regular and effective employee engagement supports meaningful two-way conversations between employees and their employer, making the former feel valued by the latter. In other words, effective employee engagement leads to higher productivity, more commitment, greater motivation, better workplace ambience, greater collaboration and teamwork, happier customers and ultimately, increased revenues or profits.  

So why do we say Content is like the Nerve Centre? It’s because content for employee communication encompasses a broad spectrum of areas including leadership communication, employer branding, campaigns, news and events, HR announcements and even crisis management.   

Content empowers employees.  

Effective employee communication keeps employees informed, updated and engaged about company policies, organisational culture and work practices, hence making it essential for the success of an organisation.  

There are several aspects of employee communication including clarity, relevance, consistency, target audience, timing and channels that need to be taken into consideration while building a campaign strategy for employee communication.  

However, the most important aspect is Impactful Content. To ensure impact and create an engaging experience, content should be planned across a diverse range of formats ranging from newsletters and emailers to blogs, videos, podcasts. These will capture attention, spark conversations and ignite a sense of community. 

Content can also be designed specifically for corporate intranets. For the Tata Group’s global intranet, The Information Company (TIC) creates content designed to cater to a geographically and culturally diverse workforce. Here the content comes alive in the form of eye-catching banners, compelling stories, interactive contests and captivating campaigns. The content strategy covers all aspects of internal communication, from leadership communication to employee engagement and campaigns, and is specifically designed to successfully engage employees across Tata companies, and build a commonality through shared values. 

Content creates motivation.  

Without content that connects, employee communication would be ineffective, and without effective communication, employee engagement would be impossible. When based on insights, content has the power to build a compelling narrative and create an emotional bond between employees and the organisation. The more engaging the content – such as inspiring videos, creative emailers, visually rich campaigns, etc – the more likely it is to captivate employees’ attention and keep them engaged. 

For the ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel (AM/NS) India intranet, TIC helped build a  content strategy that lifted the intranet as a communication platform that bridged the gap between employees and management of the two recently-merged companies. 

Content promotes cohesiveness.  

For an organization to thrive, it needs to function as a cohesive unit. One of the most successful ways to achieve this is by aligning employees towards the company’s mission, vision and core values. Content, across all touchpoints, helps to reinforce these messages, promoting synergy and collaboration across all departments and levels of hierarchy within the company. It unites employees with a common purpose.  

We see that purpose communication is a growing trend among forward-looking organisations. To simplify the Aditya Birla Group’s Purpose Principles, TIC leveraged storytelling as a content form. The Group’s set of Purpose Books helped communicate the Group’s core values to employees in a simple yet creative manner. 

Content encourages transparency.  

Content is the conduit through which information is relayed to employees. Which is why content needs to be clear and consistent, and should be crafted for minimum risk of misunderstanding. Good employee content means employees are easily able to comprehend the goals of the company and their own role within it, and especially when it comes to rules and policies, regulatory compliances that need to be followed, workplace safety culture, operational updates, confidential information, strategic initiatives and the like.  

Content brings about better alignment across the organisation. An example of how content can contribute is the Mahindra Group’s use of videos to communicate its refreshed Rise 2.0 philosophy in 2023. The thought-provoking leadership content helped cascade and embed the new philosophy throughout the organisation. 

Content leads to a more dynamic workplace.  

If change is the only constant, then content is the North Star that can continuously guide employees during challenging periods of transition. As technology evolves rapidly and modes of working now include remote and hybrid, clear and empathetic content helps to articulate and explain new policies, address concerns and outline expectations in a dynamic, constantly changing workplace.  

For example, Hindalco’s Superhits was an internal communication campaign where TIC used the unifying theme of Bollywood movies to make heroes of the company’s employees. Here Hindi cinema examples were used to drive key employer brand messaging and build pride in the company’s people culture.  

Content helps to retain the best talent.  

Content builds a sense of community between employees by binding them together in a shared organisational culture that celebrates their diversity, rewards their achievements and fosters pride in belonging to the company. When employees are emotionally bound to an organisation, they are more likely to be loyal advocates of the employer brand and less likely to seek alternative career options. This also helps the company to attract and retain the best talent. Take the Mahindra Group’s Water Conservation video TIC created for World Water Day 2024, a compelling narrative that demonstrated how employees helped deliver on the company’s sustainability goals.  

To sum it up, when done well, good communication and good content creates a powerful and positive work environment. It builds a culture of inclusivity and empowerment, trust and transparency, and growth and innovation within the organisation. Partnering with an agency specialising in internal communication can help companies harness the full power of content to lift employee communication to a whole new level, making it more impactful and engaging for everyone involved. 

For close to two decades, (TIC) has partnered with some of India’s biggest corporates to develop integrated internal communication strategies that go beyond mere information decimation to include leadership-employee communication, employer branding, employee engagement and more. To see how TIC can help in your internal communication journey, contact us at + 91 842 581 4016 / 17 or simply drop an email at solutions@ticworks.com.