SnapComms Blog

When planning an IT outage or experiencing an unplanned outage, it’s important to communicate well with all employees affected.

We’re exposed to messages everywhere we go. Whether at home, at work or anywhere in between, a constant stream of information is fed to us. In fact, each person receives about 105,000 words every day. Or put another way, 23 words per second – that’s a lot of information overload.

The annual IABC internal communications conference lit up Vancouver this year and the SnapComms team were there. Not just attending, but presenting a masterclass in internal comms.

Employees are typically spending less time physically active and more time at their desk. This can have a detrimental impact on them – and the organization. There’s no longer any doubt that work affects health.

The hard truth is that most IT rollouts fail. Even when every technical issue is resolved, staff must still be informed about, invested in and using the tool.

Uncertainty is bad for business. Few people thrive when they are feeling nervous and insecure. Most of us work best when we have a clear picture of where our organization is heading and what we need to do to contribute.

Extreme weather events are becoming commonplace across the world.

Floods, hurricanes, snowstorms, Earth quakes and other natural events inflict serious damage to lives and property.

For businesses, being prepared is the best insurance to minimize the damage.

Staff would rather communicate with their immediate supervisor than any other level of management.

This is particularly true during uncertain times.

Staff may start to distrust the ‘corporate mouthpieces’ such as the intranet, and turn to their managers for interpretation.

Effective internal communication is central to acceptance, user adoption and effective usage of any new systems introduced by IT teams.

But changing how staff work takes effort. They need to be informed of the value of the technology and engaged with it in order for them to use it effectively.