Dave Cain: Welcome to unsuitable on Rea Radio, the award-winning financial services and business advisory podcast that challenges your old-school business practices and their traditional business suit culture. Our guests are industry professionals and experts who will challenge you to think beyond the suit and tie, while offering you meaningful modern solutions to help enhance your company’s growth. I’m your host, Dave Cain.
In business, the topic of communication comes up every day, especially when we talk about ways to effectively communicate information about products and services to our customers and clients. But what are you doing to communicate better with your employees? If you are making internal communications a priority in your business, what are you doing to maximize your efforts?
On today’s episode of unsuitable on Rea Radio, we’re talking to Abigail Eisenbrei, Internal Communications Specialist here at Rea. Before coming to Rea & Associates, Abigail helped implement communications strategy at the corporate level for a company with over 25,000 employees. Since joining Rea, she has used her experience and expertise to help us with our own internal communication opportunities.
On today’s episode, Abigail is going to talk about the three primary objectives of internal communications. Then she will give us some tips to help us implement a solid strategy in the workplace that will help us achieve maximum results. Welcome to unsuitable, Abigail.
Abigail Eisenbrei: Thank you.
Dave: Welcome. I should say welcome to the holiday edition of unsuitable on Rea Radio.
Abigail: Yes. I like your sweater.
Dave: Well, thanks. Yours is great as well. We encourage our listeners to go onto YouTube and check them out. As our Christmas edition, maybe we start with what is your favorite … You have a favorite Christmas carol, Christmas song?
Abigail: I do. My favorite Christmas carol is I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.
Dave: That goes back a ways. Were you singing that on the way down to the Columbus area?
Abigail: I wasn’t. I was listening to a Mariah Carey Christmas CD instead.
Dave: Okay, okay.
Abigail: But I love that movie, White Christmas, so it’s a great song.
Dave: Yeah, I had you as maybe Vacation as an expert … that was one of your favorite shows, Holiday Vacation.
Abigail: No, it’s not, actually.
Dave: No?
Abigail: No.
Dave: Okay. Well, we’re going to talk about communication, which you brought to Rea & Associates, a very interesting concept of the fact of an internal communications specialist, which is virtually unheard of for companies of 300 employees. Congratulations on bringing that concept to the CPA industry.
Abigail: Thank you. It’s been a real pleasure to work with Rea so far, and I’m looking forward to communicating for employees as we move forward.
Dave: In our intro, we talked about the three strategies that we want to talk about when someone is gathering information to put together communication strategy within the firm. I think we’ll talk about those in high level. One is to inform, to educate, and to engage your employees. Let’s start there. Those are your primary objectives of internal communication. Let’s talk about where does a company start to put in a communications program? What’s the first step?
Abigail: Inform, educate, and engage are really best practices when it comes to internal communications. They’re pretty simple to integrate because, when you inform, you educate, which leads to engagement. They’re all intertwining. They all interconnect to make a whole plan in itself. To really start, it starts with informing and educating, so on a very basic level, letting employees know what’s happening within the company, whether that’s due dates, whether that’s forms they need to submit. That’s at the very basic level, just so they know what they’re required to do by the company outside of their regular job requirements.
Dave: Before we dig a little deeper into that concept, in the intro we talked about you had worked … your experience with a company with 25,000 employees. That’s quite a challenge. At Rea & Associates, there’s over 300 employees at 12 locations, but the same concept could work with a company, whether they have 10 employees, 20 employees, 25 employees. It’s really the communication piece not the number of employees.
Abigail: Yes, that’s absolutely correct. Inform, educate, and engage are where any company are at. All employees want to know what’s going on. They all want to be informed and feel like they’re a part of the business and that they have … they can leave a footprint. One way they know they can leave a footprint on the company is having the knowledge to do that, so that really just goes with knowing about the company, knowing about the strategic plan going forward.
Rea has a great strategic plan that we’re really trying to implement in our communications so employees know where we are in terms of that direction and where we are in the timeline of things. That’s very crucial and important because, to get people behind an idea and a project, they need to know about it. They need to be informed. They also need to be educated on how they can help, and what it means to them, and why it matters. They need to know those things. Without knowing those things, it’s very hard to get them engaged.
Dave: What are some of the techniques that you would use to make sure that message is consistent throughout … We mentioned Rea has 12 offices. That message has to be consistent in every office, so what are some of the methods you would use to make sure the communication is consistent, whether it’s by an office, or a department, or a floor, or a specialty? What are some of those techniques?
Abigail: You really want to establish one source, one communication source, so who is communicating, and then that same message needs to be distributed to the entire company. For Rea, it would be to the entire firm. We established an inbox just for Internal Communications, so when employees see that inbox name come through, they know that’s important firm information that they need to look at, take notice of and, potentially, take action. That’s a huge thing, setting up that one communication source so that they know they’ll be receiving that type of information from.
Another strategy that can be used is really being in touch with your leadership and knowing what message they want to communicate and making sure they’re all on the same page, because your leadership needs to be all on the same page so they can communicate the same message, as well, to their employees. Then, I mean, that can lead you into tips on how to work with leadership to share those types of messages with employees, but it’s really just making sure you, yourself, the communicator, understand the plan, understand the strategic direction, and then making sure you have a tool to share that information in and then talking with your leaders and making sure everyone’s on the same page.
Dave: It kind of leads into the next questions is how important is the why behind communication? I think you hit on a couple things, leadership, but let’s continue. How important is the why?
Abigail: They why in terms of for employees or-
Dave: Employees and leadership.
Abigail: For employees, the why, it’s all about that engagement piece, making sure they feel a part of the company and want to support the company in their path moving forward. That’s huge for employees. For them to want to do that, they have to have some type of inspiration, some type of passion behind it, and having that education about the company and how they can play a vital role within the plan is really important. That’s kind of their why. Why does it matter to them? It matters to them because, if they want to have career success, then it’s huge. It’s crucial that they play a important role within the company and having that information.
Then, for leadership, it is making sure their employees feel motivated to move that needle forward. I mean you can’t do anything without the employees in your company. They’re what it takes to get things done, so empowerment and engagement, that’s huge.
Dave: Let’s talk about some specifics. Some very good response there, very good ideas, but how often should a communication come from the communications specialist or leadership? Is it daily, hourly, weekly, monthly?
Abigail: It depends on what needs to be communicated and how big your company is. Internal communications, it doesn’t mean every time that message is going to go firm-wide or company-wide. It could be to specific groups of employees that just need to see that message. At Rea, it could just be to the tax team, like there’s something really important coming up like tax reform, and they need to know about it. Then that message would just go to them because it may not affect the rest of the firm. A message like that likely will, so we would send it out, but that’s just an example.
Dave: Sure, sure.
Abigail: I would say weekly at the least. You need a firm-wide or company-wide message weekly at the least. Employees need to know when they’re going to receive it every week, what day, around what time, so they know when they can expect it and when they’re going to get their company news weekly. That always has to be planned. That always has to be in the loop. But there may be messages throughout the week in addition to that. You just have to ask yourself, “Does this need to go out to my employees?” If it’s not of importance, then you should probably shy away from sending the email because too much communication can mean a lack of attention to the communication when it comes in because people just think, “Oh, I won’t need to know about it. I’ve already gotten five of these today.”
Dave: You bring up a good point. Is there such a thing as communication saturation where, if I’m getting communications from you daily or weekly, I may have so much saturation that I’m no longer reading those communications?
Abigail: Definitely. That is definitely something to be wary of and to make sure you’re avoiding that at all costs. The weekly message is a great way to avoid that because all your information can start to be funneled into that communication, and then that newsletter becomes your employees’ one-stop source for everything they need in terms of what’s happening within the company. You also could utilize an intranet of sorts for employees to go out and access more information, but really, just having that weekly email and funneling all messages in there … Sometimes you might have to be a little bit firm with whoever you’re working with. If they want it to go out right away, don’t be afraid to question them and ask them, “Does this really need to go out right away? Can’t it wait til Friday? Explain the strategy. We’re really trying to funnel all communications in this Friday email. Is there any possibility this can wait?”
Dave: What does research tell us about companies that communicate well within their employee base?
Abigail: Research tells us that when companies communicate well, engagement skyrockets. When engagement skyrockets, performance skyrockets, company growth skyrockets. Everything starts to perform better. Everyone starts to feel like they’re involved. That’s really the basis of internal comms, to be a tool for the employees so the employees can do their job better.
Dave: You’d mentioned one of the communication pieces that hits the airwaves within a company is, obviously, some technical information, maybe some strategic plan information. What about the fun stuff that people are doing? Is that also included in a communication piece? Is that important?
Abigail: Oh, yeah. The fun stuff’s the fun stuff, right?
Dave: Fun stuff’s what everybody reads. Yeah.
Abigail: Yeah. I mean that’s a great way to boost employee morale too. That’s also another great reason to have internal comms is because it can be an employee morale booster. Let’s say you want to highlight an employee who did a fantastic job last quarter, so you go and interview them, you take pictures of them, you learn about their personal life, and you craft an article, and you share that with employees because employees want to know about who they’re working with. They’re interested in that. When you get on the news and there’s something about a celebrity on the news, you’re likely to click on it if you’re interested in that person because you want to know about their life. That’s just the same for us every day at work. We want to know about people. What better opportunity than to share about our employees doing great work and also sharing a little bit about their life?
Dave: It’s a celebration as well.
Abigail: Yeah.
Dave: So we’ll celebrate and recognize famous people throughout a company.
Abigail: Oh, yeah, for sure. At Rea, we have our Famous People Initiative. It’s just so crucial to highlight that within internal comms, and that’s something we’ll be rolling out because to show famous people taking part in podcasts, taking part in engagements outside of work, and really just doing everything they can to showcase their specialty within their market, that’s great because, by showing that to other employees, they might say, “Hey, I want to start getting involved, and I want to start doing that.”
Dave: Obviously, there’s the email communication. That seems to be the most popular at the present time. What about videos being used as a tool for communication? What’s your opinion on videos?
Abigail: I think videos are great. Every month, our CEO, Don, he does a video to employees called his Monthly Musings. He shares just a little bit about what happened throughout that month, his thoughts, his takeaways, and shares that with employees. It’s a great way to differentiate your communication and make employees take notice. Employees love video. I love videos. I love watching videos. The news is all about videos today. One way to make internal comms matter to employees is kind of taking some of those practices you see externally on the news and apply them internally, because if … Employees are already used to receiving news one way, and trying to alter their mindset to receive news a different way won’t always be effective, so it just makes sense to go with what they’re used to and what they like, and employees like videos. People like videos.
Dave: Again, this strategy, and I want to kind of reemphasize on a point you made earlier that what we’re talking about is just not a technique for large companies. Every company, every shape and size could benefit from this.
Abigail: Oh, yes. The same practices that I used working in the corporate world are some of the same practices that I’m using now because those practices just work. They’re best practices for a reason, because employees respond to them, and it gets news out, and it disseminates information. It’s just important to share. Share, share, share, and always have that why behind it for the employees so they know why this matters to them.
Dave: In today’s workforce, the workforce has become more and more mobile with … You’d mentioned that you had worked from home this morning and that we’re on the road, and this form of communication is even a greater tool to help communicate with employees who may work out of the office or out at a customer or a client. Now they’re plugged in.
Abigail: Yeah, exactly. With Rea, we have 12 different offices, so we have employees all over, and a lot of our employees are traveling daily to go meet with clients, so it’s really important that they can access their email and look at a message that came through. There’s also different avenues you can look into with apps and making sure … That could be like a sharing tool or they have internal communication social media type platforms. One is called Yammer. That’s an easy way just to … and start a conversation between employees. It’s just you want to make sure employees are connected and feel connected, especially when they’re remote, because you’re all still part of one company.
Dave: What about text messaging?
Abigail: Text messaging isn’t something that I know, personally, that’s hugely popular right now, but I think with more study and research into that area, it could, potentially, develop into something.
Dave: Apparently, I’m not going to get a memo in my old-fashioned mailbox from you regarding communications anymore. Is that a thing in the past?
Abigail: In your inner-office mailbox?
Dave: That’s right. The snail mail.
Abigail: Oh, like a memo?
Dave: Yeah.
Abigail: Maybe. Memos are kind of a thing of the past. Employees want to be able to access information at all times, and electronically is just the easiest way to do that for them.
Dave: Let’s go back again. I want to emphasize this education. Obviously, you’re pitching the message and pitching it quite well, but you have to educate … I would assume you would have to educate the employees to catch that information. If I’m not an avid email reader … I get 300 emails a day, and you do as well. How do I navigate through that?
Abigail: A lot of it is just a type of transitional period to let employees know the importance of what’s coming out. You need to tell them and inform them that this is vital company news, and when you receive an email, or a message, or a video from this particular communication source for … At Rea, it’s the Internal Communications inbox. Then you start to know, over a period of time, that, “I need to look at this.” I’ve worked for companies that didn’t always have an internal communications plan, but when they started to develop the plan, over a period of time, employees started to realize, “Oh, this has important company news. I need to pay attention to this.”
It’s never going to be overnight. Nothing is. I mean, you start a workout regimen, and it’s not like, “Oh, I’m super fit overnight.” It’s over a period of time. That’s the same with employee communication. We’re people too, and we have to start to “train” ourselves to think a different way and to get our news when it comes through, especially if there’s never been internal communications before.
Dave: One of the goals in this education process is when that email hits my screen, you have to educate me to want to open that immediately before anything else.
Abigail: Yes. From the communicator’s standpoint, there’s a few different ways that you can bring importance to that message. You can make a little top header in all caps, “OF IMPORTANCE,” or, “TAKE ACTION.” That’s what we’re doing right now at Rea just to kind of start that education on, “This is important for you to look at. This is important for you to read.” You can do things like that that help. You can also send reminders and educate people that this may not be the first time that this has been communicated to them.
Let’s say a first message went out about employee training in your weekly newsletter. Well, then you send out a separate email, and you ask you leadership to mention it during their office meetings. They want to reference, “As you might have seen in the weekly newsletter, employee training is next week.” It’s just a sense of always referring back to your once source of communication so employees know that is their true reference.
Dave: So I can no longer say, “Well, I don’t know what’s going on,” or, “I didn’t get that memo,” because it’s there, and you can go back and grab those at any point.
Abigail: Exactly. There is a responsibility on the part of the employee to want to be engaged and to want to take that information and use it for their advantage. It’s just like with anything. If you care enough, you’ll look at it.
Dave: I want to back to one of your earlier comments when we were talking about the research tells us that companies that communicate well, the benefits are off the charts in every which way, any benchmark, anything you want to use. Communication, it’s well-established that the company is going to take off. Okay, if I’m a listener and I’m hearing this for the first time, this concept, and it’s kind of out there, kind of confusing, may not work for my company … at least, that’s maybe some reaction you would get. Where would I start? What would be the first thing that I would do if I want to implement a communication strategy with someone like yourself?
Abigail: I would say if you don’t have internal communications right now at your company, then there are a few easy things you can do to start implementing that now on your own. One thing you could do is, if you’re a leader, get with some of the other leaders at your office or with the company overall and let them know, “Hey, I’m going to start communicating to employees on a regular basis.” It doesn’t have to be long. It can be a short memo about, “Hey, we were featured in an article this week in this industry publication, and that’s great. And this is a part of our initiative to start being noticed within our market.” It’s just kind of little things can help too, those little reminders to employees. Those little messages to them can make a big difference, especially if there’s nothing going on right now.
Dave: And the fun facts, the company picnic.
Abigail: Yeah, and the fun facts. Yeah, the company picnic, we had a camping trip here. Those little things can help.
Dave: How about pictures from the office Christmas party that no one wants to see?
Abigail: Yeah. As long as they’re appropriate.
Dave: There you go. Our guest today has been Abigail Eisenbrei from Rea & Associates, the Internal Communications Specialist, sharing some best practices with us today. Thanks again for joining us on Unsuitable today, Abigail.
Abigail: Thank you for having me.
Dave: Listeners, let us know if you found this episode valuable. Send your email to podcast@reacpa.com or contact us on Facebook or Twitter. When it comes to communication, we understand that our listeners have different preferences, which is why we want our podcast to be available on a variety of mediums. Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or watch the interview unfold on YouTube. Until next time, I’m Dave Cain, encouraging you to loosen up your tie and think outside the box.
Disclaimer: The views expressed on unsuitable on Rea Radio are our own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Rea & Associates. The podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the professional advice you would receive elsewhere. Consult with a trusted advisor about your unique situation so they can expertly guide you to the best solution for your specific circumstance.