Achieving the right balance: push, pull and interactive communications
| Date | 09 October 2017 |
| Pages | 244-246 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/SHR-05-2017-0029 |
| Published date | 09 October 2017 |
| Author | Cathy Marcheschi |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Employee behaviour |
Achieving the right balance: push, pull and
interactive communications
Cathy Marcheschi
Cathy Marcheschi is Senior
Manager at Lawson Products,
Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Afew years ago, depending
on the day, employee
feedback was either “You’re
sending too many emails” or “You
didn’t tell us about X initiative”.
Keeping employees informed
and engaged without
overwhelming them with
information is a daily balancing
act for communications
professionals.
With a distributed sales team of
approximately 1,000 sales
representatives spread across
North America, we had become
email dependent and important
communication was often lost in
overflowing in-boxes. To
compound the problem, content
on our intranet was outdated and
access required a username and
password different from the
standard network credentials, so
employees had trouble
remembering their login
information.
Self-service communications
Partnering with our IT team, we
created and presented a
business case for a new
SharePoint intranet with standard
password credentials, along with
a shift from a strictly “push”
communication strategy (email)
to a combination of “push” and
“pull”. This strategy enables all
employees, including the
distributed sales team, to pull
information from the new intranet
site if and when they need it.
And, we continue to “push”
time-sensitive or action-required
information as needed.
We recognized that having
updated and relevant content on
our new intranet was a critical
success factor. So, we identified,
engaged and trained key content
owners across the business. We
secured their buy-in by
highlighting benefits their
functions would experience as a
result of providing employees
with on-demand access to their
function’s key information, forms,
FAQs and more. The benefits
included less time answering
repeat questions and overall
fewer phone calls and emails
related to topics that had already
been communicated.
It wasn’t until after we launched
the new intranet that we fully
appreciated another benefit –
hyperlinking. When we email
employees – which we still do
but much less frequently – we
include hyperlinks to relevant
content on the intranet instead of
sending documents as
attachments. For employees, the
relevant information is just one
click away. And, content owners
can update a document while
maintaining the same hyperlink.
No more sending updated
versions to over 1,000 people.
HR at work
PAGE 244 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW VOL. 16 NO. 5 2017, pp. 244-246, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1475-4398 DOI 10.1108/SHR-05-2017-0029
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