Internal Communications Tools

Were you a Cub Scout or a Girl Guide? Can you remember the excitement of receiving a new badge and displaying it on your top? Well badges are making a comeback, but this time they don’t have to be sewn on. Open badges is an emerging educational technology from Mozilla; they are essentially image files containing information about what has been done or learned to earn the badge, together with who has issued the badge and the earner’s unique evidence.

Read the full article to find out more about badges, how they're being used, and how it might affect Internal Communications and help support behavior change.

This funnel symbolizes how employees are made aware of corporate goals, learn about the corporation and change the way they do their job. Eventually they make more employees aware and help them do better. As employees go through the engagement funnel, the organization needs offer different tools for each stage in order to optimize the process.

Gamification should take center stage in driving the employee engagement funnel. Gamification is going through a process that is making it richer and better suited to make sustainable change in enterprises. This new era of enterprise gamification goes beyond badges and leaderboards and using compelling game mechanics such as narratives.

Read the full article to find out how gamification plays out in each phase of the employee engagement funnel:

• Awareness (Know)
• Onboarding employees (Learn)
• Engagement (Act/Do)
• Internal leadership development (Lead)
• Corporate ambassadors (Viral expansion)

The Digital Leaders Think Tank is a UK cross-sector, not-for-profit venture where leaders in digital marketing and communications share best practice and lessons with each other.  At a recent session they discussed Internal Social Media and the Implications for the Internal Communications Function.

Read the full article to find out examples and more about these discussion topics:

• ways to utilise internal social media to impact change
• understand what the barriers to change are so you can try to remove them
• have to lead by example
• how to remove the fear factor of communicating online
• the currency of trust
• shortest social media policy ever - don't be stupid
• find out what your audience wants and answer "what's in it for me?"
• people get things done, technology helps
• gamification, not shamification
• understand the five levels of attitude
• education and training - and one big miss, not including best practices
• importance of pre-planning
• importance of leadership buy-in
• fear of losing control
• and a long list of additional abbreviated take-aways

Gamification only really took off around 2010 and since then, the geeks of the gaming industry and the marketing buzzword wizards have taken it to a whole new level.

So what is gamification? Previously known as game mechanics, gamification is the use of game, loyalty and economic concepts in order to engage and reward individuals, solve problems and boost learning.

Doubters think it sounds like a new way to waste time, but supporters claim it can help organisations accelerate digital transformation projects by engaging, rewarding and motivating employees and customers.

But all that said, what does it mean for the Internal Communications industry? Towards the end of last year, the internal comms industry started to get bitten by the gamification bug and departments around the country started to ask whether it was right for them – and with good reason. With companies like Accenture, who released an excellent report on their experiences with gamification, and Google adopting the technique to drive loyalty and employee engagement, other companies are wanting in.  The idea of gamification does offer us a creative and innovative way to bolster loyalty, foster collaboration and secure engagement and it is not something that should just be seen as a digital led tool but one that could be used offline as well.

But before you jump on the bandwagon ask yourself if it really is the right solution for your organisation. Gamification has been around for a long time and people are only sitting up and paying attention now that it has become a buzzword.

"In this blog, I propose a fun intranet scavenger hunt to help introduce and familiarize employees to these various intranet features. So, your mission – should you choose to accept it – is to execute an intranet scavenger hunt to spread awareness of what hidden treasures are available on your intranet. As a result, more people will start using these features more effectively, and more frequently."

Read the full article to find out more about intranet scavenger hunts and:

• how they can boost employee engagement
• suggested tasks
• how to design your own

"With Gallup estimating only 13 percent of employees are engaged at work, organizations are looking for solutions that can help them attract, retain and motivate a diverse and distracted workforce. One solution gaining momentum across every market segment is called gamification, or the integration of gaming elements into traditional communication programs and business processes."

Read the full article to find out more about these six steps to consider when integrating a gamification strategy into a communications program:

1. Articulate the end objectives gamification will accomplish.
2. Identify specific employee actions or tasks to target for intervention.
3. Find the right game.
4. Reward behavior.
5. Inspire both collaboration and competition.
6. Learn from your results

With less than 30 percent of workers today committed to and satisfied with their work, leaders need to find ways to change their employees’ attitudes and habits. Gamification can help.

Read the full article to find out how gamification worked for Deloitte to get senior executives to start & complete leadership training and Salesforce to increase usage and engagement with their CRM system.