The way we communicate at work has undergone a bit of a transformation the last few years.
From most things being communicated in person via meetings or phone calls to watching the rise of the instant message and video calls at work.
The pandemic and the shift to hybrid / remote def moved us more towards asynchronous communication.
✨Hence live, laugh, Slack ✨
But with the move to more async communication, we experienced some challenges like:
- Miscommunications
- Loss of context
- Delayed responses
- Difficulty building culture
- Tool overload (another system to log into??)
- Balancing work/life balance (yes I check Slack on my phone, ugh)
Each of the challenges deserves its own newsletter!! And maybe you shall receive them… 🙂 I’m feeling generous this AM!
But for today – In the spirit of rethinking it all this quarter today I want to focus on 2 reasons why you may want to consider adding a comms tool to your tech stack.
To have more fun:
Question: When’s the last time you really had fun at work? Maybe this definition will jog your memory…
Fun (noun): a feeling of enjoyment, amusement, or lighthearted pleasure.
Basically what you experience every time you open my newsletter.
If you’re still drawing a blank, welcome to my first reason as to why adding a comms tool may be beneficial.
✨ And yes, that reason is HAVING FUN! ✨
Having fun at work isn’t just about making work enjoyable (although is that too much to ask?) it also:
- Boost morale & engagement
- Foster connection
- Helps with creativity
- Reduces stress
- Builds team resilience
- Improves retention
- CAN BE CONTAGIOUS (the good kind obvi)
But here’s the thing, HR forced fun is never really fun. It’s sometimes met with eyerolls and less than positive experiences. So, leveraging a tool that can create a feeling of fun would be beneficial.
To make the tool even better make sure to integrate it into your current workflow because no one wants to log into another system!
📣Check out these Slack/Teams bots that you can incorporate into your environment that can foster some FUN that ranges from trivia, kudos, intros and more:
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- Water Cooler Trivia
- Culturebot
- Together
- HeyTaco
- Doozy
- Donutbot (just acquired Gatheround!)
The goal is to create magical moments of fun because ultimately that will impact so much more at your organization.
Here’s to more fun in 2025!
To be more efficient:
There’s NOTHING and I mean NOTHING I dislike more than an inefficient process.
But, I’ve been guilty of doing it before!!!!! Accountability, amiright?
Creating more efficiency is where I see comms tools having a major impact for HR and employees.
Why?
Because a good comms tool can:
- Centralize your comms – imagine not being asked by an employee “what do I have to do?” ever again
- Automate your process and align them with timed communications
- Eliminate the manual sending of messages
- Provide a template library so you don’t start from scratch
- Send across all your channels
- Give you precious time back
💭Let’s daydream for a second…
You mark an employee as hired. All the communications like emails and messages regarding onboarding are already written, timed, and sent without you having to do A SINGLE THING other than mark them as hired. We’re talking employee comms, manager comms, swag comms, ALL THE COMMS. You are left to go focus on other things other than sending reminders.
👀👀UM, THIS IS MY DREAM.
And with a really good comms tool – this can actually be a reality.
See why I said efficiency!!
HR is bombarded with things all day long, the last thing we need to do is one more manual thing. I do believe a good comms tool would help automate and alleviate many of our tasks.
📣Check out these tools:
- ChangeEngine: they have over 500 free templates
- FirstUp: they also have over 125+ comms templates AND their CEO Nicole Alvino was on the I Hate it Here pod where she dropped GEMS about personalized comms.
Tis the season for tools?
Everyone is talking AI this and AI that.
IT’S TIME TO RETHINK AI TOOLS AND HOW WE’RE USING THEM.
Sorry for getting shouty but I’m very excited.
I polled my network about tools they’re using and I’m going to discuss them all next week!
Until then, auf wiedersehen!! ✨
