"The Google Effect" raises the bar for employee communications

Recently I had an interesting conversation with Watson Wyatt Worldwide's national eCommunications and portal leader, Michael Rudnick who is also a close friend of Melcrum.

The focus of our discussion was on how the lack of a unified technology and content strategy can undermine efforts to encourage employee responsibility for health care and retirement planning as shown in his new white paper, "How the "Google Effect" Is Transforming Employee Communications and Driving Employee Engagement".

A soon-to-be-released Watson Wyatt survey of 2,000 employees has found that employees rank the Internet as one of their preferred ways to receive benefits information.  Sixty-two percent like to receive information this way. 

This preference is relatively uniform across generations - 63 percent of employees ages 18 to 49 like to receive information via the Web, as do 60 percent of those ages 50 to 59 and 53 percent of those 60 and older.

As Rudnick explained, "There is a "Google effect." Employees have come to expect the same level of personalization, flexibility, intuitiveness and ease of use that Google and other advanced consumer Web sites provide. This is upping the ante for employers and particularly for human resources departments. 

Content, data and applications from a plethora of internal and vendor sources are far more useful when integrated in a way that makes sense to employees and is easy to navigate."

Watson Wyatt have been kind enough to let us share the white paper with you, so read on...

The full white paper can be read at Watson Wyatt Worldwide.

L.A.

Comments

[Annie Waite]

Michael's also a new member of the Internal Comms Hub's editorial board (due to launch at the end of April) and he'll soon be available to answer member queries about social media issues and employee engagement.

[LA]

Michael will be running a workshop on transforming your intranet at Melcrum's Strategic Communication Management Summit in Chicago, September 24. Check this space as more information becomes available!

[Emma Lambert]

To secure employee engagements, comms channels internally must match the technology of external, customer-facing websites. Certainly, RSS feeds are useful because they allow employees to tailor the company news that is most relevant to them. General Motors, in the US, has had impressive results with employee portals and RSS news feeds.