Your communication plan should be at the center of your strategy as you launch and implement your recognition program. Think about:
- How you are going to get the word out about the program
- How you are going to communicate its value
- How you’re going to teach people to use it
- How you’re going to encourage people to adopt it
- How you’re going to maintain adoption as the program becomes more established
Choosing the right communication channels, setting a schedule, and tracking the success of your tactics will be key to building buzz around your program, and making sure it becomes a visible part of your culture.
Above all else, you’ll want to generate buzz for long-term success. Find a few key advocates amongst your leadership team to promote and communicate the benefits to recognition, and make sure to communicate it more than once. Generating excitement makes your recognition program easier to implement in the adoption phase. Further, this helps to maintain momentum for participation well beyond the early days of your program.
Communication Channels & Strategies
Fortunately, there are a number of different channels at your disposal that you can use to raise awareness of your program. Here’s a rundown on some of the essential channels and strategies you’ll want to tap into to raise awareness of your program, and a few more outside-the-box suggestions you might not have thought about.
Digital Communications
Using internal digital communications channels is a relatively low-lift tactic to raise awareness of your program, and helps get your message into the tools your employees use every day, increasing your chances of reaching them.
For instance, you could:
- Send a series of email blasts announcing your program, communicating the value of recognition, and offering quick tips to use the system. Click here for communication templates.
- Highlight the program in your company newsletter
- Create a recognition Slack or Teams channel for people to share recognition they’ve received, or what they’re using their rewards for
- Have your IT team push a wallpaper or screensaver to all your employees’ computers
Tangible communications
If you’re working in an in-office or deskless environment, there’s also a number of tangible communication tactics that you could use to make your program more visible, such as:
- Creating posters to hang in the office
- Distributing flyers or pamphlets
- Creating an insert for ID badges
- Doing a Swag drop with branded merchandise promoting your program
Pro tip: If you’re doing a Swag drop, opt for items your employees will keep at their desk, and preferably use (stress balls, pens, etc.). That way, they’ll serve as constant reminders about your program.
Themed campaigns/events
During the early days of your program, it can be helpful to tie your program to specific events or themes in order to drum up participation. Some examples might include:
- A recognition ‘hackathon’ where employees aim to recognize each other as much as possible over a short period of time
- Games or social events with rewards from your program as spot prizes
- Encouraging people to send recognition around specific dates (International Day of friendship, Mental Health Awareness Week, National Pizza Day, etc.)
While you ultimately want people using the system as part of their routine, utilizing these kinds of events in your early communications strategy can help you get more people involved and trying the system out. These kinds of campaigns can also be useful if you notice participation starts to drop after the early hype dies down.
Personal communications
All these tactics could be very helpful, but by far the most effective channel you have to get the word out about your program is your people. Wherever possible, you should leverage the chance to get executives, managers, and employees championing your program. This could mean:
- Encouraging managers highlight recognition in team meetings
- Running introductory sessions in groups
- Recruiting ‘internal advocates’ across different departments to champion the program (see the section on Internal advocacy for more)
- Implement ‘recognition reminders’ in 1:1s
- Include recognition training as part of new employee onboarding training
5 Steps to Define Your Communications Plan
Unless you have an awful lot of resources behind you, you probably won’t be able to employ all of the tactics we’ve listed here. So how do you map out what your communications plan should look like? Here’s 5 steps to help you shape a strategy that works for your company.
Gather your information
The first step to building your communications strategy is to look at what channels you have available to get the word out about the program.
You should also look at what communication tactics have worked well for your company when launching other HR initiatives in the past, and what haven’t. For instance, you might find that when you send emails out about new programs they get ignored, but that holding in-person meetings or introductory sessions can really help to drive adoption.
Lastly, consider what tactics are appropriate for the program, and what the scale of your communications strategy should be. If you’re rolling out a program to a small number of employees, you probably don’t need a large scale, multichannel communication plan. But if you’re running it for a large company with several departments and locations, it’s worth putting in a bit of extra effort to make the program visible.
Build a project plan and timeline
Once you’ve gotten the information you need, the next step is to build a project plan and a timeline, detailing what you’re planning to implement and when, your goals, and how you’re going to measure them.
You should set targets and milestones that go well beyond your initial launch, so that you can track how things are going over time and make sure your campaign is really a success. And if your communications aren’t performing, you can adjust and make changes to your tactics where necessary.
Find ‘easy wins’
If you have limited time and resources, try to think outside the box and look for easy wins to help make your communications strategy successful. Look for tactics that are relatively low-lift, but can help improve your program's visibility and give your people the information they need to use it.
For instance, designing a custom wallpaper and having your IT team push it to your employees’ screensavers might take relatively little time, but provide a daily reminder to people to use the program.
Segment your communications
It’s important to make sure your communications reach every level of your organization. You should have communication plans for how you’ll introduce the program to employees, to managers, and to senior leaders.
Most likely, you will take different tactics for each group, both in terms of the information you are trying to convey to get them to buy into recognition, and the channels you use for communication.
For example, you might do mass emails to get employees interested, but run an in-person presentation for executives. People at different levels of your organization will respond better to different tactics, so it’s worth trying to find the right formula to reach each group.
Focus on key outcomes
Your communication plan might be fairly simple, or fairly ambitious, depending on what kind of initiative you’re introducing and what resources you have.
The important thing is it covers the key outcomes that will be crucial to your success. These outcomes might differ depending on your company and the goals of your program, but some example might be:
- That your communications reach every level and department of the organization
- That people have the training and technical information they need to use the system
- That people truly understand the value of recognition and what it means to your culture
By keeping these principal goals in mind, you can work smarter with your communications, and develop a strategy that accomplishes what you set out to achieve without stretching your resources beyond their limit.