What Makes a 2022 Communications Center of Excellence?

By: Keith Kitani, Former CEO of GuideSpark

In my last post, I walked through my top 3 predictions for the landscape of HR technology and employee communications in 2022. Based on the trajectory of the pandemic, the constant drive of digital transformation, and the massive cultural shifts we’ve seen just in the last year, I named DEI initiatives, deeper integration functionality, and an uptick in internal marketing as the top trends I think will only continue to rise next year. But it’s important to understand these predictions as a foundation for a larger communications strategy – to ultimately build a 2022 communications center of excellence. In these times of rapid change and growth – as well as wide room for employee churn – it’s essential that organizations stay open to adopting new platforms and technology as part of their strategy to scale.

Pursuing a platform that can provide visibility into key metrics like employee program engagement, surveys and results, and employee satisfaction is the most critical step any organization can take in this unpredictable work landscape. This kind of technology opens the door for many teams to see what’s working for their employees, what’s not, and how to change it in order to (enthusiastically) retain their valuable performers.

Consider this example of a highly mature communications team using deep integration power and automation features to boost the employee experience:

Acme is a global enterprise software company onboarding a new cohort of employees every week, all across different regions and departments. They just rolled out a new, fully-automated onboarding communications program. To manage this influx of workers – and constantly changing employee data – the organization uses Workday’s HRIS platform, and they’re looking for a platform or tool that can integrate and support automated messaging to new employees to take some of the burden off of internal communications teams.

With a cloud-based and data-driven platform like ours, integrating directly with an HRIS is not only possible, it also opens the door for a host of automation potential, and is the clearest path forward to scaling your program. GuideSpark, recently acquired by Tivian, offers functionality that directly connects HRIS data to a rich, complex communications platform. Once Acme adopts this technology, they’re able to trigger a complete, personalized communications campaign automatically, based on new employee data being added into Workday. This not only saves time for internal teams, who might normally need to manually send an onboarding package to every new employee, it also delivers a consistent employee experience across the enterprise. How much time could your organization save by designing a communications campaign once, then letting automation features take over multiply those efforts across every new employee group?

Then, once a campaign has launched, that same bank of employee data housed on Workday is the fuel for GuideSpark’s technology to report on the success metrics that matter most: how many employees (and their departments, locations, and more) are opening your emails, clicking your calls to action, and truly engaging with the content you’re delivering. And measurement doesn’t stop here – the platform also enables organizations to conduct highly relevant surveys, polls, and ratings to understand employee sentiment, and better drive content based on that feedback. On a larger scale, the true impact of your communications can be hard to measure, especially given that the best indicator that your messaging has made a difference is the significant behavior change of your employees. I believe that, in 2022 and beyond, the ability to tie behavior change, business impact metrics, and revenue to the success of your communications program will be a fierce priority.

This ability to integrate and ultimately expand the capabilities of any one platform, is the key that will drive product decisions and roadmaps in the employee communications space next year and beyond. Organizations are no longer seeking a single technology that meets 100% of their current and future needs – instead, many are adopting a complex technology stack that operates as a living ecosystem. With the functionality and integration potential that GuideSpark technology offers, employers will be in a better position than ever before to deeply connect employee information with the communications that are most personalized and relevant. This level of segmentation and targeting, coupled with a consistent, best-in-class approach to content, is an exciting combination – which has the potential to lay the foundation for a powerful communications center of excellence.