With our communication platform, you can keep employees well-informed, no matter where they work. Important announcements, management updates, and crucial KPIs are shared instantly, so everyone can do their job. It enables you to reach everyone immediately in case of urgent situations, such as a cyber attack or technical malfunction. However, naturally, internal communication doesn’t always have to be serious business. Especially if your coworkers don’t see each other very often, it is important to keep your employee communication fun!

Not only is nice-to-know information fun to share, but it also reinforces your need-to-know messages. If you constantly flood people with serious messages and never mix it up with some fun content, your colleagues will be less likely to read messages in your corporate app or on your digital signage screens. There’s a reason that the best-read sections on news websites are often the sports or showbiz section. With fun content, you attract people and draw their attention, which, in turn, makes them also read the more important messages.

Examples of fun content

Netpresenter provides you with everything you need to easily distribute fun content within your organization. In no time and with little effort, you can share someone’s vacation pictures, share the casual Friday lunch menu, or post a message about your colleague’s new baby or about their brand new marriage. Fun content can also be about your new employees. Introducing them through various communication channels can be fun and useful: everyone will know who their new colleague is, and the new colleague will feel welcome.

But fun content can be so much more, depending on what you and your colleagues are willing to share. This is some of the fun content our clients regularly share:

• Birthdays
• Anniversaries
• Special or funny achievements
• Employee of the month
• Colleague in the spothlight
• Quotes
• Jokes
• Sports news and game results
• Weather and traffic
• External news from news sites

We even have ready-made templates for some of the examples above, so your fun content will look fun, too!

Start the interaction!

Your content will really become fun when you make good use of the various interaction options. In the Desktop App and Mobile App, colleagues can comment on messages, or give the thumbs up. You could, for example, stimulate interaction with some fun facts or organize a small quiz where colleagues can leave a comment to see how well your colleagues know their coworkers and the organization.

To enhance your fun content, you could use our polls feature. Use a poll to let people vote when they would like to meet up with their team, what they would like to drink at the next corporate drinks, or which of their colleagues’ recipes they thought was the most successful (which gives you the opportunity to ask for their own recipes that you can share in the future!).

With our targeting features, you can decide wether you want to reach your entire organization or only specific people for certain messages on a smaller scale. This feature enables you to have colleagues from the same department vote on an activity for their next team event, while you send more general fun facts to everyone.

Create a connection, no matter where people are

Fun content will always be a nice change from all the serious business communication. However, it becomes extra important when your employees work from home or remotely a lot. In these cases, employees miss out on a lot of small, social interactions. Water cooler chat or joint lunches are often moments employees share moments of their personal lives, giving each other some insights into the person behind the colleague. In hybrid organizations, digital interaction has to make up for these moments.

Or customer Smurfit Kappa has also noticed this. They have started using Netpresenter more and more to keep their employees engaged. “When you’re working from home, you miss a lot of these little social moments with your coworkers. These messages on our screens still keep us informed of what is going on,” says Arjen Warners, Application Manager at Smurfit Kappa.

Fun content pays off in the hybrid organization, Warners thinks. “Because we publish information on our employees’ laptops, colleagues who don’t visit our office buildings every day still get a feeling of connection.” In this way, fun content isn’t just fun: it also helps to keep employee engagement high.

Benefits of a strong organizational culture

If all of that hasn’t convinced you enough of fun content’s importance, consider that it can also contribute to a strong and positive organizational culture. A strong organizational culture has many benefits. 65 percent of employees say that culture is one of the main reasons they stay with their organization. For more than half of the employees, culture is even more important than salary! So, let’s get going with fun content to contribute to a positive organizational culture and a better employee experience!

Do you need some inspiration? Get in touch with our consultants to see how you can use Netpresenter for more fun content. Or download the free infographic which explains why organizational culture is important.

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These are 13 reasons why a strong organizational culture is important:

1. LOWER TURNOVER RATES
   65% of employees say that one of the main reasons they are staying at their company is its culture. Employees who feel respected and valued at a company are less likely to leave.

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In the latest installment of our organizational culture blog series, we discussed organizational culture as described by Edward Hall’s Cultural Iceberg Model. In Hall’s Model, he describes organizational culture as an iceberg–Organizational Culture, like an iceberg, has the typical feature of being disproportionate in its visibility. Some aspects of it are easily perceived; some parts are submerged in the values and basic assumptions of the organization. In this follow-up, we’ll be looking at how to strengthen level 1 of your organizational culture with internal communication and the Cultural Iceberg Model.

Some aspects of organizational culture are visible or perceivable for employees and outsiders. These aspects are in level one: the artifacts. These perceivable or perceptible aspects of organizational culture will be different in every organization. However, in every organization, they are the aspects that are formed by people based on what they hear, feel, and see about the organizational culture and its leadership. We already named some of these aspects in our previous blog, but how can you use internal communications about them to strengthen your organizational culture? These are some artifacts of organizational culture:

1. Appearance

Your staff’s appearance can highly influence how employees and outsiders perceive your organizational culture. Do your employees come to work in shorts and t-shirts, or do they wear formal wear? Organizations with a casual dress code are perceived as having a more positive work environment (‘Hey, you can be who you are with us!’).

Rather than worrying about their appearance or being distracted by stiff clothing, employees can focus all their professional energy on their tasks, which may increase productivity. Think about it: when you get home from work (or when you work from home), don’t you switch into something comfier most of the time because it feels better? I’m sure I’m guilty of changing into sweats the minute I get home! Studies even show 61 percent of employees are more productive when the dress code is relaxed.

Communication about this artifact

Although a more relaxed dress code might increase productivity for some organizations, a formal dress code is sometimes still the rule. In, for example, finance or law realms, suit-and-tie are preferred. Client-facing employees are usually part of your brand image. Therefore, it can be helpful to communicate some ground rules about how you want your culture and brand image to be exposed through your employees’ appearance. Set up a page in your SharePoint and connect it to your digital signage screens or your employees’ corporate app, so all employees know where to find this kind of practical information.

2. Language

Language matters for an individual’s perception and interaction with the world. Therefore, the language you use in your organization acts as a moral compass for your employees, affecting how they feel, act, or think in different situations. Your organization’s language shapes its culture, and its culture shapes its people. Language can be used to exclude just as effectively as to include. The way we phrase or frame information and choosing what words, what tone we use becomes crucial to your organizational culture.

For example, expressing what you want to happen instead of what you don’t want to happen can guide employees to show the desired behavior and reflect a positive attitude and a can-do mentality, which will trickle down into your culture. The way you phrase your mission statement and values can significantly impact how employees do their job. The language employees use in their emails to clients can influence how the organizational culture comes across to outsiders.

Communication about this artifact

To make sure you use the same tone of voice, you can form clear guidelines on your organization’s desired language, tone of voice, phrasing, et cetera. Document it on your intranet and share it with all your employees, so they know how to use language in their interaction with clients or colleagues. Communication templates can be a part of these guidelines. At Netpresenter, for example, we have created an internal lexicon so that we all use the same chosen words and use language that we feel fits our organization. This can be useful, especially when discussions arise about the use of certain words.

However, through internal communication, you’re also giving the right example. Repetition is key, so if you want your employees to use certain kinds of words, make sure you use them repeatedly yourself. If you want your employees to live by your carefully stated mission, repeatedly show it through your digital signage on big screens in public spaces. That way, it stays top of mind. Your internal communication is part of your organization’s language and is, therefore, a significant factor in shaping your organizational culture.

3. Technology

The technology you use can give your organization a young and tech-savvy appearance like Netpresenter has, or an old-fashioned, stiff, and even incompetent appearance. Technology that works as it should and fits into the organization’s goals and strategy can reinforce a positive, productive, and winning culture amongst your staff. However, technology that lacks adequate efficacy and is not aligned to your beliefs and values can feel redundant and can turn positivity and productivity into demotivation and frustration.

‘The screensavers enable us to send out alerts whenever there’s a downtime of any of our systems. When we use the screensavers, we’re sure everybody gets the message.’

@netpresenter

Who knew an employee app could be a party starter? Discover how Gary makes TGIF drinks go viral in the office! 📲🍻🎉 OfficeLife TGIF EmployeeEngagement InternalComms EmployeeApp

♬ origineel geluid – Netpresenter – Netpresenter

Communication about this artifact

People will understand technology and systems sometimes need an update, or downtimes can occur. But when nobody has told them their system would be updated, and they come to work just to find out there is downtime in one of their systems again? That will cause frustration and demoralization, which will sooner or later seep through into the organizational culture.

Sky Lakes Medical Center, one of our clients, has a great solution to this problem. Sky Lakes uses corporate screensavers to send out alerts that communicate downtimes of their systems. John Gaede, Director of Information Services at Sky Lakes, explains how this works: ‘Feedback we consistently received around this topic in the past from staff across multiple departments reflected their frustration. They told us: we need you to communicate with us so that we can do our job. The screensavers enable us to send out alerts whenever there’s a downtime of any of our systems. When we use the screensavers, we’re sure everybody gets the message. And then we use the alerts to validate the system is back up when it has been restored.’

Sky Lakes shows they care for their employees and put them first by keeping them informed on everything they need to do their job. This reflects in their culture; it reinforces a strong and productive organizational culture that puts people first and enables them to do their job at their best.

4. Perks and benefits

This is among the first things employees speak of when asked about their organization’s culture: the in-house gym, the free lunches, the Friday afternoon office drinks, the foosball table, or the massage therapist who keeps colleagues’ muscles lose – during working hours! At Netpresenter, we like to play a game of FIFA on our PlayStation during lunch break to blow off some steam in between work. However, perks and benefits are also flexible working hours, paid leave, work from home options, and other efforts to increase employee wellbeing.

Communication about this artifact

Perks and benefits are a sign you care for your employees’ wellbeing. They show you put your people first to make them happy – and happy employees are productive employees. So, make sure you understand what drives your employees to do the best they can and see which perks and benefits can add to that. The best way to do this is to ask them by deploying your internal communication channels such as Microsoft Teams, digital signage screens, or corporate screensavers. Be sure also to use these channels to communicate about any perks and benefits and enable employees to click straight through to essential pages on benefits in your SharePoint environment. This way, employees know what you are doing to make work as pleasant as possible: work hard, play harder!

5. Rewards and recognition

Rewards and recognition have an enormous impact on organizational culture. Workplace recognition motivates staff, provides a sense of accomplishment, makes employees feel pride for their organization, and makes them feel valued for their work. Recognition boosts individual employee engagement, increases loyalty to the organization, increases retention, and boosts productivity. Recognition creates a perception amongst employees about their organization’s values and beliefs and what it stands for. Rewards and recognition emphasize that an employee’s work is valuable and meaningful to their organization.

Besides communicating how valued someone and their work is, recognition provides motivation and sends a message to other employees as to what success looks like. In this way, recognition can be both a tool for individual rewards and employee engagement and an opportunity to fortify the desired organizational culture to other employees.

‘When a team does something noteworthy, I go by, take a picture, and put the news on the screensavers and digital signage. The teams knows everyone on staff will know about their achievement, which makes them feel appreciated.’

Communication about this artifact

Rewarding and recognizing employees can be done privately and publicly, but employees who go above and beyond to do a great job need recognition for their hard work. Highly engaged organizations with strong organizational cultures provide multiple recognition programs via various channels.

For example, peer-to-peer recognition programs enable employees to celebrate their peers: 89 percent of HR professionals reported peer feedback having a very positive or somewhat positive impact on their organization. Peer feedback programs can be enabled by setting up peer-to-peer recognition channels such as a public channel in Microsoft Teams or a channel in your corporate app where employees can give their peers kudos for doing a great job.

Our client Brooklyn Hospital Center deploys their screensavers and digital signage screens to recognize their employees publicly for a job well done. Brooklyn Hospital Center’s Senior Writer & Editor Eric Sommer explains: ‘The TV and PC Screens have had a huge effect on improving employee satisfaction and morale and on building a sense of community. When a team does something noteworthy, the so-called small victories, I go by, take a picture, go back to my office, and put the news and the picture on the screensavers and digital signage. The team knows everyone on staff will know about their achievement, which makes them feel appreciated. It has this immediate ‘Boom, make them feel good’ effect.’

Through public recognition, the Brooklyn Hospital Center makes its employees feel proud to be part of the team. It reinforces a positive culture that employees want to be a part of – a great way to shape a strong and winning recognition program and make employees feel valued.

Did we inspire you to get started on building a winning organizational culture through internal communication? Get in touch with our consultants for a consultation; they would love to help you reinforce your organizational culture! Are you curious about tips on levels 2 and 3 of the Cultural Iceberg? Keep an eye on our blog for the follow-up! Or download the free infographic which explains why organizational culture is important.

The post How to Strengthen Your Organizational Culture with Internal Communication and Hall’s Cultural Iceberg Model appeared first on netpresenter.com.

‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast,’ management consultant Peter Drucker once said – and we definitely think this can be true. Companies disconnecting the two may be risking their success. However, while the majority of organizations spend lots of time and effort developing strategies and plans, the way people will work to deliver these can quickly be overlooked – resulting in a misalignment between strategy and the culture required to deliver the desired results. But if there are people in your organization, there will be a culture of some nature. Shaping your desired organizational culture is an ongoing process that requires constant effort, and internal communication will play a key role in every part of the process.

Organizational culture: a definition

We think of organizational culture as the ‘social glue’ within an organization. It is the collection of beliefs, values, norms, and methods of interaction that create an organization’s environment and make up an organization’s personality. Leading culture academic Edgar Schein defines culture simply as ‘how an organization organizes itself internally’. Additionally, he provides a more in-depth description, defining culture as ‘the sum total of everything an organization has learned in its history in dealing with the external problems – which would be goals and strategy’. In other words: ‘The way things are done around here’.

The Cultural Iceberg Model

According to American anthropologist Edward Hall, organizational culture (in whatever form) comes about at three different levels. These levels are often displayed in the metaphor of an iceberg. Hall developed the Cultural Iceberg Model in the 1970s as an analogy for the cultural codes that prevail in any society, but it’s still applicable today. The model is inspired by the icebergs found in polar seas: they have visible parts above the water’s surface, but up to 90% of an iceberg’s actual mass remains hidden underwater. Hall’s iceberg levels indicate what factors of organizational culture are above and below the ‘surface’ – or what can and cannot be observed.

Level one lies above the surface: the ‘artifacts’ or the visible part of your organization’s culture. This part can be noticed, but not necessarily understood, by a visitor or ‘outsider’ in the form of (among other things) physical artifacts such as a building’s interior, office design and decoration, appearance, perks and benefits, and technology, as well as your organization’s own language, rewards or recognition, visible traditions, social practices, and even office jokes.

Level two and three lies below the surface – they’re less visible and prominent.

Level two, the ‘espoused values’, are what an organization says it stands for and claims to value, such as published organizational values or a mission. These are stated goals, and they reflect the members’ shared opinion on ‘how things should be’. They can be the ‘public relation face’ of the organization, though it does not always match the reality.

Level three, the ‘basic assumptions’, are your employees’ core beliefs. They can heavily influence how people act and interact, although they are not always conscious assumptions. A basic assumption is a kind of belief that is taken for granted as a fact, and so it is never challenged, e.g., ‘it is best to speak up when I have a good idea’. A pattern of these evolves among the members of a social group such as an organization and makes up the core of the culture.

If we keep in mind Hall’s iceberg model, organizational culture can feel intangible, and in some ways, it is. Internal communication is an instrument that helps to expose your organizational culture’s intangible factors. Its key role regarding organizational culture displays itself in two important processes: understanding organizational culture and shaping organizational culture.

Understanding organizational culture

Organizational culture is something personal, and new hires or even existing employees might have trouble in discerning it and going beyond the artifact level of culture – its visible layer. Internal communication plays a key role in exposing the impalpable factors of organizational cultures, such as thoughts, values, and beliefs. Effective internal communications will bring your company values and assumptions above the surface. It provides insight into cultural settings and enables a better understanding of the organization, helping your employees align your company values and culture. Higher levels of alignment will result in a behavior pattern of high performance and positive assertiveness – and who wouldn’t want that?

Shaping organizational culture

While internal communication helps you make the espoused values of your organization tangible, your communication channels are also a helpful tool to shape your organizational culture. Communicating about your values and assumptions will, for example, instill a culture of transparency, which creates an environment that leaves employees feeling valued. Transparency nurtures a type of comfort that allows employees to communicate effectively and thus progress. As a result, it will instill the basic assumption that honesty is the best policy.

The basic assumptions in your organization dictate your espoused values and artifacts. However, your basic assumptions can also be affected by your espoused values, and your artifacts will have to be adjusted accordingly. Your culture iceberg’s levels are all interlaced and interact with each other. Internal communication will function as the thread that exposes them all.

Do you want to deploy your internal communication channels to bring the hidden layers of your organizational culture to the light? We are always excited to help you understand or shape your organizational culture. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with our consultants! Or download the free infographic which explains why organizational culture is important.

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