Quickfire questions 5 in five Guy Chiswick managing director UK&I, internal comms tech company Speakap We put five quickfire questions to Guy Chiswick about how companies can modernise their internalcommunications by using apps to reach and engage employees and deliver greater customer experience Why are secure and private messaging platforms becoming a vital part of internalcommunications? Getting messages to employees that will help them deliver a better service isnt always easy. Speakap came about after the companys founders worked in a supermarket and saw how bad communications were between the head office, managers and employees. Most people in retail work part-time they dont have a desk, work email address or intranet access. Getting messages to them is difficult. But in their social lives they use Facebook and other social media, and apps that mirror those platforms can help get vital information across. How does the design of such an app ensure it is used, and liked, by employees as atool for work? First, it needs to be easy to use and not require a lot of training. A timeline format that is familiar to other social platforms will help. Think about how the news feed works and how staff can do private messaging or how they can access an events section. Its also critical that an app is branded by the employer, so the line between work and social is not blurred; if its clearly branded its less likely that staff will post private information to the work app and vice versa. Having the corporate identity on communications also creates a sense of professionalism and belonging that you dont get with off-the-shelf, non-branded comms solutions, such as other social media platforms. How do you organise information across the platform to keep it relevant to individualemployees? Any internal comms platform needs to be well-structured. Create groups of employees, so that news and information is relevant to individual group members. With a supermarket chain, for example, groups could be split by location, then departments bakery, frozen, and so on. Then you can tailor the messaging. Withprivate chat, you can talk to people within a group, so its easy to communicate with the people you need, and not with those in other parts of the organisation who arent interested. It means you have a much greater chance that messages will be received and acted upon. Are there any rules as to the frequency with whichcompanies should be delivering information toemployees? Its down to the organisation how frequently they think they should get in touch with their employees. One company weve worked with checks the temperature of their employees on a daily basis by asking them how theyre doing, whats going well and what isnt. This can be useful as an HR productivity tool. Then, if youre in retail and theres a new product launch, its obviously vital that key marketing messages and information are delivered in time for the product release. It comes down to relevancy. If youre bombarding people with information they dont need then people switch off. If it adds value and helps people to do their jobs, it will be engaged with. How do you ensure that using such a platform doesnt make employees feel theyre being spied on? You must clearly state what the privacy policy is and how their data is used. For example, make it clear that an employees private chat is just that private. But also be clear that if they post on the company timeline, then everyone will see it. This is best done as an onboarding piece of work, which means people are comfortable with it straight away. Bear in mind that this is not the case with something like a third-party internal comms platform, such as the Facebook Workplace tool, which is built on the same data platform and algorithm as Facebook. This means that the rules on privacy might be different, and that employee concerns about privacy are likely to be higher. cim.co.uk/exchange