BECKY LEONARD
INSIGHT AND CONTENT MANAGER
Ethics, exhaustion and emails: top IC trends to kick off 2025
January to March edition
It’s the start of a new year, which means new questions to ponder. As we settle into 2025, here’s an insight into some of the challenges we’re already hearing about from our client organisations – and the actions we’re advising they take to set themselves up for success.
“Should we be speaking out more?”
It used to be that we looked to business leaders for strategic direction, industry awareness, and productive operations. Now it seems that we expect that, plus social and political commentary, as employees ask their organisations to speak out on the important, trending issues of the day.
Indeed, 62% of the UK workforce say they expect their employer to take a stance on the big issues in society, such as climate change and conflicts, according to the IC Index. The same report shows that trust, engagement and advocacy all drop sharply when people feel their employer doesn’t meet their expectations in this area.
This can also occur when organisations say they have certain values, or claim to support an important issue, but then don’t act in a way that aligns with that stance. For example, Amazon was criticised for its support of the Black Lives Matter movement while treatment of people of colour in its workforce was under scrutiny.
So, in a situation where you could be punished for saying the wrong thing, as much as saying nothing at all, how do organisations know when to speak out?
There is no easy answer to this one. You need to weigh up the pros and cons in any given situation. You need to consider what it means to your colleagues, as well as teaming up with your External Communications colleagues to discuss customer and shareholder impact where relevant.
But you can make each decision simpler by considering two things. Firstly, does the issue align with your organisational values? Secondly, do you have (or will you have) actions that back up your words? Being seen as a performative activist is not a good look for any leader, or organisation.
“How can I help to prevent burnout?”
Mental health and wellbeing at work is hardly a new topic. Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic, conversation has intensified around how organisations can support their employees more effectively.
But changes to working patterns, constant digital connection, and a cost of living crisis are just some of the issues that have pushed many people towards ‘burnout’.
Mental Health UK reported that 9 in 10 adults experienced high or extreme stress in the past year, with a fifth of UK workers hitting burning point. And despite this, still it appears that organisations’ approaches aren’t improving. The same report found that 49% of workers said their employer doesn’t have a plan to spot the signs of chronic stress.
So with the risk of mental health crises looming, what can internal communicators do to help?
What is burnout?
Burnout is a syndrome that results from chronic workplace stress that hasn’t been successfully managed. It’s characterised by:
- Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
- Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job
- Reduced professional efficacy.
World Health Organisation
Now, we’re not going to suggest that it’s an internal communicator’s job – or even possible for us – to fix workplace burnout on our own. It’s obviously a wider consideration, with many contributing factors.
But we can connect struggling employee and well-meaning (or not!) employer. For example, pointing colleagues to support and resources, creating educational content around how to manage stress, and giving them a sense of purpose by showing how their role connects to the organisation’s success.
You also can have an ear to the ground through listening mechanisms, letting leaders know about the mood of the organisation before it’s too late.
One way could be setting up support networks that can also feed back on employee sentiment. James Devine, Director & UK Head of Healthcare Workforce Practice at KPMG, says they’re seeing a big impact from staff networks.
“We acknowledge how the wellbeing of the people who work within our firm is shifting,” he says. “especially underrepresented communities. It’s about giving people a voice, and those networks are really important for doing that.”
How can I make email more effective?
The rumour of email’s death is greatly exaggerated. Move over instant messaging, video, intranet and posters. Email is still clinging on to the top spot when it comes to internal communication channels.
And it seems the love goes both ways. Six in ten employees prefer email as an internal communications channel (Inside Insight), while 93% of internal communicators say email is the most-preferred channel for reaching employees (Ragan).
Yet all we hear from employees is that there are “too many emails”. So much so that many admit to deleting emails from the Communications team without even opening them.
When we dig into the reasons why, we find that it’s because: 1) they don’t feel the content is relevant to them; or 2) they’re getting so many emails, they don’t have time to read them all.
So how do internal communicators balance the preference for email with the overwhelming amount received?
Be strict. Establish a core purpose for your email communications and stick to it. That way you’ll make sure it’s only used for what it’s best at – and stop employees being bombarded by irrelevant messages.
To help manage internal politics with those “Can-you-just-email-this-out-for-me” requestors, we recommend creating a triage system or checklist to help them understand whether their request needs an email communication, or would be better suited to another channel.
Once you’ve established this foundation, you can also level up your email communications with descriptive headlines that help the receiver understand whether this is something ‘to know’ or something ‘to do’. Plus, you can use designed templates to aid consistency and introduce creativity.
You could even bring in gamification and incentives. At Agorapulse, they doubled engagement in their internal newsletter by hiding a contest in the text and announcing the winner in the next issue. Fun for the employee reading and the team creating it!
Get in touch with Paul, our Head of Insight, at paul.jones@sequelgroup.co.uk to talk about the trends we’re seeing, and how Sequel can help you tackle your communication and engagement challenges this year.
