Ask any internal communications professional how they make communication persuasive and they’re likely to start in the same place: by making it personal. Putting themselves in the shoes of their audience and considering their answer to the vital question: “What’s in it for me?”

Often that means internal communicators try to shape messaging around providing benefits and erasing pain points. For example, “Here’s your new intranet – it’s easy to find what you need!” (Benefit) Or “Our new strategy will end the confusion around our goals!” (Pain point).

But there can be a problem with this approach. It assumes that our audience are rational beings, who will process information in the way we want them too. Sadly, that’s not how we (humans) work.

Unconscious decisions

Much of life is designed in a way that’s about conscious reasoning. That if we’re presented with the benefits and/or pain points of a choice, we’ll take the time to weigh them up and make a decision in our best interest.

But that approach assumes that we have an unlimited supply of knowledge, memory, attention and self-control at the moment we have to make that choice.

Instead, scientists estimate that anywhere up to 95 per cent of our decisions are made unconsciously and automatically. We make mental shortcuts – also known as heuristics – to stop us being completely overwhelmed by the estimated 35,000 (!) decisions we have to make in a day.

And to complicate things further, those behaviours are heavily influenced in the moment by physical, cultural, emotional and temporal context.

For example, how often have you acted a certain way because you feel it’s the ‘right thing to do’? In behavioural science, that’s called the injunctive norm. Or have you been loath to give something up, even if you know it could be beneficial in the long run? That’s called loss aversion.

These are both examples of heuristics, two of more than 100 that have been researched and noted already. And they make behaviour change even more complicated.

Conscious choices

So how can communicators attempt to tackle this? Firstly, by making sure that we know our employees as well as we can. Of course, we can’t understand the psyche of every single person, but we can understand the mood of the organisation, or even employee groups, by investing our time in regular measurement.

We’ve helped our clients gain a deeper understanding of their people and their needs through quarterly pulse surveys and interviews, which help them make informed, timely decisions.

Secondly, you can plan your communications (and particularly your messaging) with behavioural insights in mind. Think about any biases and/or prejudices you might need to overcome, and the mental shortcuts someone might make in reaction to your communications, and adapt accordingly.

In a world where decisions are often made in the blink of an eye, understanding the unconscious drivers behind those choices isn’t just an advantage – it’s essential. By doing so, internal communicators can craft messages that truly resonate and lead to meaningful change.