Chances are if you looked around your office, you’d find more Millennials working than other generations. Once you do your head count and realize you’re office is swarming with these young workers, you’ll want to fine tune how you’re communicating with them. Millennials stand for something. You’ll find that Millennials have an eye for authenticity and block out everything else. Chances are, that any Millennials you have on your team probably looked into your company to see where and how you stand. Millennials are passionate about their work and who they work for, so when it comes to communicat ..read more

Company progress and growth really starts to happen when you can align your employees with your vision. Helping employees feel connected to the direction of your company gives them a better understanding of their role in the structure of the organization and confidence to do their job well. Your vision is every employee’s common goal. And when everyone is engaged and moving in the same direction, the company works better and smarter. But it’s up to you to communicate the vision to employees, and keep the communication going as the company evolves. Here are four ways that Tribe recommends shari ..read more

An intranet can be so many things, but to internal communications, it’s like Main Street.  Everything is on display there, it’s a place to find information on benefits, figure out who works where, and stay up-to-date on the latest news within the company. It all happens here, but is anyone visiting? How does it look and how does it function? First impressions are everything, and that goes for your intranet as well. When employees get to the site, you want them to stick around, read any new stories, and be able to find the information they came looking for. In order to do that, you have t ..read more

Employees want to hear from the C-suite. In Tribe’s national research with employees of large companies, 72 percent want to hear directly from top management. Over 84 percent say they hear from corporate management “not enough.” Unfortunately, when employees do hear from their leadership teams, the communications are not always as authentic as one could hope. Of course, it’s far easier for everyone – not just the busy executives also the internal communications team – to have leadership simply sign off on communications that have been prepared by others. But that’s missing a hug ..read more

More often than not, internal communications travel down a one-way street. While communicating from the top down is certainly better than not communicating at all, employees crave the opportunity to have a voice. Don’t let fear of the unknown hold you back. We find a lot of companies are hesitant of allowing two-way communication because they’re worried about negative feedback. If employees don’t have a forum to speak their mind, important issues might go unnoticed. These negatives can also give you the opportunity to address things other employees might be experiencing as well. Here are a fe ..read more

The core of a brand is expressed through its visual identity system. This includes a color palette, typography, imagery, and icons that assemble in a coherent rhythm to establish the foundation of a brand. Like a great band, different instruments ebb and fl­ow together in harmony, while still leaving room for variety. For instance, a guitarist might start a solo, while the rest of the band continues not breaking the song’s overall cadence. It’s the variation within the system that makes music special. This is the main function of a great visual identity system– balancing consistency ..read more

Digital newsletters are a great resource for timely communications, highlighting a variety of subjects, people and news from across your organization. A well-executed newsletter provides the opportunity to bridge silos, create shared pride and boost recognition. Often produced as a monthly publication, newsletters can be efficient to create while remaining reasonably priced. Here are three simple tips for producing an engaging and efficient publication. Develop an editorial plan. Establishing reoccurring topics and themes for each issue will take a load off the planning process at the be ..read more

On Friday before I left the office, I posted a couple of sentences that have now had over a couple thousand views: At Tribe, we like to think we can move fast when necessary, but I think we just broke our own record: Planned, wrote and designed an internal site in 72 hours. Our client gave us the assignment Tuesday afternoon and we handed off PSDs to the developers EOD today. Bam! To be fair, that particular client deserves a tremendous share of the credit. I don’t want to give the impression that Tribe could do that large a project so quickly on just any account. When I stop to think about it ..read more

Here’s the thing: trust is not about guaranteeing employees that nothing bad will ever happen. If building trust requires a guarantee of anything, it’s that the company will tell employees what’s really going on, even if it’s bad. Impending job reductions are a great example of the sort of bad news that companies occasionally have to share. But employees are smart enough to realize that no company can promise lifetime employment anymore. Most employees don’t even want lifetime employment. They want interesting, challenging work, and in an ideal scenario, work that they find personall ..read more

Properly arming managers for cascading consistent communications can make or break your message delivery. In many cases, managers are responsible for delivering news to their teams. Without the proper guidelines and tools in place, managers will filter any information they receive through their own lenses. The problem comes in when their interpretation of the message changes, slightly or vastly, from the message the company intended. The answer to this common issue can be easier than you think. Providing managers with simple communications tools, like talking points and FAQ sheets, c ..read more