ICYMI: Intranets ranked, the future, and meme what you say
4 comms things and 1 non-comms thing you might have missed
- Last week on Mister Editorial, an interview with Carolyn Clark, Senior Director of Internal Communications at GoDaddy
In case you missed it…
1. Intranet Platforms, Q2 2020 Report
Forrester research reviewed 12 intranet platforms using 26 criteria, such as personalization, content analytics, metadata support, and user interfaces.
Some takeaways:
- Igloo Software, LumApps, and Simpplr are the leading services.
- 🦕 On-premises intranets are dinosaurs. Cloud-based platforms with flexibility around personalization will carry the day.
- Integration with productivity apps is critical if you want the intranet to be a relevant, used, and loved platform.
- Mind the gap: 66% of knowledge workers are satisfied with their intranet. Compare that to 80+% who are happy with their calendaring, word processing, spreadsheet, and email tools.
- Download the report here.
2. The Workforce Is About to Change Dramatically
“When the pandemic is over one in six workers is projected to continue working from home or co-working at least two days a week.” Writing for The Atlantic, Derek Thompson offers three predictions of what the workforce of the future could look like. He argues:
- The “telepresence” revolution will reshape the U.S. workforce
- Remote work will increase free-agent entrepreneurship
- A superstar-city exodus will reshape American politics
- The kicker: “The plague is not an inventor. It is a time machine, pulling us forward into a future that was, perhaps, already on its way.”
- Read the article
3. What’s Keeping You Up at Night?
The Grossman Group recently conducted a survey of dozens of leaders and communicators, asking a frank question: What’s keeping you up at night?
On the whole, leaders and communicators shared one key theme: uncertainty — personally, around the pandemic, and about how to communicate amid so much change.
- Personal uncertainty — example: “My job, the kids, finances.”
- Pandemic uncertainty — example: “Working to keep my staff employed, seen as essential during this time.”
- Communications uncertainty — example: “Starts and stops of communications campaigns in response to ever-evolving mood and fears about the virus.”
- Read on for four tips on how to address ongoing leader and communications concerns.
4. Sustaining Employee Networks in the Virtual Workplace
“One of the biggest drivers of who interacts with whom in organizations is physical proximity — a phenomenon that’s been observed from the U.S. Senate to the Google campus. Amazingly, even a distance of a meter or two can make a big difference.” Writing for MIT Sloan Management Review, Daniel Levin and Terri Kurtzberg argue that managers need to understand how relationships work if they want to keep a virtual workforce happy.
- In a virtual world, interactions are intentional, not serendipitous
- 🔑 “A less-interconnected network of relationships among employees reduces the sense of commitment to one another and to the organization.”
The authors provide five ways managers can reinforce trust and a sense of connection:
- Actively cultivate feelings of solidarity and shared mission.
- Be a useful and helpful network broker.
- Use a variety of communication channels.
- Preserve teams with long working relationships.
- Foster communication norms that value the need for focused attention.
Read the article to get the details.
5. How to Meme What You Say
Chi Luu, writing for JSTOR Daily, discusses the highly engaging and mutating internet expression that is the meme. “Expressing yourself through the medium of the absurdist humor of internet memes can seem silly to many people — but it’s a silliness and playfulness that’s often surprisingly bundled together with astute observations about the human condition, or our assumptions about the world.”
- 😂 choice quote: “…the remarkable thing about internet memes is that without constant mutation through wordplay, they become, ahem, meme-ingless…”
- Meme more
