Join me in this IABC webinar
I met the folks at IABC Emena during a networking event I co-hosted with friends before summer. They took interest in my research on belonging at work. And the below post is the result. Join me?
Good Comms celebrates two years!
Time flies when you’re having fun, so they say. This summer, Good Comms celebrated its second year! I would say, we’ve been actively creating cultures of belonging in the projects we served. Here’s my post on LinkedIn:
Belonging for change
This week, our expertise in change communication was featured on IoIC Voice. Voice magazine is the quarterly print title exclusively for IoIC members. Voice is rich in practical, useful content for IC practitioners – in-depth features, key research and opinions from around the industry. Voice is an essential tool for internal communicators to gain knowledge about their work and talk openly to their peers – sharing experiences and solutions to common issues.
Belonging at work: recommendations for future research
This study found a direct relationship between belongingness and the quality of an employee’s relationship with his/her manager. However, it seems that line managers are either reluctant, unavailable, unaware, or unskilled to create a sense of belongingness in their teams. It might thus be interesting for future researchers to explore the real cause of this disconnect and find out how internal communication can help make this relationship flourish.
Belonging at work: recommendations for practice
Every internal communication programme starts with a baseline. It is therefore useful for IC professionals to determine where their workplaces are in terms of a sense of belongingness before they aim to improve or strengthen it. To make sure that belongingness for new hires is taken on board, IC can conduct an initial survey to design a programme that can lead a transformation. They can do this via a questionnaire or random focus groups in the organisation.
Belonging at work: conclusions of study
The workplace has changed many times and in many ways since the coronavirus pandemic introduced lockdowns in the early part of 2020. With so many lives taken and workers pressured to perform behind their screens while balancing families and careers, mental health has been put under the microscope. This includes an employee’s sense of belongingness.
Bringing it all together: The new model for virtual workplace belonging
This blogpost aims to bring together what I have found as what works, what does not work, the themes that emerged during my interviews and the internal communication strategies that design belongingness in the virtual workplace. I managed to bring them all together in a handy model I call the new framework for workplace belonging.
IC strategies that work: nurturing leadership
Employee interviews have shown that they welcome nurturing leadership, especially when working from home. How should leaders be and how can IC help?
IC strategies that work: teaming events
Employee interviews have shown that random virtual socials can be uncomfortable while teaming events might do the trick.
IC strategies that work: supportive network
Employee interviews have shown that new hires need a supportive human network when starting a job. How can IC help?