The Swear Jar

Corporate Podcasts: Are they just the new corporate newsletter?

September 18, 2020 Andrew Brown and Elizabeth Williams
The Swear Jar
Corporate Podcasts: Are they just the new corporate newsletter?
Show Notes Transcript

Employee Communications professionals beware....the next new(ish) thing is here! That's right, corporate podcasts have descended upon us. That means we've got to figure out:

  • If we should use them
  • When we should use them
  • How we should use them
  • How to get the most out of them

That's why in this episode of The Swear Jar, we sat down with corporate podcast guru, Jonathan Davies from the folks at Happeo (www.Happeo.com). 

Jonathan, Elizabeth and I help you wrap your heads (and employee communications) around corporate podcasts and podcasting by tackling the following:

1.     Trends in podcast usage

2.     Expectations about podcast for employee communications

3.     Outcomes of podcasts for employee communications 

4.     What needs to be in place for podcast success

5.     Myths and misconceptions of corporate podcasts for employee communications

Join in on the fun and be sure to check out the show notes at www.AcademyofBusinessCommunications.com - listeners of The Swear Jar get some exclusive, cool discounts!

Elizabeth Williams  

Hi everyone and welcome to the swear jar. The official podcast of the Academy of business communications where we tell it like it is about corporate and employee communications occasionally use colorful language to raise money for worthy causes. My name is Elizabeth Williams.

Andrew Brown  

And I'm Andrew Brown. Today we've got a special guest to tackle a form of employee communications that is relatively new. We're speaking about corporate podcasts. And we're very lucky to have Jonathan Davies who owns responsibility for developing and implementing the podcast strategy. Software as a Service communications platform happier. What's unique about Jonathan is that he has also own responsibility for employee communications, and has seen the how organizations across different sectors tap into this communications tool. Jonathan, welcome to this wager.

Jonathan Davies 

Thank you so much, Andrew. And Elizabeth. I'm really happy to be here.

Elizabeth Williams  

So, Jonathan, just before we jump into our discussion today, why don't you tell us a little bit about happier and about how you came to have responsibility for its corporate podcast strategy, which unless I'm mistaken, is partly focused on helping to reinforce happier thought leadership.

Jonathan Davies 

So, Happeo is a platform that some would call a digital workplace. Some would call it a social intranet. We call it an employee driven communications plan. form. And basically what it's there to do is to merge the ideas of an intranet on an enterprise social network, and bring collaboration capabilities together into it. So that that conversation that you have digitally ends up turning into collaboration and gives people the tools to really create difference in a business. how it came about when it came to podcasting? Well, I mean, happy has always had the mission of wanting to completely revolutionize the industry of internal communication. And in order to make people aware of that mission and to help internal communicators or employee communicators, such as the ones listening to this podcast, we decided that blogging, creating content, creating videos, and also creating podcasts would be a great way. Now specifically podcasts have proven to be a big success, simply because, you know, those internal indicators aren't always very visible because their work is internal. 

And we have a podcast, the most beautiful thing is that you can grab those people and ask them about all the amazing things that they've done and create a conversation that's actually pretty deep learning for anybody who's listening to it. And that was kind of also the strategy behind it, there was absolutely no commercial aspects to it, other than really wanting to create content that truly adds value to our audience. And I think that also ties into what most successful corporate or enterprise podcasts or internal podcasts are doing now, which is really good material is a type of material that creates value for your audience.

 Elizabeth Williams  

Yeah, that's and it doesn't matter which audience that is, does it? It's it can be employees just as easily as it can be customers. Which I guess is it's surprising then that we're only just starting to think of podcasts as an internal communications platform. Given that they've been around for, what, 10 or 15 years, you know, as external content, so it's interesting. So I want to understand what you've seen then in terms of how widely employers are adopting podcasts to use as an employee communications tool. And then why would they include podcasts as part of their overall strategy. Are they reaching someone different? Or is it offering some new advances that we couldn't have before? What are you seeing? 

Jonathan Davies 

Trends in corporate podcasts and podcasting

Well, I would say I can sum that up into two things on one side, in a normal circumstance, I'm seeing podcasts being adopted by mostly larger organizations that want to take the time to delve into kind of complex situations because you have to imagine a podcast is a great conversation with some direction to it, that allows for so much contextual information around the subject. So just to make that ladder a little bit less bubbly. For example, let's say you work in engineering and you've just created a new product that will machine aluminum instead of, I don't know injection molded plastic, I have no knowledge of engineering, but just to name two engineering buzzwords, they're not there's obviously a difference between the two materials. And there's market value between both of them and in business implications for that company. Now, not everybody in an engineering company is an engineer, you also have people in sales that have a deep understanding, but not they don't have a master's in engineering, you'll have people in marketing, that whose more understanding maybe a bit more shallow. I know of people in HR whose understanding will be even more shallow than that. Just to name an example. podcasts are a really great method to have a conversation with someone who knows a lot about a subject and really pick their brain and dive deep and there's so much value around all That contextual information that you're creating that it's just a really, really beautiful medium to explore complex subjects. Now, this isn't a normal circumstance. I've also seen this happen very currently with the corona outbreak. I know of a company, very well known brand who I'm not sure if I can say who they are because I know the person there and they didn't want to share this. But let's just say that they've put out their podcast specifically because people were starting to obviously work from home. And yes, you have certain goals. And all of that is great. But some people were just missing a voice of leadership, and they really use it as a leadership visibility tool. So this was more a matter of getting in touch with those executives that command strategy and how the company is now reacting to this massive global change in form of the corona pandemic. And really have a long, rich conversation with him about that. Share that in podcasts and get people to engage with it.

 Andrew Brown 

Expectations about podcasting – Cost, Benefit, Risks

That's exciting. And no, we're not going to delve into who that is. But it's always encouraging to hear large or leading brands adopting and refining new communication skills. What I'd like to take a moment to turn our attention to next is the expectations that organizations and employee communications professionals have when they start their podcasting journey. After all, we know that investing time, energy and expense in any employee communications tool is an unknown until its value is actually proven. So let's talk about the three critical expectations that apply to all communications tools, cost, benefit and risk. So what do you find are the common expectations about each of these as it relates to using podcasts for employees Communications. And, you know, let's start with expectations about the benefits of podcasts and then move to costs and risks.

Johnathan Davies

Yeah, I would actually say that when it comes to cost benefit and risk, I think most of those three factors for most of the in-house internal communicators that I've spoken to are still somewhat unknown. And specifically around the benefit, a lot of people think this is a great new medium, we need to jump on it. But there's not much more reason behind it than it's a great medium, we need to jump on it. I think clarifying that is really important. So, in that sense, the benefit of it for me for podcasting is it's a great way to explain in long form complex subject with a rich amount of context. So not a very practical benefit to it, which is that employees can listen to it on in their leisure, so they can download that podcast or listen to it in their, you know, their own internet platform. Or if you've blocked it, maybe you can Listen to it privately listed on Apple podcasts, whatever is available to them, whatever medium is available. You could listen to it in your break, you could listen to it during your commute if you're not in a lockdown like we are now. Or, well, whenever it's convenient for people really. And that's pretty awesome. You're able to reach people when they can when they say they want to be reached. And that's a pretty powerful way of doing it. 

Andrew Brown 

Any thoughts on expectations that people might bring to podcasts? As far as the costs and the risks are concerned? They know what what costs are associated?

Jonathan Davies

Yeah, so I think that a lot of people expect that an internal podcast is extremely time consuming and very expensive. And the time consuming part mainly comes from Well, you have to interview people and you have to edit a lot and then the expensive part comes from You need a lot of professional equipment. So, I'm not just talking about a microphone, but you also need a capable sound card or your, your laptop needs to be up to snuff. You need a room with noise, insulation, all of that stuff. And you may or may not need a freelancer, potentially person on your team who has some audio engineering capabilities. And that's those are the things that I'm most frequently hear. And those are the biggest fears, especially when it comes to getting buy in from the business and getting this done. Which the fun part about it is honestly, none of it is true. It's not expensive. It's not very time consuming. And you do not need a professional audio engineer to get it done.

Andrew Brown  

We're going to cover that a little later on when we're talking about myths and myths, misconceptions about podcasts.

Elizabeth Williams  

Yeah, I mean, I would say certainly, my experience with podcasts is it was I underestimated not so much the expense To the expertise because you can hire people to do a lot of the stuff but I find that even the one that we're currently recording I think Andrew and I were talking the other day that it takes more time than you think, I think to to both prepare for recording a podcast and then also to kind of tidy up the loose ends at the at the back end. But we can we can talk about that what I like to just segue on to understanding what the initial expectations about podcasts are and the outcomes right because that's all we hear is communicators when we propose anything it's you know, what, what's going to happen on how are we going to measure it and so they aren't going to get adopted if they can't demonstrate some kind of value to the employee communications team. And so when we think of what communicators like us do, it's really about getting employees to know something that's important for the organization to feel something that's you important to them and the organization and then obviously to do something that moves the organization forward. And, so we could include how learning from podcasts affects the effectiveness of employee communications function. So I'm interested in how you've seen organizations measure the impact of internal podcast, Jonathan?

Measuring the impact of corporate podcasts

Jonathan Davies

Yeah, that's a great question. So I think that a lot of organizations right now that do run internal podcasts are in the experimental stage, which means that they're not necessarily yet really relating this to business objectives, but are more doing it to see if it's an effective channel to use which is fine. Now, I have seen other organizations that have been putting this out and are looking at what's our strategy right now, what do we need to get done? And how can we contribute to that? And then and only then when that's been decided, they will look at Okay, so how can we implement podcasts into this and Is this a viable channel to get that done. So, to give you a concrete example: A specific company that I know of was dealing with turnover issues. employees were leaving, and they are active in an industry where talent is particularly hard to find. Now that's outside of the normal war for talent that's raging. Now, one of the main reasons that they were leaving was because a lot of people felt they had a lack of knowledge of the business, what it does, what's it trying to achieve in the world? So, kind of that overall mission vision values, what do we stand for? And how does our strategy relates to all of those things? People weren't necessarily this, their audience is largely a whole bunch of introverts, so they didn't necessarily want to take the time to explain this to new colleagues. It was very much a sink or swim environment. And when they found this out, they figured well look. This is a lot material to talk about, it's hard to say, here's our mission as a company. These are our strategic objectives and how they relate to that, here's how we are going to measure that. And these are the activities that we are going to do to make that measurable change. That's where podcasts really came in handy, again, because it's such a complex subject, but at the same time, it's also something that you can understand very well. But just having a great conversation with someone about a company that I'm talking about specifically looked at turnover. And, you know, it's a very lagging metric. So, it didn't immediately have a massive impact. But after measuring through survey, they could definitely see that the sentiment towards I don't understand my business and the direction it's going. This was very much changing. And obviously, that's a great result as an internal communicator to say and something that in this case, HR was also very happy with.

Barriers to podcasting

Elizabeth Williams  

That's a fantastic story. Thank you for sharing that. And so now you're getting everybody on excited. And so I have a couple of questions. And I'm actually just while you were talking, I was looking at a survey of recent survey from 2020, about internal communications. And, and what's interesting is that only 23% of internal communicators are, are expressing any interest in podcasts. So that's still lagging behind things like webinars and haven't helped us email templates. So, I guess I'm wondering, is, is this because perhaps they are worried about getting executive buy in for the medium, right? We're asking executives to do a different thing and behave in a different way. And many of them are, perhaps, have little to no experience with podcasting, either as consumers of podcasts or podcasters. And then, secondly, perhaps what needs to be in place for these overworked under resourced internal communications people, whether they're an HR or communications or marketing to make it successful, so is, Are there things that perhaps are creating a barrier to entry.

Jonathan Davies  

When it comes to executive buy-in, I think that every organization will have that one internal influencer. So, you don't even need to necessarily start with an executive level person, though that does very much help for the first episodes. But find that one real influencer, that really wants to talk. And they really want to share their opinion. And they, they don't just talk about fluff, they have actual good things to say. That's where you want to start. Because the second that you start with that you get this person on your side, when you have somebody on your side with one ally, it's much easier to create two allies and from two allies, you can create four and so on and so forth. It's that kind of leadership buy in snowball effect that you're looking to create. Most internal communicators that are listening to this, probably already have a bunch of internal influencers. Hopefully also some of those are executives on their side and those are likely to people where I would start to have them as a guest, provided that they can relate to the subjects that we want to talk about, which are then hopefully related to business objectives, essentially. 

Elizabeth Williams  

What other things do you think need to be in place? Given how stretched and stressed and under resourced so many internal communications functions are?

Jonathan Davies – What Needs to be in place

When it comes to the stuff that you need in place, well, there's the practical stuff, right? So you kind of need software to be able to deal with your podcast and that needs to be easy friendly to use, and it shouldn't be something that requires an entire e-learning module to understand how it works. That's one, for example, Audacity is a free audio editing software that works just fine.

When it comes to initially setting up your podcast, one of the best ways to start is to record a season and theme that season, because then it becomes much easier to direct the content, right? If we decide that our theme is going to be working from home, then I know exactly roughly which subjects I can approach in those, let's say six episodes that we start with. Now, let's say you decide that the optimal duration for your podcast is an hour, I would always say start with 30 minutes to 60 minutes. Now, you know that it's going to take twice as long per episode simply because the recording takes a little Bit Longer. And also you want to have pre screening calls with people that you invite just to get them a little bit comfortable talking about the subjects, figuring out what their style of conversation is, so you can play into that. And also, generally just giving them the practical tips of “Hey, you need to be in a quiet room, you need to have headphones on you need to have stable internet connection”, this type of stuff. Once you have an overview of the amount of time that it's going to require, I'd say literally just make a list of the products that are necessary to get this podcast out there. And I do not have to be expensive. So, I mean I'm sure I'm so my currency is usually Euro. So just speaking euros, a decent podcasting microphone, around 100 euros external soundcard with which you can edit it kind of the same deal software to edit it. Some in some cases, depending on the computers you use will come for free with it. If not, it can be around 80 to 90 euros. So, you're looking at really not a whole lot of money that's necessary. When it comes to the resources side of things, yes, internal communicators are incredibly busy and overrun with requests. But remember that this is a channel through which you can communicate things. So, if you're if you were intent on writing free internal blog articles on I don't know, the five best ways to create sales in 2020 because this is one of your company's objectives. Honestly, probably you can replace two or three of those blog posts with one podcast simply because it's such a long medium, again, so much rich contextual information, you can really dive deep in those conversations. So, a lot of people think it's a really big time sink. I actually feel like it saves me a lot of time by doing a lot of podcasting.

Andrew Brown  

Well, you know, it's like you anticipated our next question. And that's, you know, all you new-ish communication tools are approached with some initial skepticism, right? And that's because they are misunderstood. So, what would you say are the critical three or four big myths or misconceptions about corporate podcasts and corporate podcasting that are acting as those barriers or stumbling blocks and people from getting started?

Jonathan Davies - Misconceptions

I think the first misconception is that it’s really hard to do. Because it's not, it's a conversation that you're having. And the best podcasts have a directed conversation. So one of the things I will do when I have guests on my podcasts, and one of the things that I advise internal communicators to do when they are creating their podcast, when they found our guest, simply ask this guest, hey, this is the subject we're going to be talking about. I know you're comfortable with this subject. I would like you to note one or two key takeaways that you wouldn't give to our audience, in this case, your colleagues, and note those down and send that to me, I will base my questions around it, but I will not script the rest. This is my approach and that tends to work really well. Well, saves a lot of time, but you do need to be comfortable continuously asking questions. Now a lot of internal communicators either have affinity for journalism or are former journalists. So, I think that most of the people listening to this podcast, this will be a good approach room. Second misconception you need a CEO or high-level executive as a host. You don't. There are a lot of corporate podcasts that have somebody of higher stature within an organization as a host. That is fine. But it's really not mandatory. If I'm an internal communicator within an organization, let's say Acme Inc. - to name a Looney Tunes example - If I'm an internal communicator there, I can be the host and I can just constantly invite guests that have good things to say. And that's also the difference between creating a guest driven or host driven podcast so make that decision early on, that overcomes that obstacle. Number one is well we spoke of you don't need to have a professional An audio engineer. So, I'm going to, we can maybe dive deeper into that later. But then lastly, big misconception is you need to be in one room with this person to do a podcast and his room needs to be well insulated and you need a professional microphones and all of that stuff. You don't. I run most of my podcasts simply via sprinkles and provided that the service that you're using is high enough quality that really is not an issue. There are also other services out there that are really optimized for podcast calls, and they work really well. 

Elizabeth Williams  

What I'm hearing from you is there are a lot of ways that we can also put together a good business case for podcasting. I liked that you talked about well, it doesn't necessarily have to be a net new thing, it can actually replace something else that you were doing, for example, blogging. I think, personally, most CEO blogs are the saddest corner of every internet ever. And, so I think if we're able as communicators or as fearless communicators, to have some success, we can propose the podcast as something perhaps that replaces something that wasn't working. And, and I think, too, that it isn't on the part of the participants, the executives or the subject matter experts necessarily that onerous. And I guess my question is, are we at a point now where the perfect is no longer the enemy of the good when it comes to things like podcasting? Is it more authentic to have maybe a slightly rough around the edges podcast with the arms and the oz and the occasional Dog in the background is that that now Okay, are we there and what other? What other things can we have in places?

Jonathan Davies 

Yeah, I absolutely think that we're there. I think that the time where everything needed to be a completely polished product is done. We don't live in kind of that 90s plastic reality idea anymore. It's okay to have you know, we're all working from home in a lockdown right now or most organizations are. It's very normal to have a screen co somebody and hear their kids yelling in the background, or do your example to hear your dog bark. I know it happened a couple of times during webinars or podcasts that I did. And that's totally okay. In fact, actually, the reactions to those things have been mostly positive, because it seems like a normal more relatable situation. And when you're an employee communicator, internal communicator, you want to be normal and relatable, because how else You're going to get people to talk. So that's definitely a very big aspect of it.

Andrew Brown  

Excellent. You know, I've got a couple of, “messy questions”. So, I'd like to raise something that, no doubt some of our listeners are thinking, you know, will that the podcast become just the new corporate newsletter? And by that, I mean, is it going to become a communication channel that becomes a real drain on resources that only, you know, a handful of people truly care about? A tool that's thrown on the scrap heap of good intentions, and potentially over time erodes the credibility of the employee communications function because it becomes one of those things that gets sit in the corner that that sit in the corner and people are just going off. Do I really have to do this? Or it's just another thing that that arrives that I have to listen to? How do we make sure that our fearless communicators don't have podcasts that become that sort of dead dying cat of a new corporate newsletter? So that's the first question. And the second question, because we're talking about collaboration and conversation and deep learning. Elizabeth and I are always talking about how communication needs to build in listening. So I'm curious about your thoughts on how podcasts can be a tool to facilitate listening. And I know there's a lot there to unpack.

Jonathan Davies – Avoiding the Newsletter Trap and Listening

So, actually, when it comes to listening, and I think also, you know, making sure that that podcast does not become a dying cat. Let's First start with a statement of fact, which is a podcast is simply a channel to get your message across. And it's not a strategy in itself. It's just a way to tactically execute something good employee, communicators or internal communicators start with a business objective form a strategy based around how can we help that business objective? Figure out which message is needed for that business objective? And then we'll see, okay, is my podcast A great way? Is it a great medium to get this message across? Now if the answer is “yes”, then there's intrinsically immediately already value in it because you've decided and you figured out through, hopefully educated opinions, research, whatever, that podcast is a great way to get this current message across. Now when it comes to how can we facilitate listening and actually also how can we keep this medium fresh? 

Look, corporate newsletters the issue with it is that nobody can react to it. Nobody can really engage with it. It's one way broadcasted communication. And that's boring. The world has shifted on. Now you need one way broadcasted communication. But if your entire internal comms strategy centers around it, that's really bad. But most internal communicators know that that realization is there these days. podcasting by its nature is of course, one to many, right? It's just you download a piece of audio. That's it, you can't exactly ask live questions. That's what webinars are for. However, there are really simple ways to create that static assets, or to change that static asset into more dynamic assets. For example, one is post in your social intranet, or if you don't have such a tool in place, ask it for email if really necessary. Ask your people first and foremost, “hey, I'm about to record this episode with this person. What would you like to ask this person?”

Once you do that, a lot of people start thinking and some of those people that have started to think, will also ask questions. Now I guarantee you those people will listen to the episode because they're waiting for that question to be answered. That's one way. The second is, you've recorded the podcast, you post it on whichever internal platform you have. Hopefully, this internal platform allows you for interaction, right? So, you can comment or you can post you can like on it, maybe dust out that old enterprise social network that nobody wants to use those networks. By its definition, they're great ways to just create engagement around static assets such as podcasts. So, if we've had an episode, I can post it there. And then I can ask my people. Hey, so what did you think about this episode? Do you want to dive deeper into this topic for a future episode? Are there things that you think we missed? What was your biggest key takeaway, you can also even interview people that have been listening to your podcasts that are have become loyal followers and ask them name your top three learnings and post that In an internal channel that you have, you know, a way to create some employee storytelling around the podcasts that you've created. Because the great thing about podcasts is they're such rich mediums for content. They're essentially big sources or even libraries that you can pull on. So, one podcast doesn't need to just be one podcast, one podcast can be 15 posts on your enterprise social network, and free blog posts that you derive from it. Because you've got so much to source and refer to.

Elizabeth Williams  

I love the idea of using a podcast we call them tea bags, content, tea bags that you can just keep squeezing new cups of tea out of as opposed to just, well, the dead cat newsletter . I think that's great. 

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Andrew Brown  

Wow. You know this has been an amazing conversation. Jonathan Elizabeth, I was challenged to figure out how to summarize this. Well, I'll highlight a few things and also mentioned that we'll develop at least one checklist for our fearless communicators and we'll put it on our website. But the things that really struck me was that that podcasts are powerful tools for collaboration, conversation, and complex discussion, the three C's, that was conversation, collaboration and complex discussion. 

So, Jonathan, that's what I took away from that. Thank you, Elizabeth, Jonathan, anything that you'd like to highlight that really caught your ear?

Elizabeth Williams  

I think a couple of things that sort of caught my eye, in addition to what you said is to remember it as a great leadership visibility tool and not just for your CEO, but you know, for some of those perhaps lesser known leaders who are subject matter experts, I took away the excellent advice to make sure you have an influencer on the inside to help drive that through and to use the approach of recording seasons with themes and use that as a way to scope what you're doing, to make sure it's strategic to really kind of break it down into something that's manageable. And I guess the final thing I took away as maybe more of a question for Jonathan is: are podcasts a really great way to reach some of our more difficult employees, such as the people we call the undesked. So people who work in warehouses and cars and you know, don't sit at a at a tidy little desk like we do. Is there any evidence to suggest that this is a good medium for reaching younger workers, so those Gen Y and Gen Zed who are so notoriously disengaged, what do you think Jonathan?

 Jonathan Davies

To your first question around, is this a great way to reach deskless workers? I mean, by logic, I would say yes. However, in practice, I haven't heard of a lot of podcasts being implemented in organizations that have a big deskless force. It's really been mostly knowledge driven organizations. So that's definitely one aspect. However, I'd be really interested in learning that. So, anybody who listens to this, please reach out to me and say, yes. And then secondly, is it something that kind of the Gen Y, Gen Z, people would enjoy more? Definitely also millennials. So, the most people that I speak to that have corporate podcasts, I've done so successfully work in kind of knowledge driven organizations with a varied workforce, and a lot of young people among that workforce as well. So, it's not just the baby boomers, and it's not just Gen Y or Gen Z. It's both. The beautiful thing about that is because it's such an accessible tool, and generally everybody knows how to access a podcast, because it can dive so deep for the kind of Gen Z and Gen Y people with a novel way of being communicated to so there's already valuing that that makes them intrinsically interested, and maybe more towards a baby boomer generation of things. They tend to be really, really content-oriented: really “just give me two takeaways, what am I learning here, how does this add value”, and “how can I make it as easy and painless as possible to learn new things of my work?” And that's definitely what podcasts are great for and how I've seen them used very successfully.