Internal communication gets smart

By Stuart Forbes

Plenty. Just ask Korea Exchange Bank who recently distributed smartphones to 6000 employees to strengthen internal communication and are active in educating staff about the benefits of using their electronic devices.

Or Novartis, whose employees rely on iPhones to manage emails, calendars, as well as information about vaccines and other health issues.

Or Microsoft, whose Academy Mobile has now reached 940,000 downloads in just 3 short years.

“There is no doubt that mobile is the way to go to access even reach media content such as audio/video podcasts,” explains enterprise social video consultant, Paolo Tosolini.

“Employees appreciate the convenience of mobile learning. It helps their work life balance because it respects their busy schedules. You can learn something new every day as you drive to your customer’s office vs. being chained to your desktop. Mobility = freedom to learn at your own time and pace,” he points out.
 
The mobile office

Thanks to smartphone technology, employees are doing just that.

“There is an expectation now – from employees and employers – that your mobile is going to play a role in your working life. People expect to be able to use and benefit from smartphone technology,” explains Chris Barrow, Advanced Technologies Marketing Manager for Avaya, a global leader in the manufacturing and implementation of enterprise communications systems.

Avaya are best known for developing Unified Communications platforms – as Barrow says: “we could turn pretty much any device into a mobile office.”

But what are the benefits to employers of having a mobile work force - employees that can work remotely - from home, from a hotel room, even from the back seat of a taxi?

Well, according to Barrow, the rewards are myriad. First, you can cast your net wider when it comes to recruitment.

“Large employers will generally have saturated the employment market within their local geography. But if you can actually say to potential employees, ‘listen, travel to the office is actually only required on X number of days per month’, all of a sudden you can start recruiting out of less traditionally well salaried areas and start attracting high calibre staff from places that you just couldn’t have attracted them from in the past.”

Cost-saving

A second benefit to having a mobile work force is that companies can save money. Lots of it.

“We have clients who are now working on a ratio basis of staff to desks – in some cases that ratio is pretty high, 4 or 5 staff to a desk,” says Barrow. “These clients now employ hotdesking on the basis that a high percentage of staff will only spend one day a fortnight in the office.” 

Needless to say, the savings in terms of real estate are considerable. And the days of the heavily staffed office in large office spaces with high rental costs are gradually drawing to a close.

Apps for employers

Apps for smartphones are an integral part of the mobile office experience. There are the obvious “office-simulating” functions that allow employees to read an email, download a PowerPoint, respond to a calendar appointment, check a contact or dial into a teleconference. Not to mention apps for geo-location, reading and storing Word and Excel documents, keeping track of invoices and logging your mileage. 

While many of these apps are useful for today’s mobile worker, there are also more immediately cost saving apps, developed and tailored to the needs of the client by companies like Avaya.

“We had a client recently who – like many businesses – wanted to reduce the roaming costs  - calls to and from abroad - associated with their work force. This particular customer had a particularly mobile sales team and they were spending £600 a month per phone simply on roaming costs. So we developed an app that reduced their roaming costs significantly,” Barrow explains.

Intuitively, it might seem that commissioning an app to be developed specifically with your business needs in mind might be an expensive endeavour. But this isn’t the case. Consider the ‘app stores’ touted by the manufacturers of any given smartphone. These app stores tell you that the manufacturers want external developers to develop new apps for their devices. Why? So that smartphone owners have more options on that device – choices in the form of apps that assist them in business, entertain them at leisure and make targeted information accessible to them instantly in their everyday life. This means that companies like Avaya can develop an app in almost no time at all with just one obstacle to keep in mind, as Barrow points out:

“The longest part of app development is not the technical aspect, but waiting for the device manufacturers – Apple, BlackBerry etc – to sign off the developed app so that it can be uploaded onto the phones.”

Apps for knowledge sharing

In the consulting field, employee communication experts have begun to see the value of providing quick, accessible information that matches the lifestyle of busy communicators on the go.

This past July, David Grossman, President and Founder of The Grossman Group in Chicago, introduced a free app called “Ask David”  so he could stay better connected with his clients – many of whom consist of senior leaders working in large organizations.

“We want to give people access to best practices in internal communication so that they have information at their fingertips whenever they need it to be available,” Grossman explains.

Calling the app a “go-to resource” for leaders and communicators, Grossman says the goal is to help them “turn strategy into action and influence others.” All questions are answered in 24 hours or less.

Tackling internal comms issues

So what kind of questions has Grossman been receiving thus far?

“I get a half dozen or so questions a week – anyone from employees in large organisations working in a communications role wanting to know about change communication to a question from a CEO of a veterinary practice.

“Other inquiries include how to engage employees to how to handle a tough conversation to team-related challenges that people face.”

In addition to the ability to pose questions, downloading the app also gives communicators access to free eBooks, quick assessment tools as well as Grossman’s blog and Twitter feed.

A personal touch

Grossman hopes that “Ask David” will become more than just a shiny new tool for people.

“It’s great to be able to have a thought partner to help people think about a challenge they’re facing. I want people to think of it as having a best friend, someone you know you can go to for terrific advice.

“People are looking for solutions that work, but they want an ear, they want empathy. In many cases, I help folks who are asking questions that have emotional components so I try to answer the inquiries in a responsible, empathetic way that will bring people success,” Grossman says.  

Targeting all devices

With 1400 downloads of “Ask David” to date – all on iPhones – the next phase for Grossman and his team is to make the app available for other smartphones, particularly the Droid. There are also plans to add more content to the app “to keep it fresh and ensure we have the latest thinking and best practices in corporate internal communication.”

Live streaming for mobiles

This year has seen the dawn of live video streaming to mobile phones making the possibilities for internal communication even clearer. 

World Television - one of the world’s leading video communications agencies - have recently introduced live streaming to mobiles for clients such as Nestle, FIFA and the luxury watch manufacturers, Hublot.

It was the agency’s Swiss arm that provided live streaming of Nestle’s internal conferences, Hublot’s product launches and soon – an awards ceremony for FIFA.

You might think that live streaming to smartphones would be complicated and expensive. Think again. According to Rob Jackson, consultant for World Television UK:

“From a technical perspective it’s very simple. It’s literally no different to streaming live to a laptop, PC or MacBook. Where you might watch a webcast on your laptop in Flash or Window’s media, it’ll have a particular spec to it – a particular bit rate etc. So it’s just a question of selecting the right flavour of media plus the right flavour of stream in the right stream size.”

Communicating to the masses

What about video quality and reaching a large audience? Jackson says:

“It’s not a problem streaming to an audience of 100, 1000 or even 100,000. The great thing about streaming to mobiles is that, as a user, you know that you don’t have to watch it live, you can watch it two minutes, twenty minutes or two hours after the event. So that tends to make pressures on streaming servers much lower and gives employees the freedom to watch the broadcast at a time that suits them.”

A growing trend

Thomas Rajman, MD of World Television Switzerland, sees this technology as being part of the future of the landscape of internal communications.

“Will it take off? For sure. It will be taken up by high level, advanced mobile phone users. Will my Ma use it? No. That’s a generational thing. But will you and me and business people all over the world come to expect communications to be delivered in this way? Certainly.”

Jackson agrees. “At the moment we’re seeing the use of live streaming technology much more in the PR side of things than the internal comms side. When we do a launch, or if we’re helping a client like Burberry with one of their events, it’s something they’re much more likely to take up - as a luxury brand - to get in touch with their consumers.

“But there’s no reason why it won’t take off with internal comms – it’s inexpensive, and it’s efficient because you can get to people directly. At the moment one of the problems for live streaming to mobiles is the devices – there are a range of devices out there and some of the Nokias and Blackberryies are just not up to handling live streaming. iPhones are less of a problem, because they’re specifically designed for this sort of thing. But moving forward this sort of capability will be like blue tooth – something that is just in-built into the phone so that it has the functionality to be able to play streaming media. And that’s when it will really explode.”

A convenient truth

So it seems that smartphones are going to play an increasingly important role in internal communications. Apps are giving employers and employees the flexibility to work remotely, saving money on office costs and granting more flexibility to the way in which people work. And live streaming, while at the moment being put to greater use in PR communications, looks to impose itself on the internal communications landscape as soon as employers and employees are armed with devices that can handle the technology.

While the future is bright for mobile communication, the best benefits are truly yet to come. Just ask David Grossman:

“The need for instantaneous communication will continue to be paramount in organisations and will help facilitate the need to listen and to solicit input and ideas across the company.”

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Additional reporting by Kelly Kass.