10 ways to treat employees like customers

1. Have a proper internal comms strategy
External comms marketers never dream of doing anything without a proper plan, so have a proper internal communications strategy. Not just loads of initiatives, run by lots of different people across various departments that inevitably run out of steam.

2. Understand your audience
Don’t lump your employees together in one homogeneous group. Segment and understand to gain insight. Your messages will have a much better chance of landing.

3. Make the message fit
Ask these five questions before you create any internal comms

Who is your audience and what do you know about them?
What’s the objective of your communication piece?
What are the key messages?
What do you want them to think, feel and do as a result of receiving your communication?
What’s the channel?

4. Use your brand’s tone of voice to create consistency and inject personality into your comms
Ditch the corporate dictionary, release yourself from the shackles of corporate armour, free your inner corporate robot and give your comms a human face.

5. Tell a great story
Millennials are driving the need for greater purpose and meaning in their work lives. Tell the story of your organisation, where you’ve come from, where you’re going and the part everyone has to play in realising the organisation’s ambition.

6. From CRM to ERM
Manage your employee relationship from cradle to grave.

7. Recognition and reward
Seek to recognise and reward with freshness and relevance, rewarding those who demonstrate the values and their associated behaviours.

8. Give your employees a voice
In the same way as brands invest in consumer research to gain insight, use innovative tools and methodologies inside to tap into what your people are thinking and feeling. Make sure you feedback and act on what they say.

9. Allow connections
Be brave and experiment with social media that employees can access through PC, laptop, tablet or smart phone.

10. Make coming to work a pleasure
And just like retailers and leisure marketers do, wrap the brand experience around your people.

Click here to download a helpful checklist.