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Internal communications provide organizations with a powerful opportunity to unite people around a vision and inspire everyone to fully commit to achieving that vision. It can be fun, challenging, inspiring and empowering. It can also help businesses improve profits and address operational challenges.
Not all businesses take full advantage of the possibilities that internal communications offer. If ignored or viewed as a formality, internal communications can become a somewhat boring, limited platform that is even ignored by the internal employees it is meant to influence.
Huge opportunity
However, Telkom sees internal communications as a huge opportunity to leverage a fully owned platform to inform and inspire employees and contribute more to the success of the organization.
This enables companies to unearth a powerful pipeline of ideas, align thousands of employees, and significantly improve morale, even in the face of tough business challenges.
Some of these innovations fall into the area of new platforms. Telkom Times is a monthly digital journal that keeps Telkom employees informed of business developments, while also adding value by providing them with health information and training opportunities.
To provide real-time announcements and powerful updates, we have designed Telkom Bulletin, a weekly digital newsletter, to deliver key business information in short bite-sized pieces.
Communication works best when it’s mutually beneficial. So we made sure our Blue Space intranet made it easy to inform and engage. The platform offers multiple channels – surveys, interactive screensavers, pop-up notifications, newsfeeds, desktop and lock screen updates. The Telkom Teams app also provides a gateway to the intranet where employees can stay engaged and informed, while Viva Insights helps employees be more focused and productive, and Viva Learning fosters development and growth.
To enhance the production value of Telkom’s in-house content, we use Telkom Studio, a dedicated production facility equipped with industry-leading sound, video and lighting equipment for live broadcasts, off-site events and studio recordings. This allows our content to capture the attention of our audiences and demonstrates that Telkom takes quality very seriously.
We are redefining employee engagement with Microsoft Viva Connections on the Microsoft Teams app as a path to a better communication experience. Users can discover and search for relevant content, share and collaborate directly from the Teams app bar. This gives employees the tools they need to perform at their best, right from their laptop or smartphone!
people oriented
Samantha Presbury, Ogilvy PR Director
From the communications team’s perspective, building a successful platform requires constructive community management – responding to inquiries immediately, implementing ideas quickly, and recognizing achievements so that employees feel heard. This is another example of Telkom’s people-first approach.
This focus on engagement has resulted in a significant increase in readership of Telkom’s internal newsletter across all metrics. From only 300 employees potentially engaging with a piece of content, we are starting to see engagement of over 7,000 people and reach rates of 80-90%.
The metrics also provide a clear indication of what content resonates with Telkom employees. We learned that people like to see themselves and their colleagues, they want to hear about issues that affect them, and they want the opportunity to improve their own lives and the lives of their loved ones.
We provide profile content that showcases the people who make Telkom great. We work to provide value, offering competitions, promotions and gamified content, and allowing Telkom employees to nominate their colleagues for recognition. This makes mutual engagement a top priority.
These experiences are consistent with recent opinion HR experts say gamification not only enhances internal communication but also improves performance and productivity, as even routine tasks are incentivized by elements such as leaderboards, badges and point systems.
Customized content
Telkom executive: Group communications Mooketsi Mocumi
As a diverse group consisting of several multidisciplinary business units and HR approaches, Telkom needs to communicate with its various stakeholders in a way that accommodates all of them equally.
While some employees may be working from their laptops in the office, others travel to different locations, only have access to the internet via their smartphones, and have limited time to participate.
So we streamed and repurposed content based on the needs of each employee. Telkom Times provides in-depth, topical content, while concise lock screen notifications don’t even require employees to open them to get the information.
We made it clear that Telkom employees will work with us to build OneTelkom based on unity and shared values.
In this regard, the Telkom Monate Champions award allows employees to nominate colleagues who they feel embody the Monate values of teamwork, fairness, alignment and commitment. They can then vote for the candidates and attend a glittering awards ceremony at the end of the year. Everyone is involved and helps shape the promotion itself.
This level of involvement proved invaluable when Telkom had to deal with the restructuring process. Thanks to the input of colleagues, we were able to transparently articulate the reasons for a possible restructuring and seek employees’ input to manage the impact.
Employees actively participated in this process. An unexpected result was the continuous emergence of innovative ideas from employees.
Creative Pipeline
This led to the establishment of the Telkom Innovation Centre, dedicated to establishing a continuous pipeline of innovative ideas and suggestions from those closest to operations – Telkom people.
At the forefront of this culture of innovation is Lion’s Den, also known as the Telkom Group Innovation Challenge – an exciting, group-wide employee engagement programme dedicated to unleashing innovation from within.
The challenge received more than 60 proposals from Telkom Group employees who believe these ideas will drive the Group towards a more innovative future.
The 10 finalists were then invited to pitch their ideas to the Telkom Group Innovation Challenge Lions – including Group Chief Human Resources Officer Melody Lekota, Openserve CEO Althon Beukes, BCX CEO Jonas Bogoshi, Telkom Consumer and Small Business CEO Lunga Siyo and Gyro Head of Information Technology Solutions Lloyd Chego.
The Lions Clubs evaluated these ground-breaking concepts and determined the winners of the challenge, who received a prize of up to R1 million in recognition of their commitment to innovation.
Events like this capture everyone’s imagination and lead to strong synergies between staff, management, HR and communications to achieve Telkom’s mission – to make life seamless for South Africans better.
From Group CEO Serame Taukobong to each of our operational teams, we are all on the same side thanks to open two-way communication that brings people together for the benefit of everyone – at Telkom and across South Africa.
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