Cutting through the Clutter: Creating communications that people will actually pay attention to . . . and act on!

It’s getting harder and harder to capture our audiences’ attention with our communication efforts. Limited attention spans, increased workloads, more and more competition, people working from home, people reading on mobile devices . . . these things are making it almost impossible for our key messages to get through. Almost impossible . . . but not impossible. Not if you change the very nature of how you communicate. In this practical session, leading communication expert Steve Crescenzo will use real-life examples to show you:

• How to avoid being the “company Kinkos” and focus your communication efforts on strategic goals
• How to take those tired, old stories and flip them upside down — so that employees actually pay attention to them
• How to Do Less And Do it Better!
• How to make the important interesting
• How to avoid the “Four Deadly Ps” that always drag down corporate content
• How to start using the new tools available to communicators — including social media and multimedia channels
• How to find and tell the kinds of stories that will cut through the information clutter that is so rampant in your organization
• How to reach virtual workers . . . who are more distracted than ever
• How to start using your vehicles to change the culture in your organization from “We’ve always done it this way,” to “Let’s try something different and see if it works.”

2020 has been an extraordinary year for communications professionals. From managing the crisis presented by Covid-19 – a global pandemic, the likes of which we’ve never seen before – to supporting businesses with recovery and adapting to a new normal, communicators have certainly ‘earned their keep’.

You may have heard Albert Einstein quoted as saying “in the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity” – well, for internal communicators that may well be the case. Whether it’s keeping furloughed colleagues connected, ensuring front-line workers have the latest information and guidance they need to work safely and effectively every day, or helping employees stay engaged and adapt to new ways of working, many organisations have quickly come to understand the value of strategic and impactful internal communication.

In winter 2018-19, George Brown College needed to find a compelling way to engage its employees in the development of the college’s new strategic plan. Faced with a diverse employee population spread out across several campus locations, the college needed an accessible platform that could offer flexibility and give employees a voice.

The launch of George Brown College’s ideation platform, iGBC.ca, encouraged employees to share their opinions on the future of the college in a collaborative and transparent way to influence the organization’s direction for 2022 and the decade beyond. Within nine months, more than 6,000 individuals offered more than 20,000 contributions to the college’s strategic development process through workshops, think tanks, roundtables, college council meetings, surveys and via iGBC.ca.

In this session, internal communications and HR professionals will gain insights into:

1. Breaking down siloesthrough thought-provoking content and conversations;
2. Encouragingemployees to openly share their ideas; and
3. Lessons learned on the power of staying focused on a singular call to action for success.

• Why focus groups and user testing are beneficial at all stages of a digital workspace or intranet project
• How Loblaw’s intranet and social platforms complement each other
• The importance of establishing and maintaining site governance

With a highly diverse workforce, BRP*, one of the world’s leaders in the powersports and marine industries, has always valued its employees as its most important brand ambassadors. Recently, BRP has experienced rapid growth that far exceeds industry averages. To sustain a predicted similar growth trajectory over the next four years, BRP urgently needed to recruit and acquire talent with the right skills and expertise. Who better to recruit new talent than our own employees with their passion, drive and ingenuity — the core values at BRP.

With this in mind, the Internal Communications teamed up with Talent Acquisition to rethink how to promote an existing but unknown Employee Referral Program and expand its awareness and reach in its various sites around the world. In this session, learn how good collaboration and bold creativity led to a recognized campaign that resulted in an exceptional increase of referrals, the best results ever.

(*Bombardier Recreational Products)

Moderator: Priya Bates

Panelists: Aidan Djabarov, Arefeh Ghane, Maxim Naylor, Michelle Nguyen

Get your leaders involved & owning their leadership to power performance

Whether you realize it or not but your normal working conditions can stifle creativity and thinking outside of the box. Here we’ll challenge the way we develop strategies that motivate decision makers to lead teams to greater performance.

In this keynote you’ll hear about:

• Inspiring leader involvement
• Facilitating leader ownership
• Promote engaged performance

How do you create a strong culture at an organization that can carry you through both business as usual and times of crisis and change? Hear an ongoing case study about a corporate bank that enabled employees to create a renewed culture for two different parts of Rabobank’s business, drive that culture to bring colleagues across North America together, and leverage that culture during COVID-19 and the events surrounding George Floyd & the movement for social justice.

Participants will learn:

• How to create an employee-focused culture and solicit employees as Culture Ambassadors
• How to leverage your culture and its ambassadors to help manage internal crises
• How to use internal communications to promote culture

This session is designed to walk participants through a journey already taking place at York University whose end goal is to build capacity and foster a culture of communications through empowerment and engagement.  Leveraging the power of peer networks and the innate desire to learn and develop, employees are being given an opportunity to enhance their knowledge and strengthen their current skills and to adapt and thrive in a fast-changing, fiscally restrained environment.

Participants will learn how professional and /or personal interests can be used to:

• Develop professionally
• Promote communication and
• Improve employee engagement

MESH/diversity empowers professionals with the strategic support, tools, metrics and data needed to drive success across their organizations.

With the present public discourse around racism, many organizations are professing their desire to be actively anti-racist. In this interactive session, you will be introduced to a framework and tools to drive success across your organization and build high performance teams where all your people can thrive:

• Gain insight into your own leadership style
• Understand tools that help you develop your people and empower your leaders
• Drive real inclusive change

Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), the parent company of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, and one of North America’s leading sports and entertainment companies, implemented employee engagement platform, Workplace from Facebook, 3 years ago. Today 100% of salaried employees and more than 90% of hourly employees use it as their central communication tool. Learn how:

• MLSE no longer uses email for corporate communication purposes
• Targeting helped MLSE get the right information to the right employees at the right time before and after COVID
• MLSE is able to deliver internal communication effectively and efficiently despite a small (but mighty) team of two
• Allowing employees to set up their own special interest groups drove community and connection

(until September 25, 2020)

(after September 25, 2020)