Breaking Through via SMS

How smart organizations use text messaging to get employees’ attention

As a consumer and customer, you’ve probably become spoiled by the convenience of SMS, or text communication:

  • Users of food delivery services like seamless.com benefit from knowing that their food is being prepared and when it will arrive.
  • Shipping services – and Amazon Prime – sends text message alerts, shipping and delivery notifications.
  • Credit card companies send customers payment reminders and immediate fraud alerts.

Clearly, text messages represent a great way to send timely, short updates.

Texting can be good for internal communication, too

For its immediacy and convenience, text messaging can be an effective communication method for HR and Business Communicators to use to reach employees. Text messaging provides a more direct channel to employees. It’s easy to ignore an email, but not so easy to avoid a short text message.

Text messages are also low bandwidth and can be sent and received on-the-go in places with limited Internet connectivity.

Adding SMS messaging to your internal communications strategy is a no-brainer. But how can organizations use this medium to most effectively reach and engage with their employees? Fortunately, this is becoming easier.

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Four keys to effective text messaging to employees

1. Get permission

Per FCC mandate, you must obtain permission before you can begin texting employees. This is true even if the company owns the smartphone and issues it to the employee for work.

Also, FCC regulations forbid mandatory opt-in for text messaging. This means that you will need to make SMS communications optional but encourage employees to sign up by reminding them that receiving these communications will help them stay more informed at work.

Some strategies to request permission from employees include:

  • Setting up a feature on your benefits portal or Intranet where employees can indicate their communication preferences, including for texting.
  • Using Twitter’s Fast Follow feature as explained in the video below.
  • Conducting an emergency phone number test campaign and include opting in for text messages as a part of that.
  • If you provide smartphones to employees, include a request for consent on their application prior to receiving the device

Twitter Fast Follow

The social media platform Twitter has another use beyond tweeting. You can use Twitter to send text messages to employees — for free. Click on Play to view the video for step-by-step details.

2. Respect your employees’ boundaries

Keep in mind that some employees may not wish to receive text messages. Perhaps they use their own cell phones for work and don’t want to incur additional charges. Or, maybe they think that it’s invasive and prefer to limit the influx of communication they receive on a given day. And for some, they don’t text message in their personal lives, so they are not likely to change because you want to text them at work.

Be sure to disclose what you plan to send via SMS and how often. Also, texts are so immediate that they may be seen as a distraction. Try to limit your text to convenient hours for employees.

3. Integrate SMS into your communications strategy.

Sending text messages to employees should not take the place of regular business communications but rather as a tool to give timely information as needed. In order get the most out of timely business communications, many companies are syncing up their employee-facing Twitter accounts to send select messages directly to their workforce via text.

Thanks to Twitter’s agreement with mobile operators, sending and receiving texts with Twitter shortcodes is easy and can cost less than sending individual SMS messages. Another option is to sync selected emails to text messages to be sure that urgent messages (office closings, natural disasters, etc.) are received and viewed as soon as possible.

4. Practice discretion

Never send privileged information over text that you would not want external people (especially your competition) to see. This includes trade secrets, client information, and other confidential information intended for employees’ eyes only. For the sake of discretion, consider subscribing to an enterprise-wide secure text messaging service, which will reduce anxiety and ensure compliance with privacy guidelines.

Finally, if you plan to introduce text messaging, be sure to include in your plan a periodic reminder to employees to update their contact information, including their mobile phone number.

Have you used text messaging in your organization? What have you found to be effective?