Sick Of Content Reviewers Runining Your Employee Communication

Sick of Content Reviewers Ruining Your Employee Communication?

Imagine: a process where your content reviewers don’t delay or ruin the messaging in your next employee communication…Before we talk about how to get there, let’s look at where you might be right now.

Every employee communication begins with a well-meaning purpose.

arrow4Someone comes to you to request the communication. Or, you have the benefit of being at the table when a decision is made, You speak up and say, hey, employees will need to know this.

After identifying the need and messaging, you choose the most appropriate communication vehicle. That could be video, email, posters, brochures, etc.

In earnest, you draft the communication in the simplest terms so that employees can understand what they need to know, and what they should do as a result.

Next is oodles and oodles of content review from subject matter experts. You apply edits. Unsurprisingly, some edits undo other edits. And your manager? Well the edits she requests in draft three undo edits she requested in draft one.

Then legal grabs hold of the communication. For an entire week. It comes back looking little like the original message. You wonder if it’s still in English.

At some point, you work with graphic design and maybe even programmers to make the communication visually appealing and ready to go live.

Finally, invariably, the resulting communication looks nothing like what you initially intended. The message has become diluted and unnecessarily complicated.

You distribute it because you have to.

You’re not the least bit surprised when it is ignored.

How can you keep content reviewers and legal from ruining your well-crafted employee communication? Here are four techniques to try.

Help others see the 360° view of the purpose of the communication

If you’re responsible for employee communication, your motivation is to determine:

  • Message that needs to be communicated
  • What’s in it for employees (WIIFM)
  • Or, What’s important to employees
  • Timeframe
  • Appropriate communication vehicle

For your content reviewers, here’s what’s important:

bullet-list-4

As you can see, you and the reviewers are approaching the communication from different angles. Knowing this should help you better frame your review request so that you fill the gaps to guide their review.

Often an employee communication is designed to do one of the following:

  • Inspire employees to embrace a change — a new process, an initiative, the corporate goals
  • Inform employees about what is expected of them in order for the company to be successful
  • Share helpful information with employees

Although you have the employees’ needs in mind, your reviewers usually will not.  When you request the review, be sure to fill in all the missing gaps to let the reviewer in on what will make the communication successful.

Get reviewers involved early

The worse is when you finish a draft and are ready to film, code, post or distribute it and someone pulls out the red pen!

Avoid this by confirming how you plan to handle the draft even before you start. Create a brief paragraph that defines what you plan to include in the communication and ask for their buy-in.

Get buy-in on key points before you start writing. It might seem like you won’t have time to do so. Many talented writers don’t determine what they want to say until they start drafting. Although what they draft could be brilliant, the process makes it difficult for others to collaborate and leads to higher incidences of your content being changed.

Your key points don’t have to be poetic, just document them and the document purpose mentioned above and request buy-in.

What if the communication is time-sensitive?

Here’s a strategy for time-aggressive communication:

  • Send reviewers the key points and purpose of the communication
  • Let them know that if you don’t hear from them by a specified time period, you will move forward with the draft.
  • Now here’s the important part: you must follow through with the timeframe. It may take a few times before you train reviewers to understand when they must provide feedback. It will never work if you don’t stick with your own timeframes.

Give the non-essential content much less focus

Suppose your team member in legal demands that a certain phrase appears. Perhaps it will apply to 1% of the population. Or maybe it only protects the company in the event of lawsuits. Find a way to include that content without ruining your document.

However, some reviewers will not budge. If legal thinks that leaving something out opens the company to risk, chances are, you’ll be forced to include it.

Some ways to minimize the impact of these rabbit holes:

  • Apply a smaller text and a simple, thin font
  • Use italic text
  • Lead with the most important text so that if the employee stops reading after a sentence or paragraph they still get the essential details
  • Put all the legalese at the bottom of the document (in smaller text)
  • Establish another vehicle for the verbose text and legalese and link to it. For example:
    • A webpage
    • Pop-ups
    • Or expandable text