Top 5 ways to engage with employees via internal podcasts
Do you know what your employees think about you or about the culture of the company? Whatever the answer may be, it is clear that engaging with employees is the best way to keep a tab on the pulse of your business.
Today’s forward-thinking employers are well aware that to engage with employees, one would need to capture their attention by entertaining them. Companies today are looking at innovative ways to reach out to their employees.
Podcasts have been around since the turn of the century and have only increased in popularity ever since. With this being a popular media, especially among the younger generation of employees, internal podcasting makes even more sense.
Internal podcasts would be a great way to connect with employees. It could be anything from business updates to interviews with the top-performing employees and even great success stories from a customer perspective.
Let us have a look at five ways you can effectively engage with your employees through the power of internal podcasts:
Knowledge transfer
There can be no dearth of topics to cover in an internal podcast. With teams both big and small spread far and wide, internal podcasts are a great way to share knowledge and help promote best practices.
Internal podcasts could act as a library of information on the evolving scenarios in business, and the methods used to deal with them accordingly. It’s a great platform to educate and pique interest.
Creative ideas, innovations, and the success of individuals and teams can be effectively shared via internal podcasts.
Insights can be shared by leaders at all levels within the organization. This would help employees get a fresh perspective on leadership which in turn could help them formulate new ideas of growth for the company and themselves.
Onboarding and orientation
Internal podcasts are a useful and engaging way for new employees when they join the organization. Internal podcasts are an informal and effective way to communicate the values and culture of the company.
Every single podcast episode could be a snippet of the company’s vision, area of expertise, and the career paths it offers to its employees.
The traditional way of onboarding is great and internal podcasts could supplement the same by adding the details and functions available to employees as and when they want. This would reduce the instances of them reverting to the human resources team, time and again for any details or updates about the organization.
Culture building
Each organization or company has been built on a vision to start with. As you grow, this vision might get washed down if not communicated in the correct way with employees.
Internal podcasts help to spread the message about the vision, values, and direction of the company. When employees listen and are aware of these, they develop a feeling of connection and a sense of cohesiveness.
One of the examples is California-based WalkMe. Rafael Sweary, who is the co-founder says that “Having an internal podcast where employees can come, hear about the company updates, hear success stories and feel generally connected to everyone else is crucial”
Sweary mentioned that they have used the power of internal podcasting for giving updates about Covid-19 to keep employees informed during the crucial period. It is also used to help employees dive deeper and learn about new developments and to foster better understanding between departments. They also used internal podcasts to motivate employees by giving them a chance to speak about themselves, their roles and success.
Career building
Many do not realize the hidden potential here. Internal podcasts are a great tool to help employees build their careers.
In an internal podcast, various career paths can be discussed. Employees and executives from the leadership team can share their experience and knowledge on how they built their career within the company.
This would help to educate the team within, so that they can put those strategies in action themselves to achieve growth and success within the organization.
Knowledge about the necessary skills required for a particular role and various trainings can be imparted to help employees be up to date with the latest skills required for their growth.
Build empathy
The corporate machinery, while being a well oiled machine, very often loses the human touch in the pursuit of numbers.
Internal podcasts create a safe space for employees to share their stories and messages. This helps to build the human connect and promote empathy, especially in testing times like these.
Internal podcasts help people to look at each other beyond the titles and responsibilities, help to find a common ground and be inspired by their stories as well as the challenges they face. This helps employees to gain fresh perspective about people which they otherwise wouldn’t via other media.
Getting started with your own internal podcast
As evidently seen, there are a multitude of ways you can engage with employees via internal podcasts. Now you are ready to start one, aren’t you?
An internal podcast will be an addition to the suite of corporate communication, which is much more than a tool. It is an instrument which helps build the human connection.
There are various steps to consider, ranging from the topics to be covered, the specific goals you want to achieve, the hosting platform, the schedule and who will be managing the entire process.
While starting an internal podcast may look daunting, you would want to look at Hypecast which is one of the best podcast apps to help create and share your own internal podcasts with your teams, clients and business partners.
The app is easy to use and will help you create individual groups and build curated playlists of the best national and international publications.
People love audio and to use it in a format they understand is what internal podcasting will help you achieve. Book your demo now and see the difference it makes in the way you engage with your employees.
