In many companies, internal magazines and newsletters are not distributed anymore; they are played. We are not even talking about online newsletters, which are considered passe by many companies.
Here is a situation that illustrates our point. With podcasts and Yammer-driven features, Mondelez India’s monthly newsletter Joy Flash , is an out-and-out visual presentation. The traditional concept of an editorial/content management team has also been dispensed with. The stories are crowd-sourced. A gamification app to engage colleagues to help them share information is on the cards.
This trend is not restricted to companies that have appeared on the horizon in the last few years. Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited and Johnson & Johnson are among companies that have stopped printing newsletters and gone in for digital alternatives.
The RPG Group brings out a video magazine every two months with employees narrating their stories. The video magazine is sometimes screened in the cafeteria or before a meeting gets under way.
At the Chennai office of Freshworks, Workplace, a collaboration platform on Facebook, is made to serve a variety of purposes, which may include helping a colleague find a house for rent, identifying volunteering opportunities for the weekend, celebrating milestone achievements by teams and communicating a major decision taken by the company.
T.P. Pratap, co-founder, Qwikcilver Solutions, says “We have noticed that people are more spontaneous with their responses when internal communication is sent through social media instead of formal email.”
Pratap says he uses Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, in that order, to communicate with his teams and customers across the globe.
For Friendship Day, he shared a note on LinkedIn for his customers. The note included a link to an article in the Harvard Business Review where Qwikcilver Solutions had been featured as a case study. His note ended with the announcement of a ‘Uber Gift Card’.
