"Can we stop talking about IC support? It makes us sound like a service function but we're not; we're a partner,” said Joanne Frankel, head of internal communications at technology company Amdocs, speaking at Unily's conference. Unily offers intranet technology services.
According to Frankel, the role of IC has evolved to become a proponent of business strategy.
"We spend a lot of time interacting with senior stakeholders who think they understand IC but don't. We need to stop being there to please leaders and start ensuring that our communications drive value and address pain points and business needs.
"I always tell my team that we're going from housework to high-value work. Leaders can be uncomfortable with that at first but it has to happen."
Peter Lyons, interim head of internal communications at airline British Airways added: "IC is often seen as a 'can you just-' function. But really it needs to be harmonised with business strategy and seen as a strategic function."
Read more: Internal comms and personalisation - what HR needs to learn from marketing
IC professionals need to put themselves in the shoes of their employees in order to ensure they are strategically communicating content, according to Laura Jamieson, head of internal communications at retail franchise group Alshaya Group.
She told HR magazine: “Alshaya is made up of 80% frontline workers, including in store and in the warehouses. For these people, they often access our comms via our app on their own phones, using their own data, so we need to make sure the content is really engaging and really worthwhile. We do things like competitions to win free stuff and recognition programmes to make sure it is value-add.”
Lyons added that briefing line managers is a crucial way to ensure relevant messages reach employees.
He said: “We have a challenge with digital comms where colleagues feel overwhelmed by the amount of information we want to share with them. Managers help cut through that and share what each employee in particular needs to know.”
IC’s evolution is being pushed by employees’ changing expectations and the proliferation of remote working, according to Lena Diemer, head of internal communications at manufacturer ZEISS.
Speaking to HR magazine, she said: “Employees are pushing us to change. After the Covid-19 pandemic, as employees kept remote working, digital portals and IC became a much more important way to connect.
“This does seem to differ by age group. Older workers mainly want the information and news that is necessary for their job. Younger generations want to be inspired by it; they want to use IC to learn and connect with coworkers, and not just about work stuff.
“We have a social intranet which is separate from our work intranet, and it is very close to social media. Engagement here, especially from younger workers, is through the roof.”
Read more: How can HR drive authentic engagement?
Another factor driving IC’s evolution is AI, said Jamieson.
“AI will help us be more efficient. For example, in our company we produce our comms in both English and Arabic. At the moment we have an entire translation team. We can’t take out the human touch in this but it could help us.”
Frankel added: “We’ve used AI for lots of things. We can now create communications with the tone of voice from different leaders. We’ve used it to create digital docs groups with different personas, asking how they would prefer to receive each communication, which has been really useful. We’ve also used it to help decide how to bring an idea to a leader and what the key points should be.”
According to Diemer, the best way to get leaders on board with IC’s changing function is to lead with data.
She said: “Obviously you will still get leaders who think: ‘If I want to contact everyone in the office, I’ll just send everyone an email’, which is not very effective. People are overwhelmed and that email might just end up being deleted. We now educate them on better ways using data. We show them – if you do that, this will be the outcome, versus if you work with us.
“Leaders are used to making decisions based on data, so this does help them to listen to what IC is saying.”
She added: “Try to provide guidelines and training for the best way to communicate.”