As another season of open enrollment comes to an end, it’s a good opportunity to reevaluate the impact of your internal communications strategy. When discussions begin and end with open enrollment, information about complex benefits may be shared too early or too late, and employees struggle to see the value.

Internal communications teams do a lot of heavy lifting to support their organizations, acting as messengers with incomplete information and little time to control quality or frequency. As a result, many companies see their employees tune out. 

MindHandle CEO, Eric Harris, spoke with Adam Fridman on his Future of People Initiatives podcast about retaining employees in today’s market. During the discussion, Eric talks about the need to “date” your employees, much one like would date their spouse to keep the relationship healthy.

There are many factors to consider as you set out to build or strengthen your company’s employment brand, including the type of branding content you desire and the tone of your internal messaging. You'll also need to resolve one critical component of internal communications: How quickly your company’s brand should communicate.

Imagine this: In one of your conference rooms, there’s a long, horizontal line drawn on a whiteboard. On the left side is the word “fast.” On the right, “slow.” Now imagine representatives from HR, Marketing, Operations and Internal Comms are all sitting in that room.