I’ve yet to come across an organisation that doesn’t operate its own Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or [enter name of any other messaging app here] group, and as much as you’d like to think yours couldn’t possibly, I’m afraid I might have some rather alarming news.
The rise of Shadow Comms is on the increase, and as highlighted recently by this excellent blog from Rachel Miller at ‘all things IC’, with the pending arrival of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the financial and reputational cost of shadow communications could be even more significant. If you have employees using 3rd party technology to communicate and send company information then you need to be aware of how and where it’s happening and to whom it’s being made – Ignorance, as they say, will be no defence.
Assuming you don’t know your teams are using Shadow Comms to communicate with each other, it’s highly unlikely you would be able to do anything about it or control it now anyhow.
Instead, as Karen Dyke, Managing Director of RMS said at the 2016 User Forum, “Don’t fight it – Embrace it – Give them what they want” – Identify where your comms channel gaps are and plug them with something that is under your control. Allow colleagues and teams to interact with each other in a secure closed environment, in one that also integrates with your existing systems.
Our Metro Unified Comms (UC) line supports every form of communication any distributed business requires – from written to video, voice and instant messaging. UC provides each individual user personalised communication and compliance activities via personalised homepages. Content, tasks, social communications, messaging, feedback, performance and much more is delivered through a dynamic and responsive web portal.
RMS, working in partnership with Yapster have delivered Metro’s internal chat messaging application (called Yap!) to several of the UK’s biggest retail brands, with significant business benefits being realised over and above the ability to deliver instant messaging, chat forums and groups. Intelligently integrated with other UC applications – such as League and KPI tables for example – Yap! enables ‘gamification’ and competition across the user population in a socially engaging context…and the results have been astonishing.
With almost *two-thirds of 18-34 year olds* admitting to using personal messaging services for work, and with GDPR looming on the horizon, the battle against Shadow Comms is heating up – add to this increasing numbers of Generation Z’s entering the workplace, now the time to reassess how your business is communicating and engaging within and outside of your company. Contact us today and let us help you reassess your Internal Comms, and learn how Metro Unified Comms is helping more than 85 leading brands deliver their Comms.
*Source: Yapster Survey, May 2017, taken from a sample of over 500 people
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