Modern corporate communication tools provide compliance teams with new ways of directly reaching employees. As a result, it is expected that compliance professionals can produce their own communications, often bypassing internal communications teams altogether.

Because this is still new territory for most compliance specialists, many are unaware of the best practices they can adopt to increase communications effectiveness. Drawn from the world of internal communications, this white paper provides a set of best practices compliance teams can use to ensure message cut-through.

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As a Compliance Manager, Director, Vice President or Chief Compliance Officer you have many things to worry about in 2015. Despite all of the various developments on the compliance horizon, one concern remains unchanged:

How do you increase employee engagement with your compliance communications programs?

This at a time when employees’ attention spans shrink further with the launching of each new social media network that is launched.

THE ONE COMPLIANCE CHALLENGE THAT REMAINS CONSTANT

THE CHANGING FACE OF COMPLIANCE COMMUNICATIONS

CUTTING THE INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS UMBILICAL CORD

Up until now, internal communications departments were the gatekeepers to employees’ hearts and minds. In order to get your compliance messages heard by the organization, you had to ensure that your political nous was as as well developed as your campaign objectives.

This should no longer be the case. Modern compliance communications software provides compliance managers with new ways of reaching employees directly. Should they choose, compliance teams can now bypass internal comms departments altogether and execute campaigns on their own.

STEPPING OUTSIDE OF THE COMPLIANCE COMFORT ZONE

Yet, for many compliance teams, creating an effective employee outreach program presents its own set of challenges. Seldom are compliance departments equipped with the same skills, knowledge or tools as are internal communications teams.

As a result, compliance outreach efforts are often not well thought out. They tend to lack the same ‘polished’ feel that internal comms’ involvement would provide.

That’s no surprise given how rare it is that compliance professionals have marketing or communications backgrounds. Compliance teams have to juggle many hats and PR is seldom a core competency.

Since this part of the job is still relatively foreign territory for compliance specialists, most are unaware of the best practices they can adopt to better engage employees with targeted and relevant communications.

As a result, trying to create effective compliance outreach strategies usually causes anguish for compliance specialists. Due to a lack of exposure to best practices, such efforts result in half-hearted campaigns with low engagement and retention rates.

IMPLEMENT COMMS BEST PRACTICES (OR MAKE FRIENDS WITH OBSCURITY)

Compliance outreach campaigns should produce drastically better results. Compliance teams just need to embrace a certain number of best practices that their internal communications colleagues regularly utilize.

This white paper aims to provide compliance teams with such best practices drawn from the world of internal communications. It also introduces a suite of tools that can help compliance teams take employee outreach matters into their own hands.

Following these guidelines and adopting the suggested processes and tools will bring your company closer to achieving its strategic compliance objectives. The result is that employees will be engaged at a much deeper level than they currently are.

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INCREASED EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IS NO CAUSE TO CELEBRATEThe findings of a recent Gallup survey unequivocally show that employee engagement is historically at an all-time high (1). However, this actually means very little to compliance departments and your communication campaigns. Why?

Consider that even though engagement rates are the highest since Gallup first launched its survey, this figure still equals less than one third of the entire US workforce. The other 66% of the white collar workforce remains disengaged to varying degrees.

In addition to low engagement levels, employees are also overwhelmed at work. Last year’s Deloitte Human Capital Trends survey clearly shows that this is an urgent issue that all organizations need to address. (2).

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THE CHALLENGES OF GETTING COMPLIANCE MESSAGES HEARD

1 - "Majority of U.S. Employees Not Engaged Despite Gains in 2014." Majority of U.S. Employees Not Engaged Despite Gains in 2014. Web. 18 Mar. 2015. <http://www.gallup.com/poll/181289/majority-employees-not-engaged-despite-gains-2014.aspx?utm_source=Employee Engagement&utm_medium=newsfeed&utm_campaign=tiles>.

2 - "Global Human Capital Trends 2014." Deloitte University Press. Web. 18 Mar. 2015. <http://dupress.com/periodical/trends/global-human-capital-trends-2014>.

Given employees’ low engagement rates and their general feeling of being overwhelmed, it is unlikely that your compliance messages will achieve a high level of cut-through with such a jaded workforce.

THE TWO-FRONT WAR FOUGHT BY COMPLIANCE TEAMS

Crafting engaging messages is only half the issue. Every compliance manager knows that getting these prioritized by your internal communications is where great compliance campaigns often fall apart.

In addition to trying to win the war for employee ’mind share,’ compliance teams often have to do battle with internal comms teams over what is considered shared territory. Namely, this includes negotiating for exposure in corporate newsletters, on intranets and other limited internal communications channels.

With all other departments fighting for the ‘top spot’ on these channels, getting your compliance message into the limelight is often a tricky proposition. Compliance managers and their teams have to contend with this fact and use their lobbying skills to ensure that at least the ‘must-have’ campaigns get the required exposure.

As a result, such metering of compliance communications takes away from the overall effectiveness of compliance programs. The flow-on effect is having to produce reports to top management that don’t show compliance in the best light possible.

HOW VISIBLE IS YOUR COMPLIANCE MESSAGE? AND HOW TRACKABLE?

There are two things that decrease the visibility and significance of your compliance messages. The first is an often disengaged workforce. The second is the need to constantly prove your worth to internal comms. Together, these factors weaken compliance campaign performance.

From a tactical standpoint, the digital ‘one-two punch’ of doing an email blast and posting an update on the company intranet no longer seems to cut through the noise. These communications channels are being increasingly ignored by employees, as evidenced by several recent studies on employee engagement.

The other side of the coin is lack of appropriate measurement tools built into these channels. There is a general lack of detailed reporting on the results of compliance campaigns. In turn, too much ‘guessalytics’ and rule-of-thumb decisions go into creating campaigns, lowering their general impact.

ADAPT OR... NON-COMPLY

As a result, compliance teams need to put more effort into planning their communications strategies, an area they often don’t have expertise in. To aid with the planning process, there are a number of internal communications best practices that can be recommended  for this purpose.

There are also new tools on the market that allow compliance professionals to achieve their communications goals and, just as importantly, report accurate metrics back to senior stakeholders. This alone increases the compliance function’s credibility in the eyes of the wider business.

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WHY COMPLIANCE IS SO MUCH MORE THAN JUST TRAININGWhile being an important part of the compliance communications mix, training is not the only way to get important messages accepted by your organization’s employees .

Just as Chief Compliance Officers need to take on a more strategic role in their organizations, a compliance communication plan needs

to go from being an add-on to compliance training programs to becoming the driving force behind every campaign.

As with other parts of your compliance program, the key to achieving the desired results of  your outreach is having a solid strategy in place. This involves creating a written compliance communications plan.

While taking such a step sounds simple enough, your compliance department will be handsomely rewarded for formally documenting your outreach strategy.

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HOW TO DELIVER COMPLIANCE CAMPAIGNS THAT ENGAGE AND INSPIRE

A written communications plan allows your compliance team to be much more deliberate about the way it interacts with and tries to influence important stakeholders. This will result in more powerful and relevant messages that will engage employees in ways that would otherwise not be possible.

The components of a compliance communications plan are fairly straightforward:

Establish Communications Objectives - This relates to what you want your compliance communications program to achieve and why the strategy exists in the first place.

Segment Audiences / Create ‘Personas’ - At this stage, you need to figure out the different audiences or personas that your messages will target. While audiences are more high-level, a persona is a fictional representation of a brand, product or website user that is a detailed representation of your various audience. For compliance purposes, you can create personas for, say, high-risk employees or executive team members.

Decide on Key Messages - Develop concise core messages that will appeal to each persona and then use these throughout your outreach program

Pick Communications Channels - For compliance purposes, communications channels need to be a two-way street so that your audiences can provide feedback and communicate with your team based on the compliance objectives you’ve established

Implement a Governance Model - Ensure that your team is clear on its roles and responsibilities and, if external stakeholders are involved, that their input into the comms plan is appropriately managed

Develop a Timeline / Editorial Calendar - Map key monthly, quarterly and annual dates and set deadlines for your campaigns. Your timeline will also be influenced by and, conversely, influence your editorial calendar, which will form part of your communications plan

Measurement & Reporting - A plan without a defined way of gauging its effectiveness is a wish-list. Put the necessary reporting structures into place and set KPIs that will measure your hard work. For compliance purposes, this may include things such as number of messages opened or registrations for compliance training seminars.  

While an actual written document will have a few more sections, the above elements will ensure that your compliance plan is robust.

In addition to documenting your strategy, you also need to be aware of the tactics and best practices that good internal communications teams employ. The good news is that you may have already been exposed to some of these indirectly as a result of working with your internal communications team.

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BEAT INTERNAL COMMS AT THEIR OWN GAME

An additional step beyond documenting your comms plan is the creation of a compliance editorial calendar that ties in with your communications plan. The calendar will be driven by your organization’s internal events as well as by the key dates that affect your company,  industry, other external stakeholders and the world at large.

The editorial calendar is a more tactical tool that you can use to brainstorm topics of interest to your personas. These topics, in turn, should tie in with your broader compliance plan objectives. It will also allow you to think more generally about messages that may present an interest to your audience but that may not specifically relate to compliance.

Mixing up your messages will help you to avoid the ‘doom and gloom’ communications scenario that many compliance teams tend to fall into. Relating to employees on a different level will help to position your department as being more accessible. This will help with achieving your wider strategic compliance objectives, not just your communications ones.

Actual editorial calendar solutions can be as simple as creating a shared spreadsheet or as complex as rolling out enterprise-scale content production systems that incorporate editorial calendars. Talk to your internal comms or marketing team to find out if they use anything that you can adopt for your purposes.

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In addition to creating an editorial calendar, following are some additional best practices that your team can incorporate into the way it works:

1. Be transparent. Tell the organization that your compliance team is there to help and  show what it is that you do to make employees’ lives better. This can be communicated in a number of ways but make sure to build such comms pieces into your plan. Think of it as a form of necessary self-PR.

2. Make sure that your compliance communications don’t come off as sounding like propaganda. Segment and tailor your messages to different employee personas in order to ensure their relevance.

3. Use digital tools that allow you to respond to employees in real-time about any compliance issues recognized, no matter how small. Little wins will build up credibility with your personas, which will lead to the bigger wins later on.

4. Make sure that you present content in a variety of formats to appeal to the different ways that individuals perceive information. For instance, create podcasts for the segment of your audience who are auditory-inclined and blog posts for those who perceive information visually.

5. Track employee participation and engagement with your compliance messages using regular surveys.

6. Figure out the best times to send out messages by day of week and time of day. Use this information when planning your monthly and weekly editorial calendars.

7. Don’t bombard an already-overloaded audience with more compliance ‘stuff.’ Keep your messages brief and to the point.  Try to make your messages as entertaining as is possible and appropriate to the topic being communicated.

8. Mix up your content both in terms of both format and message. For instance, you can communicate the same information in the form of an ebook or as an infographic, which will keep things from getting stale.

9. Put on your marketing hat and think of different compliance ‘guerilla tactics’ that you can execute to engage employees in unusual ways. The less expected your approach, the higher the chances that your compliance messages will be remembered.

10. Engage employees in any decision-making related to compliance topics that affect them. Empowered employees are much more likely to get on board with compliance programs if they feel that they have a say.

The above tips should help to increase the the cut-through of your compliance communications and ensure that your messages remain fresh and relevant.

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10 TIPS FROM THE COMMS MASTERS

GO BEYOND TRADITIONAL COMMUNICATIONS CHANNELS

Traditionally, email and internal web portals / intranets were the main channels through which compliance messages were delivered. In fact, a combination of a Content Management System and Outlook with mail-merge would usually be the extent of the tools compliance teams used for their outreach campaigns.

Of course there are a number of other offline and online channels that are included in the compliance communications mix. This includes offline channels and tools such as:

• Printed newsletters

• Physical notice boards

• Information brochures

• Roadshows / conferences

Compliance professionals are also increasingly using digital tools and channels such as:

• Blogs

• Live chat

• Wikis

• Internal YouTube channels

• Podcasts

• Online surveys.

Enterprise Social Networks (ESN) are also becoming more popular within organizations of different sizes. In retrospect, Deloitte’s prediction that 90% of Fortune 500 companies will have implemented an ESN by the end of 2013 was a bit ambitious (3). However, these internal social networks are definitely gaining prominence.

But just like email and the intranet homepage, these channels tend to get crowded and noisy, which often results in important compliance messages falling on deaf ears.

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3 - "TMT Predictions 2013 ‒ Enterprise Social Networks: Another Tool, but Not Yet a Panacea | Deloitte | Tech, Media & Telecoms." Deloitte. Web. 16 Mar. 2015. <http://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/technology-media-and-telecommunications/articles/tmt-technology-predictions-2013-enterprise-social-networks.html>.

In addition to having a best-practice communications plan and using modern outreach channels, compliance teams also need to look to the future to see what else can enhance their outreach programs.

A new class of communications tools are now available to compliance professionals. Direct-To-Employee Engagement (D2EE) software is different from other digital communications channels and tools in that it allows compliance teams to interact with constituents directly on their desktops.

The power of D2EE tools is that, unlike other communications channels or methods which can be easily ignored, alerts and updates appear right on an employee’s screen, bypassing all other apps. This provides compliance professionals with the previously unavailable ability to ‘hi-jack’ employees’ screens and, therefore, their attention. The likelihood that important compliance messages will be absorbed increases greatly.

D2EE TOOLS SHIFT THE POWER BALANCE AWAY FROM INTERNAL COMMS

The main advantage of these tools is that they give you full control over your compliance campaigns. Rather than having to beg internal comms to send out a crucial compliance message in their newsletter or post it on the front page of the company intranet, you can now just beam it straight to an employee's screen.

The other advantage this class of tools presents is the ability to provide continuous reminders about anything, from upcoming compliance training sessions to unsubmitted questionnaires. All of this, without having to add further clutter to an employee's mailbox.

In situations that involve whistleblowing or any other crisis communications situation, such an instantaneous approach allows for swift and effective compliance action that would have otherwise been impossible using other methods.

In addition to communications being instantaneous, the feedback loop is also just as immediate, because real-time analytics provide relevant metrics as a campaign unfolds. This allows for easy measurement of the effectiveness of your outreach messages. Just as importantly, reporting compliance program results becomes just as easy and makes your team look like superheroes to the C-suite.

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DIRECT-TO-EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT (D2EE) SOFTWARE - A NEW CLASS OF COMPLIANCE COMMUNICATIONS TOOLS

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SnapComms ‘Compliance Communication’ is the first Direct-to-Employee Engagement product to be specifically developed for the compliance industry. It was built specifically to help compliance teams take employee outreach into their own hands, taking their campaigns to a whole new level of sophistication.

The advantages of deploying a SnapComms ‘Compliance Communication’ solution in your organization include:

• TARGET COMMUNICATIONS TO SPECIFIC AUDIENCES AND PERSONAS

SnapComms CC allows you to target your compliance communications to particular individuals or groups.

Whether you segment your personas by risk profile or geography or device - or in any other imaginable way - you can create tailored campaigns focused on those specific groups.

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HOW A SNAPCOMMS D2EE SOLUTION CAN REVOLUTIONIZE YOUR COMPLIANCE CAMPAIGNS

• PUSH IMPORTANT MESSAGES OUT FAST

Whether you are in the middle of a PR crisis or facing recent legislation update that will significantly impact certain employees, the key to compliance success is swift and decisive action.

SnapComms CC lets you push out messages to relevant stakeholders in the blink of an eye with pop-up alerts or on-screen scrolling message tickers. And you can then instantly see how engaged they are with the message.

• INCREASE COMPLIANCE TRAINING COVERAGE Tired of sending reminders to employees about upcoming training? Is this negatively affecting your training coverage metrics?

SnapComms CC allows you to set recurring invitations with multiple time-slots. Now employees can no longer use the excuse that they can't book a session as a way of skipping compliance training. You can then set automated reminders and forget about manually following up altogether - the software does it for you.

• GAMIFY YOUR COMPLIANCE TRAINING

Pure and simple, most employees are bored with the usual approaches to compliance training. SnapComms CC allows you to gamify the training experience and boost employee engagement levels almost instantaneously.

SnapComms CC can be integrated with many e-learning systems, which makes it even  easier to implement effective compliance training programs.

• MANAGE COMPLIANCE COMMUNICATIONS WITHOUT INTERNAL COMMS

One of the main features of SnapComms CC is the ability to take your campaign communications into your own hands. No need to ask internal communications for approval - again and again.

Advanced campaign management and message scheduling let you build sophisticated outreach strategies and then automate implementation.

• ESTABLISH EFFECTIVE TWO-WAY COMMUNICATION WITH EMPLOYEES

Quizzes and surveys are important feedback mechanisms for measuring the effectiveness of your compliance outreach. SnapComms CC lets you create a variety of different surveys that can be escalated if needed.

In order to uphold confidentiality and win employees’ trust, these feedback channels can be customized to allow employees remain anonymous.

• EMPOWER EMPLOYEES BY INVOLVING THEM IN COMPLIANCE COMMS

User-generated content is no longer a term that applies just to your social media team’s marketing strategies. SnapComms CC lets you take full advantage of its collaborative newsletter tool to create compliance-specific e-newsletters.

You can also get employees to submit content to your newsletters, as the simple drag-and-drop interface makes it easy for anyone to contribute. Yet, your compliance team still has total control over what gets included in your newsletters.

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• DECREASE THE BURDEN OF COMPLIANCE REPORTING

SnapComms CC allows you to go beyond the usual metrics of training completion or ‘hotline metrics’ and really dig deep into the numbers to find out how your compliance program is actually doing. This can be achieved with detailed message delivery statistics, surveys and quizzes and ‘spot checks’ to ascertain understanding of specific messages.

You can now have your finger on the pulse of every single employee’s level of engagement and easily demonstrate the value of your communications campaigns to senior management. Auditor show up unexpectedly? No problem, since you can also easily export data for audit purposes.

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A COMMUNICATIONS SOLUTION FOR THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION

Because SnapComms provides communications solutions to a variety of industry sectors and organizational functions, it is not limited exclusively to the compliance function. Due to the software’s wide-ranging benefits for communications teams of all types, organizations find it easy to get sign-off on a SnapComms solution and implement it across different departments.

Both internal comms and HR teams at large corporations are already using SnapComms to communicate more efficiently with employees. Now your compliance department can have access to this same technology - with the added benefit that it fits your compliance communications needs out-of-the-box.

If you like the sound of the Compliance Communication solution then talk to your internal comms, HR or marketing teams as they may already be using the software in your company.

THE COMPANY BEHIND THE ‘COMPLIANCE COMMUNICATION SUITE

SnapComms has been providing direct-to-employee engagement apps since 1997 from its home in Auckland, New Zealand. During this time, the company has established itself as a global leader in communications solutions for various industries and has expanded its operations globally, with offices in California, New York and London. SnapComms’ tools are used by some of the largest organizations in the world, including Virgin and Vodafone.  

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SUPER-CHARGE YOUR COMPLIANCE COMMUNICATIONS - SCHEDULE A DEMO TODAYIt’s not often that a new class of software emerges that redefines the way an entire industry operates.

When such an event does occur, those forward-thinking early adopters who recognized the potential of the solution end up reaping substantial rewards. They become market leaders in their respective fields and leave the competition scrambling to catch up. But, by then, it’s usually too late.

The SnapComms direct-to-employee engagement platform fundamentally changes how compliance outreach gets done.

Finally take your fate out of the hands of the internal communications department - see for yourself just how good it feels to manage your compliance campaigns from start to finish.

Visit our website to find out more about SnapComms ‘Compliance Communication’ suite and schedule a free demo today:

US Office601 South Figueroa Street, Suite 4050Los Angeles, CA 90017.Tel: +1 805 715 0300

Asia Pacific7 Auburn StreetTakapuna, AucklandNew ZealandTel: +64 9 950 3360

General Enquiries:info@snapcomms.com

http://solutions.snapcomms.com/compliance/

UK Office64 Great Eastern Street,London, EC2A 3QRUnited KingdomTel: +44 (0)207 7499135