Internal communications in the age of AI

Digital Workplace Impact Episode 153: Internal Comms in the age of AI

[00:00:00.000] – Monique Zytnik
My center point is people come first, technology merely enables. And I think coming at any situation or problem with that viewpoint will put you, any leader, any practitioner, in a good standpoint to be making the right decisions.

[00:00:23.060] – Nancy Goebel
In this episode of Digital Workplace Impact, Monique Zytnik, a global internal communications leader, shares insights about the transformative power of AI in internal communications. It’s a very timely conversation, knowing that many members in both the internal communications and digital communications arenas are following this topic with close interest. As part of the conversation, Monique shares insights from her latest book and dives into innovative strategies and real-world examples of how AI is reshaping workplace communications. Listeners will learn about the challenges and opportunities that AI presents for internal communications pros. As part of that, Monique emphasizes the importance of a multi-layered approach and a new mindset, one that’s about immersive communications in order to effectively leverage AI tools. She also addresses common misconceptions about AI and offers practical advice for maintaining more of a human centric approach while embracing technological advancements. Join me now in conversation with Monique as we explore how AI can enhance internal communications, foster a more inclusive, high-performing environment for teams in order to drive organizational success. This is your host and DWG’s Chief Executive, Nancy Goebel. And as always, Digital Workplace Impact is brought to you by Digital Workplace Group. Happy listening.

[00:02:10.380] – Nancy Goebel
Monique, I have to say I have been so looking forward to welcome you into the Digital Workplace Impact podcast studio. I have been following you on LinkedIn for the past several months after seeing a post from a long time time, DWG friend and mentee, Christy Punch, who has since become one of our inaugural DWG luminaries. And if Christy follows someone, that gives me pause to say that I should do the same. And so welcome, welcome to the studio.

[00:02:55.000] – Monique Zytnik
Thank you so much, Nancy. I’ve really, really, since you reached out, I’ve I just wanted to have a chat with you. I’ve seen all the exciting initiatives that you have with DWG, Campbell’s, all of those different projects that you’ve been working with. And Christy is amazing. I met her in Australia at the… It was one of my first big conferences in 2019, and she just had such a spark and sparkle that we’ve kept in touch. And any friend of hers is a friend of mine instantly. So I’m so excited about this conversation, Nancy.

[00:03:36.750] – Nancy Goebel
Oh, how wonderful. And I really had a hard time honing in on a single topic because of the breadth of things that you think about and share within our broader circle. And so I thought it would be nice to start with exploring your most recent book and see where we go from there. And of course, your book focuses on internal communications in the AI era. And obviously, everyone’s talking about what generative AI and other forms of AI will do to transform the workplace at large, and then, of course, internal communications within that frame. I think a logical place to start would be to say what inspired you to write about the intersection of technology and workplace communication with that AI overlay?

[00:04:51.540] – Monique Zytnik
Well, it’s actually a very interesting timing. I was absolutely fascinated with immersive communication and being doing a lot in 3D spaces for internal communication. And that was on the hype cycle, so Gartner’s hype cycle. And then it crashed. And as I committed to writing my book in November 2023, it was a moment of… Actually, it was the month that ChatGPT was released. So it was all new. And in those first few months of me doing my research, talking to many, many communication practitioners, and seeing how the environment was so quickly changing, and then trying to think about the impact it will have on our workplace and how we do internal communications. That provided the fertile ground for my book, which is about strategic communications in the age of artificial intellectual, because I can see so many challenges ahead for us. I see so many opportunities ahead for us, and things are moving so fast.

[00:06:11.510] – Nancy Goebel
It has been remarkable watching not only how digital workplace teams are supporting and enabling the use of AI to help people communicate, connect, collaborate, and get things done differently. The whole idea of ways of working are changing very rapidly. But I think the added layer is that digital workplace professionals themselves, even within the digital communications arena, are not only helping to support and enable the change, but also need to look at embracing all of these new capabilities within their own respective orbits. That’s an added layer that needs to be considered in the mix. And so given what you do on a day-to-day basis, I am sure that you are seeing a myriad of ways that AI is transforming the landscape of internal communications teams inside of organizations, as well as internal communications as a function, delivering out messaging and instigating conversation in different ways. And we’d love to hear some anecdotes from what you’re seeing and hearing so far.

[00:07:54.680] – Monique Zytnik
Sure. And Nancy, I think this duality that you talk about, so us and how different forms of AI impact the way that we work in our roles and our responsibility to the rest of the organization in helping getting them on board is exactly what we need to be keeping in mind as we go through the coming months, coming years. Mo Gawdat, who used to be head in Google, said that it’s the first time where we cannot see the horizon of where we are going. So in terms of anecdotes of things I’m seeing, there’s some really great examples of, say, Saturn MediaMarkt, who have plugged Deepl into their Viva Connect so that their employees on… So Saturn MediaMarkt are a German European retail store for electronic goods. So that’s where you would buy your mobile phone or you might… I think they actually sell bikes and other things as well, but mostly electronic devices. And their shop front staff on the floor can use their mobile phones and listen or read their content on the Viva Engage in their chosen language. So that’s a fairly, when you think about a digital workplace and digital workplace development, that’s a fairly recent thing that’s been enabled for us in a wonderful benefit.

[00:09:32.650] – Monique Zytnik
There are so many other things, such as sentiment analysis, when we look around our, say, employee engagement metrics for our intranet articles and news, and we can aggregate all of those metrics and data and actually use AI to group people into different segments. So not traditional segments that we might be using now nowadays in terms of location or in terms of only doing hierarchy of where they are in the organization. But you can do quite detailed, specific segmentation that you don’t choose It’s chosen for you based on how they interact with your platforms and devices. And the other great example I wanted to quickly share with you is, so there’s a supermarket chain in Germany called Rewe, and they’ve been experimenting with having a AI avatar that’s based on their digital workplace manager. An actual person that they’ve trained, it looks like a person And they’ve got a hologram box. So you can go up to a hologram box and speak with this person or even access it on Teams and ask them questions, for example, around your leave or certain things to do with your entitlement. So my understanding is that it’s just in trial phase at the moment, but that was already been communicated middle to late of last year, that that was being trialed.

[00:11:15.930] – Monique Zytnik
So there are some really exciting projects with different types of AI that are being implemented across the globe.

[00:11:24.550] – Nancy Goebel
And to hear you talk about the fact that translation capabilities are becoming more robust, more dynamic, more real-time is such a leapfrog moment for internal communications teams, because I think about examples of DWG members who, at any given time, were taking enterprise-level messaging and translating into anywhere from 10 to 15 languages. And the numbers of people involved, the level of rigor and structure and formality in that process, and to allow for a more dynamic and context-sensitive translation to be in play is something that can help bring people together in new and different ways because they’re allowed to express themselves or take in that content in their mother tongue. And so I’m really curious to see how the idea of enterprise-level conversation starts to evolve from here supported and enabled by multilingual capabilities and rich ones at that.

[00:12:52.600] – Monique Zytnik
A fun fact is I used to work for Australia’s multilingual broadcaster, and one of our big principles was speaking your language. So it’s about accessibility and giving people the information that they want in their chosen language. Now, I want to take that idea and expand it further, Nancy. Imagine you could go to your digital workplace and choose what format you wanted to receive your content. So the technology is already there. I just don’t think we’ve necessarily implemented it or thought about it in a holistic way yet. But imagine going and seeing your CEO’s message, which is usually a traditionally a typed message and thinking, which is usually a traditionally a typed message, start of the week with a nice photograph. But what if you’re on the train and you don’t have time to look with your phone? What if you could just press a button and listen to it? How much more convenient would that be for you personally? And it’s this hyper-personalised approach which a lot of these tools now enable us to offer. And that’s what is so exciting. What I’m most excited about, I think, in the digital workplace space.

[00:14:18.880] – Nancy Goebel
And when you stop and think about how increasingly people are on the move, again, we have seen organizations not only call the return to office, but also business travel has been on the rise, especially for people who need to go visit client sites in professional services or other industries. And so this idea of meeting people where they are, but also recognizing that people consume information differently just because of learning styles, in addition to the convenience elements, really starts to change the nature of that hyper personalization game that you were talking about. And what does that open up beyond the immediate moment where someone takes that content in and starts to think, feel, and do things differently on the other side?

[00:15:23.170] – Monique Zytnik
So what we’re talking about now is moving from the traditional send-receiver model, where where me as the sender gets to choose the format and gets to choose the content. And you, Nancy, as the receiver, receives what I send, and then hopefully send something back to me, so it responds to my comments or questions. We’re moving from this 1960s David Burlow model to a more experienced, immersive approach to the way that we communicate. And that’s where we put the user in the center of the experience and they get to choose. We give them as much choice as possible for them to consume the content in the way that they wish.

[00:16:13.940] – Nancy Goebel
With that, and in mind, I’m trying to pull a concept from your book that you termed the multi-layered approach to internal communications. And understand where that fits into this picture. And so maybe you can elaborate on what this means and why is this crucial now in the age of AI?

[00:16:43.930] – Monique Zytnik
Absolutely. I think we’ve all seen that see just how much content is out there. There’s a deluge of content on all channels everywhere, even if you look on social media. And the idea is rather than just bombarding people with more content, we need to be strategic in the way that we communicate. So when I talk about the multi-layered model, it is a strategy model for how you can develop a robust internal communication strategy. I’ve actually been using it for external communications in the past couple of months with clients, and it’s working really, really well. And I can talk you through very quickly, just for for our listeners and viewers. The basis is the foundation. So this 1960s David Bello model of send and receiver. And I want you to think of, say, a toolbox, one of those big red It becomes the three layers that you open and pull out. So you’ve got the foundation in the bottom, which is the base, which the toolbox sits on. Then you have the next level, and that’s the communities and networks. So it’s using your champion network For example, if you’re implementing a new intranet, you’d go with a champion model to cross silos.

[00:18:06.700] – Monique Zytnik
You’d be working with communities. A lot of these concepts we are very familiar with since social media made its boom. So this is your Viva Engage type of tool or your Slack. Then we take out the top bit of our toolbox in the strategy toolbox, and there’s the immersive communication, which is what I just mentioned, where you put the audience in the of the experience. And it’s multisensory, it’s nonlinear, so perfect for asynchronous work, or as nonlinear as you can make it. And it’s also interactive. So again, things that we instinctively do or use in our comms, but it’s about being deliberate and thinking of it in a strategic way and having this model to just remember, oh, I’ve forgotten that bit or this bit of the model is missing. So then And we’ve built our toolbox. But the sides of the toolbox, what holds it together is the leadership communication, which you need to have, and also the strategic alignment and stakeholder management, because without those two things, you’ve got a very floppy toolbox that’s likely to open and collapse everywhere. So that’s the multi-layered approach. And the idea, again, is that you’ve got these different layers that are all valid, where you’ve got different tools sitting in those layers that you might pick and use for your communication strategy, depending on exactly what your situation is and what you’re trying to achieve.

[00:19:42.420] – Nancy Goebel
I love this metaphor of a toolbox as a way of framing all of these important components. And I have to ask this question because I know it’s come up in member meetings in the past where in some cases it was an IT practitioner or even an HR practitioner who innocently asked the question of the internal communicators in the room to say, we often hear from employees that there’s an awful lot of messaging that’s being generated from the center, and sometimes I’m not sure why. It’s coming into our view other than just to stay informed. As organizations leverage this toolbox that you’ve described, is there a sense of clarity that can come to a new level of understanding for individuals about why certain messages are being shared and how to essentially take a call to action in response. And so do you see, in other words, the quality, the value, and the impact of internal communications change when the toolbox is in play.

[00:21:32.010] – Monique Zytnik
Absolutely. Two things happen if you’re not strategic. If you just bombard employees with too much content in an uncoordinated way, research now, as last year from Nottingham University, shows that it directly causes employee burnout and stress. And they get, if you don’t have a clear channel strategy, they get also a FOMO type of experiences where they don’t know what channel they’re going to get the information on, if they’re going to get it at the right time, and it causes a lot of anxiety. So there’s that direct correlation. If you think about your role as a communications practitioner or a digital workplace expert, you’ve got a responsibility to your organization and your employees as a part of it. And so you can directly cause harm. The second part of the communication or the need to be strategic is if you don’t, you simply waste time and money. I worked with a client who I obviously won’t mention, but they had a release of a employee app. They already had an employee app, but they had a second component. They didn’t think through everything. And by releasing it and their communication, which was to to try and get people to download it, it caused so much confusion because the employees are like, I’ve already got an employee app.

[00:23:07.160] – Monique Zytnik
Why do I need another employee app? What’s this for? And caused so much confusion. They actually had to come to the internal communications agency that I was working for at the time, this is a couple of years ago, and pay a lot of money for another campaign and the whole thing to be thought through and created and delivered. So if they’d done it right the first time, they wouldn’t have needed to spend that big budget to fix up the mistake. And you can either mess it up in terms of confused people, or you can actually not follow through and do it properly. It’s like, let’s implement this and send out to emails, and that’s plenty. Everybody knows. If you don’t do the full implementation, as I’m sure all of your listeners are very, very familiar with. If you don’t invest the time and resources into doing it properly, it’s like having a car in your garage, an expensive one that nobody ever drives. It’s nice to look at, but it doesn’t really have much of a purpose other than existing. And particularly if you’re on some of the products that we’re all very familiar with.

[00:24:20.420] – Monique Zytnik
I know that you’re product agnostic. It can get very expensive if nobody’s using tools that you’re paying per seat.

[00:24:30.380] – Nancy Goebel
When I look at how many organizations have had to make a shift from a growth mindset to profitability, just given all of the economic uncertainties around us, every penny, every pence that an organization spends needs to show value for cost. It feels like we’re kindred spirits in many ways and are having conversations in parallel. Just this past week, Elizabeth Marsh, who’s our Director of Research, shared some of the highlights from her dissertation, she’s working on her doctorate, and picked up on these issues of techno stress and the fact that employees have been feeling overwhelmed and where you can use a strategic approach, i.e., the red toolbox, alongside the increasingly robust AI capabilities to help not only hyper personalize, but also help people absorb the right content in meaningful ways and take specific action. We will see that through in the various metrics that you talked about and see a ripple through on the reduction of friction as well as the ability to think and operate differently in the organization. And so the fact that we have been talking about things like change agility in the organizations versus old-school change management such that we’re preparing people for faster intervals of change, I think, is an area that will get a lot more focus from this point forward because we are already seeing how many organizations have gone from testing to scale with emerging technology, AI and otherwise, and that is only going to continue to intensify, I say with velocity, meaning speed and direction, going forward.

[00:27:07.600] – Nancy Goebel
And so enabling people to reduce those stressors that you talked about and to see change as a normal part of daily work life as well as personal, is what I call the new social currency of the enterprise. And so in my latest edition of Diary of a CEO, I talk about some of the disciplines that we need to have in place to not only mine the data and the KPIs that you were talking about, but also understand how employees are feeling about these changes so that we can provide the right support systems in orchestrating those changes. That’s one strand of opportunity and challenge all wrapped into one package. I know that you have been talking about a wider set of opportunities and challenges in sharing some of the insights from your book Anything you’d like to add to that?

[00:28:16.890] – Monique Zytnik
I just wanted to pick up on something that you just mentioned, Nancy. I think it is a lot of people are calling it the age of chaos or the times of chaos. It’s gone beyond the age of artificial intelligence, which is where I was placing things last year. It’s gone into a place of chaos where people are wanting this sense of belonging still. And I think we do have the opportunity to play a role as a conductor, directing the flow of communication in the right way at the right pace as well. And the new technology that we’ve been talking about allows us to offer that hyper personalisation so that we do reduce the stress, as you said. In terms of concepts in relation to my book, I think the one thing that I would like to do or hope to see in the coming years, and it’s been really pleasing last year to see this movement, at least in Europe, is this idea that our leaders do need to be upskilled in communication and understanding communication at scale. My book is the first internal communications book that was actually written for business leaders and not specifically for the internal communication professional.

[00:29:54.510] – Monique Zytnik
I’ve had great response from internal communication professionals who love the model and the immersive communication. But what I would love to do is to be actually be able to bring this more into the leadership space. And that will happen through practitioners across digital workplace, internal comms, HR, all of those people who have excellent employee communication at the heart of what they do, sharing their knowledge and upskilling our leaders to help them be better communicators and to understand that just because they’re communicating with their team, one on one or in their team, and they’ve got those great interpersonal skills, doesn’t mean that they don’t need to think out and be strategic in the bigger sense, which we all know does need to happen. So that’s my one goal or focus for this year, is to broaden that understanding of strategy a little further so that we can make a positive impact in our workplaces.

[00:31:06.780] – Nancy Goebel
When I think about the leadership cadre in many organizations, I know that any time we see a burst of technological change in this context, we’re talking about AI, of course, the idea that taking a human-centered approach becomes even more important. And so I imagine that you’re thinking about this in layers, not just in terms of what internal communications practitioners need to do, but also leaders in the enterprise. Share a little bit about your thoughts on the human-centered approach.

[00:31:48.800] – Monique Zytnik
I think it’s easy with our shiny tools and toys to lose focus about why we’re actually communicating And I know that there’s obviously business success and profitability is a key focus. But we don’t get there unless our people are on board and understand what they need to do. And that’s why we need to… In pure business sense, that’s why we need to be people-focused, and we need to put the people in the center of the whole experience is because without them driving the tools, without them checking and making sure the decisions are the right decisions, and we’re not blindly following what ChatGPT or some other tool has told us that we’re questioning, then we’re going to have serious problems in the future and we’ll be stuck in a productivity cycle of just working faster. And then the question is for what? I know we’re getting into a bit of philosophical discussion here, Nancy, but the question is, if we’re working faster with all these great tools, what’s the end outcome? What do we also as employees get for that? And there are some interesting organizations that are already, I think in Australia, are already looking at a model where they’ve got a billable hour system.

[00:33:23.990] – Monique Zytnik
And if you use AI, you write that down into your time sheet and then you get some of that time back as personal time. Because you’ve been using AI, you’ve been working faster, so you get extra personal time back, which I think is an interesting concept.

[00:33:43.570] – Nancy Goebel
Yeah, because It’s reinforcing behavior that is conducive to being more efficient and hopefully more effective on top of that as well. And so that’s the first time I’ve seen almost a level of real-time behavior reinforcement at a rewards level. I’ll be curious to see as time passes, are there other change levers like that that come into play from a more creative stance?

[00:34:22.560] – Monique Zytnik
What I find really interesting is when we start to look at not only the rewards systems and the ways of working, but also those bigger societal questions. And then you start to talk about the four-day work week, and then you start to talk about, sure, we’re coming back into the office, but how do you optimize that experience? So these are all really fascinating areas of the future of work, which I’m inspired and hopeful that we find some creative future, not only solutions, but about new ways of working.

[00:35:02.160] – Nancy Goebel
And I certainly think that the soft skills that we all need to hone will evolve as well as these tangible skills that we’re building vis-a-vis AI. And that just sparks a moment of reflection for me about advice that would be worthwhile imparting on and not only internal communications professionals, but also leaders as communicators. And we’d love to get your thoughts on any words of advice for both of those audiences.

[00:35:46.570] – Monique Zytnik
My center point is people come first, technology merely enables. And I think coming at any situation or problem with that viewpoint will put you, any leader, any practitioner, in a good standpoint to be making the right decisions.

[00:36:12.460] – Nancy Goebel
That’s a very helpful piece of advice. I guess just to cap off our time together, what have we missed, Monique?

[00:36:22.360] – Monique Zytnik
I feel like I have so much to discuss with you, Nancy. We might need to have another chat. There are lots of avenues. I’m insanely curious to hear more about what’s happening in America, particularly with your DWG members, experiences, what’s on their minds swapping stories with Europe. I’ve been involved in the digital workplace summit in Brussels last year and also intra-team, and I’ve got connections with the digital workplace as people in Australia. So I look forward to bigger and broader conversations with you and your community, Nancy.

[00:37:09.150] – Nancy Goebel
Oh, well, I certainly look forward to that. This conversation wet my appetite for continuing that conversation. And so I will make sure that that happens. But it’s hard to believe, Monique, our time together has just flown by. And it probably makes sense for us to pause here while we start thinking about that ambition for a next-stage conversation. And for me to thank you for taking the time out of a busy day to chat with me and share some of your thoughts grounded in your new book. We’ll make sure to signpost that in the show notes as well so that others can have a read and deepen their understanding of some very sage advice to level up, especially at a leadership level, the approaches taken to maintain that human-centered, yet strategic approach to communications. And so thank you so much for coming into the studio today, Monique.

[00:38:20.420] – Monique Zytnik
Thank you so much, Nancy. It was an absolute delight.

[00:38:26.910] – Nancy Goebel
Digital Workplace Impact is brought to you by the Digital Workplace. DWG is a strategic partner covering all aspects of the evolving digital workplace industry, not only through membership, but also benchmarking and boutique consulting services. For more information, visit digitalworkplacegroup.com.