How to communicate to workers who do not have corporate mail

This is an automatic translation of the Spanish original and may contain errors. Read the original in Spanish

To warn those who have no business mail, the base is a short meeting at the start of the shift in charge of the intermediate controls, with a fixed support that anyone can reread, such as a board or a screen. You just need something else when you want to know who got the notice. This article is for those who manage Human Resources or internal communication in a medium or large company with staff of plant, shop, work or distribution. If your team fits in one room and they all match on the same shift, you just talk to them.

A data that conditions everything else: an internal communication platform whose access is a link sent to the corporate mail, which is the case with the product of this blog, requires each person to have mail. For those who don't, that access doesn't exist and the channel will be another.

Five criteria for comparing channels

A channel can be good to get and bad to prove it came. Every time you evaluate one, measure these five things:

1. Scope: who he comes to without anyone having to do anything special.
2. Time: How much happens between you deciding to warn and the person finding out.
3. Test: what the channel tells you that the notice came, and if it says it per person or in total.
4. Maintenance: continuous work for the channel to continue to serve, such as removing old warnings or dismissing the person who goes.
5. What you ask the person: a personal phone, install something, be present within an hour or just pass through a place.

The six channels, side by side

The following paragraphs explain what the table compresses.

What does each channel do in practice

Physical board

It comes to the one who passes by and no one else. There's no way to know who read it, and who's on vacation or in another center doesn't know. It is cheap and does not ask for anything from the person, but its real cost appears in maintenance: someone must remove what has been won in each center, because a board with notices from three months ago teaches to ignore it.

Pants in common areas

The screen prevents the warning from getting old if the content is managed remotely, something that a display provider recommended in your guide. This provider advises that they be placed in rest rooms and passing areas where staff look at them during their breaks, and recognizes that some of the staff can ignore them at first and that many centres have no computer support of their own. The metrics he proposes to measure the result (surveys, scans of a QR code, reduction of security incidents, rotation) are indicators of the whole and none of them say who saw a specific notice. There is also a cost of equipment and content, which someone must prepare.

Start-of-shift meeting

It is the channel with the most ability to explain: the person can ask and the command can see if he understood. Your limit is the chain. The message moves from direction to intermediate controls and from them to each team, and at each step it can change or jump. Two measures improve it: a three or four-line script equal to all controls and an assistance sheet that someone signs. The sheet tests presence, not understanding.

Messaging groups

They're fast and people already use them. On the evidence, the help of WhatsApp indicates that in a group the second mark appears when all have received the message and the two blue marks when all have read it, and that there is an information screen of the message with the details of delivery and reading. The same page states that those who disable the reading confirmations do not disable them in the groups. Check, if you choose this channel, if you can keep that information as a report and not just look at it on the phone of who sent the message.

It leads to the personal phone of each person and takes the job notices to your device and your free time. Anyone who doesn't want to give the number stays out of the channel, and every drop in the company requires to remember to get that person out of the group. Before choosing it, consult your legal advice about what to do and tell staff.

SMS

It gets to any phone, without installing anything. It serves for short and urgent warnings, and for that very reason it is unfit to explain something. What should a notice like this be said in how to warn of an emergency or closure. On the evidence, Twilio's documentation for SMS the delivery receipt that Twilio receives from the operator and quotes the reading only for the channels that support it, which today are RCS and WhatsApp. In an SMS you have, therefore, the state of delivery and not a sign that someone opened it. It is paid for by message, and the list of numbers is another list of phones that someone should keep up with.

Implementation of internal communication

An application designed for this brings together in one place the notices and can give a reading report per person, so you know who saw it and who is missing to warn by another way. It is the option of the table that combines a record per person with a channel of the company, without asking for the personal phone, and some tools also allow to record an express acceptance, which neither a blue mark nor a delivered SMS give.

It has two limits. The first has read it above: if the access is by a link to the corporate mail, the person without mail does not enter, and a shared device in the center does not fix it, because each person also needs their own mail. The second one is for use: he asks for a mobile, and at the posts where he does not look during the shift the notice awaits the end.

What to do if your staff is mixed

The usual thing is that there are people with corporate mail and people without it. Three steps:

1. Count to each group. How many people have mail and how many don't, center by center. Without that number, any decision is a bet.
2. Use the application with reading report for those with mail. When there is corporate mail, it is the one that gives proof per person without asking for the personal phone and serves to order express acceptance and registration.
3. Cover the rest with a shift meeting and a fixed support. The same notice, the same day, and an attendance sheet. Two channels that do not see each other generate two versions of the message, so decide which channel is the reference.

The reading report only covers those who have access to it: those who do not have it do not even appear as pending, so do not use that list to know who did not know. To see what each reading method tests and what to do with those who didn't read, consult how to know who read an internal ad.

An alternative is to give corporate mail to all staff. It solves access, but it costs licenses and high, and it's no use if the person never opens that mailbox. Before you choose it, check if I'd really open it.

When a board and a shift meeting are enough

Nothing more is needed when all these conditions are met:

• The notice is informative. A change in the schedule of the canteen or an event date does not need to know who read it.
• There are few centres and stable shifts. A command who sees his team every day knows who was.
• The command knows its people. If anyone is missing, he notices and tells him later.
• Nothing depends on the warning. If there is no consequence for not knowing, measuring is more expensive than the problem.

A well-made meeting with an attendance sheet is a test of presence that no application improves in a shift of eight people. Instead, it is short if there are several centres that must receive the same text on the same day, if the notice requires something or if the shift changes every week and no one knows who was missing. To write the notice read at the meeting or hang on the board, there are internal ad models by situation.