Internal corporate communications – more like just employee magazines

June 10, 2016 – „Internal communication – on the way to a ‘leading position’?” – with this keynote Prof. Dr. Dr. habil. Claudia Mast opened the 12th internal communications conference of Deutsche Presseakademie about „dialogue at the age of digitalization” on June 2, 2016 in Berlin. All 100 participants agreed that internal corporate communications become more and more of interest for the companies. The success lies in the change of perspective – from management to employee perspective. But what do the employees want? „Information has to be prepared in a compact and modular way so employees are able to pass it on. Service information such as shift plan as well as the menu are important to the employees,” knows Franziska Krittl, PR Consultant at HeadlineAffairs, after the conference.
One of the questions the participants discussed was „How can I reach the blue collar worker in the production who doesn’t have access to a computer?” Representatives of Siemens AG, Philips GmbH and Vodafone as well as SMEs such as the Vulkan group explained their possible solutions. This made clear: Digitalization of content is not the ultimate solution and there is not only one recipe for success which can be applied in every company. Whereas some stop their employee magazine and only contact their employees via digital means, others focus on print media and direct contact to their employees.
After an inspiring round table session in the afternoon, the conference’s topics could be discussed in more detail at the evening event which took place at the Private Roof Club close to the Oberbaumbrücke, with a view of the Spree river.