Using an Internal Newsletter and Intranet to Engage Employees

What You’ll Learn

Allison Young and the Kauai team just won an NRECA Spotlight award for their internal newsletter and intranet. What’s their secret for engaging internal communications?

Special: Recorded LIVE at StoryConnect 2024!

Guest Speaker

Allison Young

Show Notes

Transcripts have been lightly edited for clarity and readility.

Andy Johns: Hi StoryConnect listeners, this is Andy, and I am here just to let you know about a couple of audio problems we had with these episodes. If you’ve been to StoryConnect before, you know that we have a ton of fun recording live episodes there in the conference center, and we did that once again this year in Hood River. Unfortunately, in this episode you’re about to listen to, some of the audio is not quite as good as it is when we’re recording otherwise. I think it’s an important episode. And we did learn a few things from last time we recorded live, but it’s still not perfect. So, I just wanted to give you a heads up on that. If this is your first time listening, normally, we’re pretty proud of the pristine quality we’re able to deliver, but this one is a little bit rough, so I wanted to give you a heads up. We think it’s an important episode, and I hope you enjoy.

Intro: A production of Pioneer Utility Resources. StoryConnect, helping communicators discover ideas to shape their stories and connect with their customers.

Andy Johns: How is an internal newsletter your best option to communicate with folks inside the shop? That’s what we’ll be talking about on this episode of StoryConnect: The Podcast. My name is Andy Johns. I’m your host with Pioneer, and I’m joined on this episode by Allison Young, who is a communications and public relations specialist at Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative. Allison, thanks so much for joining me.

Allison Young: Thank you, Andy.

Andy Johns: As you may have heard, this is one of the live episodes we were recording here at the StoryConnect Conference 2024, in Hood River, Oregon. And we’re very happy on this episode. All of the live episodes recorded here at StoryConnect are sponsored by Meridian Cooperatives, so we appreciate support from Meridian. Well, Allison, first off, congratulations. You won a couple of awards with the NRECA Spotlight Awards. But the one today I’d like to talk about in particular is the one for your internal communication, your internal newsletter and intranet. Tell us a little bit about what you guys do in terms of the the internal newsletter and the intranet. How often, what do you cover, all that sort of thing?

Allison Young: Yeah. So we used to have an internal newsletter, maybe as old as ten years ago, and it had gone dormant. And we also had an intranet, which we called the Electranet, and that had also become a little bit inactive over the pandemic. So when I was hired, I joined on a year and a half ago, we revived it. And we kept the same name, it’s called Watt’s Up Newsletter. And then we added the intranet, which we call Watt’s Up Hub. And the purpose of it and our goals were to inform our staff about current events so that they would understand the big picture of KIUC and how they play a part and that they feel valued and that they could provide feedback.

Andy Johns: Got it. So you’ve got the intranet, and you’ve got the internal newsletter. How do they work together? Is it a lot of the same information in two different places, or how do they work back and forth?

Allison Young: So the newsletter we decided to publish quarterly. Here’s an example, I have them if anyone wants to see them later. And that we put together a team of reps from all the different divisions and they submit their news articles. It can be anything that they choose to report on. It can be on operations. It could be on a new hire, a retirement. It can be a funny story. We really left it up to them because we were starting it up again. We wanted people to get enthusiastic about it. And the intranet, we rolled out a little bit later, maybe six months in or so. We had a team from IT and engineering working on it. It’s on our SharePoint drive that people can hit their home button on their internet browsers and get to. And that one is a little more interactive. We have links to our social media pages. So in case people weren’t following us on their own, they could see it from there.

Andy Johns: Smart.

Allison Young: And then we have our safety policies, quick links, photos of the week, and we’re constantly adding to it. Now we have a video channel, and this is all a work in progress for us.

Andy Johns: Sure. Well, it’s a work in progress, and it’s a lot of work. I mean, where does all this come from? What’s your workflow like for departments? I mean, are you getting a lot of this from different department heads? Or where does this content you’re talking about coming from? Or is it all you and your team working on it?

Allison Young: Yeah, so we have support from the top, but our reps from each division were selected by their supervisors and not everyone is in communication. So it took a little more encouragement. This falls under other duties as assigned.

Andy Johns: As assigned, yeah.

Allison Young: So I give them a very generous deadline of at least a few weeks. And, as I said, it’s a work in progress. We found after a few issues that people were having a hard time coming up with topics, even sometimes you can have too much flexibility. We wanted to let people express themselves, but they actually needed a little more prompting. So I am more proactive now, and I help them come up with topics. I’ll even help them draft something if they don’t have enough time. But yeah, and then we decided for the fourth issue of the year, which came out around the holidays, that we wanted to minimize their work and give them a break. So we called it our family issue. And that one is mostly pictures, recipes, funny stories. And employees can submit those directly to me, anyone, not just the representatives.

Andy Johns: Got it. This is obviously takes some resources to put together. It takes staff time. Because it’s a printed newsletter, so you’re spending a little bit money on printing. How much do you think, in terms of resources and staff, what kind of resources are dedicated to this, and why do you – and you said you have support all the way at the top – why do you feel like it’s worth the investment?

Allison Young: So the costs in terms of printing, we only have about 140 staff, so it’s not too high. And we decided that we would go with a print newsletter just because our crews are not at their computers all day. And it was just nice to have something in hand where they could see their faces on the cover. But so our biggest resource that we a lot to this is staff time. And in the beginning to start it up and planning it, it did take more time. But now, you know, some people are actually pretty quick writers, and they’re getting better. And as I said, I’m doing communications full time. So I assist with them as much as possible. And it’s definitely a good channel. I think people are getting more, they’re excited to see pictures of their coworkers and see what else is going on around the different offices on the internet.

Andy Johns: Yeah. You touched on it just then. We know some departments live in their email, others don’t. What do you do to try to keep employees engaged and reading the newsletter and the intranet? You know, are they required to read it? Is there a quiz on this later? I mean, what do you do to get keep them engaged? Is it the photos like you were mentioning?

Allison Young: Uh, yeah. So we decided that we were going to change it up and try to highlight a different department each time on the cover. So it wasn’t going to be just a picture of our CEO president every time. But it would be, you know, maybe them out in the field or a retirement with someone who retired with their family, something like that. So we switch it up to make it interesting. I’m open to other ideas about how to incentivize it. We added a crossword puzzle with clues within the newsletter and gave out some swag as prizes.

Andy Johns: Nice. Nice.

Allison Young: Yeah. So we’re still figuring it out, but we hope that it’s engaging enough that people will want to participate and read.

Andy Johns: Perfect. Sounds like it. Last question for you, what advice do you have? Maybe there’s somebody out here in the room. What advice do you have for someone who is trying to step up their internal communication?

Allison Young: I would say encourage people as much as possible. It might seem like a little extra work in the beginning, but ultimately it will make people feel more valued. And you’ll actually be really surprised that you might have some engineers who have a creative streak that they don’t get to exercise very much. And in communications, I’ve actually used some of the internal articles in our external magazine, and they’re very popular because it shows a side that people don’t usually get to see. And I’d also just like to give a shout out to our whole Watt’s Up team. Thanks.

Andy Johns: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. Thank you for being on. She is Allison Young, communications and public relations specialist at Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative. I’m your host, Andy Johns. This is our wonderful audience here at StoryConnect.

Outro: StoryConnect is produced by Pioneer Utility Resources.

Andy Johns: And so we talk again. Keep telling your story..

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