The most basic human need is the need for acceptance and recognition. In fact, praise or recognition can be more important to employees than even money. Is there any communications tool more cost-effective for continually recognizing employees than the company newsletter? An employee newsletter provides an incredibly cheap and systematic way to provide this recognition.
According to an article in Entrepreneur magazine, if you’re only using your employee newsletter to inform, you are missing out on an incredible opportunity to motivate and inspire employees.
The Power of Newsletter Features
The article tells the story of how a janitorial worker had the most rewarding experience in his 30-year career when he was featured in the company newsletter. His children were so excited about seeing their father in “the paper” that he might as well of been on the cover of Time magazine. The children even took the newsletter to school for show-and-tell. The worker reported that he had never felt more important to the company and motivated in his work.
Creating Newsletter Content That Inspires
Profile employees. Create stories about workers who’ve done something great or interesting. Ask for ideas or submissions from employees. Customer comments/feedback are another great source of ideas.
Use photos along with the articles. Everyone loves to see photos of themselves or their co-workers, so be sure to use lots of images in your employee newsletter.
Directly quote employees. Quotes add interest and credibility to stories.
Cover achievements, recognitions or awards. Sales awards, work milestones, safety records, and the like all lend themselves to newsletter coverage.
Highlight promotions, birthdays, births and anniversaries. Just be sure to include only the day and month on birthdays.
Feature all company events. From picnics to the softball team, events are ripe for showcasing many employees at once.
Don’t ever forget that while you may be most interested in educating workers about a new product line or policy guidelines, employees are much more interested in seeing photos from the company picnic or softball game. If you can highlight employees and make them the focus of your company newsletter, you’ll continually motivate and inspire the rank and file. As a bonus, if your employees are readily devouring the employee newsletter because it features them, it will be much more effective at communicating all the “important” news you need to pass along.
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