By Tina Dietz, CEO Twin Flames Studios

Employee engagement can feel like a never-ending uphill battle. Companies never accomplish great things if their talent just shows up to collect a paycheck, but how do you ensure your employees feel connected to your organization, stay long term, and encourage others to do the same? 

Internal podcasting is a powerful tool to cultivate a culture of employee engagement. Internal podcasts are usually produced with the help of a production company to privately reach their internal audience of employees and stakeholders. 

It's no secret why using internal podcasting to improve employee engagement is catching on. Compared to other forms of media, podcasts are easy and inexpensive to produce — and their popularity speaks for itself. A whopping one-third of Americans listen to podcasts regularly, according to Buzzsprout.

Podcast listeners crave new and edifying content to listen to. In fact, the second most popular podcast topic is news according to Edison research. Why shouldn’t it be content that serves your company’s mission and builds your company’s culture? Your employees are used to listening to their favorite news and educational podcasts, so they will trust your corporate podcast as a relevant source of information for training and development. Internal podcasting reaches employees in ways that traditional meetings and corporate culture training cannot.

Done correctly, podcasts are a powerful tool to motivate and develop employees, ultimately leading to better team cohesion and talent retention.

So, how do you do it right? Here are five ways to use internal podcasting to engage, develop, and retain employees …

1. Highlight Top Performers and Rising Leaders

We’ve all heard that one of the best ways to improve moral and employee engagement is to recognize achievement. However, the big question is “How?”. You can only have so many pizza parties, and the “Employee of the Month” plaque is getting a little tired.

A better solution — feature a top performer or rising leader on the company’s internal podcast. This is a chance to shower good work with positive attention in a very public way. The podcast producer could:

• Share a big win and highlight the team members responsible.

• Feature promotions and rising leaders within the organization.

• Recognize outstanding performers by name and describe their success.

• Highlight top performers and leaders as subject matter experts where they can share a story or host a Q & A as part of a training exercise. 

Employee recognition encourages excellence and creates a sense of shared purpose. It also improves engagement. Employees love to listen along and celebrate the success of their teammates and aspire to be featured on the company podcast as a reward for their contributions as well.

Business and tech consulting company Slalom puts this practice into practice with a segment of their Slalom On Air podcast called “Wins to Know,” highlighting big wins within the organization to its audience of over 8,000 employees.

2. Reinforce What’s Working in the Company

One of the advantages of podcasting is the opportunity to communicate a message to many people at a time. What better venue than a podcast to disseminate best practices, and training, so everyone in the organization can reinforce what’s already working and keep everyone on the same page?

74% of podcast listeners tune in to learn new things, and 82.4% of podcast fans listen to 7 or more hours of podcasts each week, so you also don’t have to twist yourself into knots distilling a complicated best practice into a 2 minute sound bite — you can use stories and examples to explain and still have confidence that the audience will actually listen.

Employee engagement, development, and retention starts with proper onboarding and training. Many savvy organizations are turning to internal podcasts for training, development, and onboarding procedures. For example:

• Virtualization leaders VM Ware includes podcasts as mandatory training for new onboards, even using their back-end monitoring tools to verify completion of the training requirement.

3. Highlight Positive Culture Developments

Highlighting positive developments within the company doesn’t have to be limited to individual performance or business practices. The company podcast can also highlight examples of great company culture – teams or groups that took initiative to solve a problem or improve morale.

For many companies, an internal podcast became a cornerstone of company culture during the COVID-19 pandemic, when unplanned remote work led to the risk of a breakdown in company culture. As work from home and hybrid jobs remain popular, podcasts are an important tool to reach both on-site and remote employees.

Reinforcing corporate culture  encourages other employees to do the same. They might not have even realized what goes into a healthy company culture or how they can actively contribute. Demonstrating it to them through the podcast is an efficient way to raise the bar for the entire organization.. Here are a few things to keep in mind when using podcasts to reinforce company culture:

• Highlight your organization’s values and be sure your script aligns with your corporate culture
• Invite employees to company events
• Weave in personal stories, hobbies, or humor to improve engagement and inspire deeper connections among employees
• Provide updates on company goals and vision 

4. Unify the Team Behind a Story or Mission

One of the best ways to get an employee to regard a job as more than just a paycheck is to cast their role as service to a broader mission. Employees who buy into the mission don’t just have a job — they have a purpose. A team united around a mission is unstoppable.

How do you make a mission resonate? By telling a story. Storytelling is the oldest tool in human history for captivating an audience and uniting them around a theme. Use part or all of your podcast to tell the company’s story.

You may have heard of the importance of storytelling in business to grab your customers’ attention. Storytelling is also an excellent way to create connections between leaders and employees. Rather than only being told information, workers feel empathy and connection to their supervisors. Crank up the drama and don’t be afraid to make it personal. Employees respect their bosses more when they are vulnerable, have flaws and a compelling story that shares their leadership journey.

When healthcare administration company Signature Performance brought on two new C-level executives, the company used its internal podcast to introduce the new leaders, let them tell their story in their own words, and articulate their vision for their role and contribution within the organization. It was an opportunity to use the power of hearing someone’s voice to build connection and trust.

An internal podcast is easy to start, cost effective to produce, and simple to distribute. Best of all, it’s one of the best ways you can effectively reach and communicate with your company’s most important asset — its talent. Don’t waste the opportunity. Use your internal podcast to build team cohesion, foster positive company culture, and decrease turnover expenses by earning your employees’ commitment and loyalty for the long haul.

Do you have further questions about how internal podcasting can help improve your employee engagement? Contact us today.