With the remote work revolution come challenges that have not been solved remotely in most organizations that have made the transition.
Among these challenges are:
- remote integration;
- Zoom fatigue and remote meeting overload;
- Up-to-date training in cybersecurity and technology;
- Cultural development by remote staff;
- Asynchronous
The solution to these problems may be in your pocket: podcasting.
How podcasting solves a host of post-pandemic problems
The most popular public podcasts don't seem beneficial for running a remote friendly organization.
Partisan political rants. Remnants of public radio broadcasts. Advice on sex and dating. Movie reviews. true crime.
But the success of these programs reveals that the podcast medium has attributes totally absent from other media used for internal communications. Specifically, podcasts done right are:
- Attractive. Podcasts have exploded in recent years because their informal nature is very attractive to the human mind. Members of a generation criticized for their short attention spans will spend three hours listening to their favorite podcast. However, if you really want employees to learn, pay attention, and engage with content, podcasting has been shown to make that happen. As a bonus, employees can participate with thoughtful input in the "comments" on a podcast episode.
- personality driven. The podcast medium is intimate, making hosts and guests feel like people they know personally. In the age of remote work, work-from-home (WFH) employees can feel alienated from their team leaders, supervisors, colleagues, and others. Serial podcasts create a psychological bond with hosts and guests.
- Comfortable. The problem with "meeting overload," "zoom fatigue," and other meeting complaints is "I'm in the meeting." People feel “in the place”, judged, observed, confronted, ignored, interrupted and trapped by the meetings. Podcasts, on the other hand, are super convenient. Listeners and viewers can be a fly on the wall, "consuming" the conversation and content without self-awareness or feeling powerless. This convenience is enhanced by the fact that podcasts are...
- controlled by the public. Unlike meetings, podcasts can be paused, slowed down, sped up, or increased in volume, and you can repeat or skip entire passages. This creates a satisfying sense of control and makes information consumption much more effective and efficient.
- Searchable and usable as a reference. Unlike meetings, content, ideas, and even decisions can be preserved for posterity in a searchable format.
- Flexible. Remote and hybrid work requires asynchronous communications. Podcasts are the asynchronous medium par excellence. Team members can "consume" them while driving, walking the dog, or doing laundry. Consuming audio while doing something mundane and physical is the only type of multitasking that works.
- creation of the tribe. The best podcasts naturally build audience communities around the topic. The TWiT podcast network (to which I am a frequent contributor and host and employee) has its legendary "TWiT Army" of dedicated fans who band together with their favorite shows. Podcasting can build a community.
How to take advantage of podcasting to solve real problems
The last thing organizations need is an out-of-touch executive striving to create fake podcasts because they've heard that's what kids do these days.
If "podcasting" means distributing existing training videos as podcasts or reading employee handbooks into a microphone, it's not worth it.
Podcasting is a real medium: a craft and an art.
Her powers are subtle, and harnessing her potential requires experience, skill, and intention.
My recommendation is to set up a podcasting organization within your company.
Create audio podcasts on various topics, goals, and projects, allowing employees to comment and interact via text, audio, and video.
Find champions within the company and hire a full-time professional podcaster to create and host interview podcasts with business leaders.
(A variety of companies specialize in helping with in-house podcasts for private companies: companies like Storyboard, Podbean, uStudio, blubrry, whooshkaa, and many more.)
Feed as much informational content as possible into the podcasting medium: onboarding content, cybersecurity training, project updates, best practices, health and safety instructions, mental and physical health awareness and sales.
The list goes on.
Present this material in conversational and personal formats using off-the-cuff conversation, humor, storytelling, and other elements of natural human interaction.
Look for authenticity, not performance.
Use podcasting analytics and other techniques to measure the effectiveness of your podcasts, and use that data to make continuous, iterative improvements.
Podcasting best practices involve creating searchable "show notes" that, at a minimum, specify the people involved and provide links and other content that augments the material featured in each episode.
The Wiki format also works for this purpose.
Invite experts, partners, employees at all levels, and others to participate as podcast guests or hosts.
Private and organization-only podcasts have been around for a few years.
But the future of work should make this idea a serious priority for your organization, as podcast support is uniquely suited to address many of the issues that arise with remote and hybrid work.
It's time to embrace the idea of podcasting.
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