Special thanks to Kate Cawood, Head of Communications at Travelex, for sharing a few secrets for good internal communication.

We all know how it feels. Someone slides over to your desk (pre-Covid) or into your inbox (post-Covid), and says can you send out this comms asap – no matter what time of the day or day of the week it is. For them, it’s urgent and critical and more often than not last minute. For you, it’s one of many all-colleague email requests stacking up in your in-tray (actually, do in-trays still exist?).

For Internal Comms teams – especially teams of one – this is all-too-familiar.

So what’s the answer? How can you create a drumbeat of consistent communications that doesn’t mean creating a content plan from hell or having to decide whether the email from the HR email supersedes the one from IT?

Recently at one of our IC Leaders’ Breakfast Events, Kate Cawood, Head of Communications at the international foreign exchange business, Travelex, shared with us her ‘10 and 2 rule’.

Global and leadership comms only go out at 10am and 2pm, and only from Monday to Thursday. It’s a comms black-out on a Friday.

Sounds sensible. But why?

Kate started at Travelex some five years ago. Then it was a very different world – pre-Covid of course, and the travel industry was literally flying.

“When I started, as the Internal Comms Manager, it was a very different world, in more ways than one. People would literally come over, sit on my desk and talk about the comms they wanted to send out. Such was the nature of the business and of the time, that we were reacting a lot and always trying to keep up with requests. Of course, all for the right reasons.”

Then Covid came along. Understandably, as flights were grounded and travel stopped, the business went into survival mode – and so too did Comms. Following a global restructure, the focus was on keeping people informed on the stuff that really mattered, in what was a tense and unnerving time, and people had gone through so much – personally and professionally.

“We realised in a post-Covid world, we had a chance to redefine how we did things. And here I was – one person trying to do external and internal comms for the entire global organisation. I couldn’t do everything even if I wanted to and at that time I had to ensure some consistency and that important messages were cutting through.”  

So, three years ago, Kate created the ’10 and 2 rule’ – to be able to manage comms traffic (as one person), grow consistency, ensure any global or leadership communication is given the care and respect it deserves, and ultimately, comms is read and acted upon.

“Choosing times when you know colleagues are going to be most engaged – at 10am colleagues have likely cleared their inbox and settled into their day, 2pm – they are looking for a small win or distraction before they hit their afternoon working block. A big thing for us about the ‘10 and 2 rule’ is about respecting the comms itself and respecting colleagues’ time – to give them a chance to read it and digest it. If there is no cap on the number of emails being sent and no space between them, you are bombarding colleagues and not landing messages. If comms is rushed out at 4pm, who’s going to read it, has it had time to be crafted and reflected on, and will colleagues act on it at that time?”

And Friday.  No emails whatsoever?

“Again, no comms on a Friday is a way for us to show respect for our people and their time. If there is something really important and urgent, like a financial announcement, then we will send out comms. But most things can wait. I’m a firm believer that ‘everyone should sleep on their comms’. It only helps to hone and shape better communication.”

Today, if comms does go out on a Friday, it’s very much unexpected.  So it has to be important. Overall, feedback to the approach has been the clearest indicator that it is working.

“Having a structured (time bound) approach to central comms helps the recipients focus knowing these will be received at the specific times only. Having said that, we also know if the comms is urgent it can be received at any time which is how it should be.”

“The general rule of 10am/2pm means we do not receive comms in close succession and therefore allows us to micro-digest these central messages. This in-turn allows us time to filter the messages down to team members who may not be on the distribution and creates more harmony in overall ways of working.”

And, as Kate says, 10 and 2 is as flexible as it is structured…

“Even if a request comes in at 4pm for some urgent comms, it’s actually not long until the next slot at 10am the next day. We intentionally don’t fill all the slots so we know we can get the comms out in good time, the next day, and it gives us all time to craft it and go through approvals.”

So, how can you do something like this for your own organisation?

Here are Kate’s tips.

1. Work out what works for your organisation.

“We picked 10 and 2, because we felt these were times in the day where comms would land well. In an ideal world we would deliver the comms to teams at their local 10 and 2, but without a scheduling tool we’ve gone for the location where the most colleagues are based.  If you’re a global business like ours, with teams in very different time zones, scheduling comms to go out at relevant times would be optimal.

2. Educate leaders and colleagues on why you’re doing this.

“Explain the psychology behind it – the respect for the comms, the respect for colleagues, the focus on landing well. Picking the times of day when you know people will be most engaged to give you the best chance of landing the message.  No-one wants their comms not to be read!”

3. If in doubt, do a trial – and prove your case with analytics and feedback.

“So many people here expect the comms to come out at 10 and 2, and know why that’s important.”