Alyssa Zeff:
Hey, it’s Alyssa here. I am here again with Alison Davis, CEO of Davis & Company. Welcome back, Alison.

Alison Davis:
 It’s great to be with you, Alyssa, as always.

Alyssa Zeff:
The last time you and I spoke on this podcast we did a special recording on the impact COVID-19 was having on internal communication. I don't think any of us could have predicted where 2020 was going to end up.

Alison Davis:
Yeah. 2020, what’s it? It’s the year that seems like a millennium.

Alyssa Zeff:
Something like that. I’ve actually heard 2020 now used as an adjective, which is awesome.

Alison Davis:
Oh, really?

Alyssa Zeff:
Yeah. That really horrible. That experience was so 2020. So that also reminds me of some really funny memes I saw when all of this kind of first started, it there was talking about like psychics or mediums. And it was like, “Hey, really people? Nobody saw this coming.”

Alison Davis:
Right. As we get into our predictions for 2020, this is an opportunity to see were we as wrong as those mediums and psychics or?

Alyssa Zeff:
That’s right. It’s funny because we did, back in January, come up with some internal communications predictions and trends that we thought would happen in 2020. So I think it would be fun and that’s why we’re here today, to kind of take a look back. We didn’t predict a global pandemic, but I think we got a few things right and maybe a couple things wrong. Why don’t we look back and see how we did?

Alison Davis:
That’s a great idea. And that’ll also give people, I think, a little sense of what to expect for next year, as much as we can predict anything. Right?

Alyssa Zeff:
Absolutely. All right. So why don’t you start? What is one trend that we really got right in our predictions?

Alison Davis:
Well, I think the one that we got 3000% right was the rise of remote work. I mean, we thought it was just going to be a sort of a gradual increase, but the statistics are amazing. 88% of organizations around the world, at least for a time, required people to work remotely. It’s just crazy. I mean, so we went from pretty small percentages everywhere to just enormous number of people working remote.

Alyssa Zeff:
And I really think this is a trend that isn’t going anywhere, even as things have become safer and people are starting to return to the workplace. Many organizations have embraced this fully. I think we heard that the Twitter CEO, for example, had said that no one needs to come back to the office ever if they don't want to. So it really forced forward this trend.

Alison Davis:
It’s absolutely forced forward. And I mean, even pretty conservative clients that we have, organizations, are moving more to at least part-time remote, part-time together for collaboration. Obviously, when it’s safe to do so, but it’s going to continue to be a factor for communication.

Alyssa Zeff:
And I love, it absolutely is, and I love the idea that people are rethinking what it means to be in person, that not just at your desk for the sake of being at your desk, but what the role of face-to-face plays.

Alison Davis:
Absolutely. I think the challenge for some organizations that have people in manufacturing and transportation and distribution, a segment of their employees are still going to the workplace. So then it becomes how do you manage that have, have not, situation where you’re really designing great communication for people working remotely or in an office. This is not a new issue.

Alyssa Zeff:
Yeah. So I thought of another trend that I think we predicted pretty accurately, which was what we called old news. And specifically, we said rather than reporting “news” stories that are not interesting or new for that matter, for employees, focus on information that helps employees be more successful at work.

Alyssa Zeff:
Well, wow. This was unbelievably important in 2020. The situation with the pandemic, with work, with everything going on around the world, was changing minute by minute, day by day. And internal communications functions became responsible for communicating to employees what they needed to know. And it was so essential, but such a great practice in communication.

Alison Davis:
Absolutely. And what we were advising against was old news or stale news or corporate speak news. This bad situation created an opportunity for people to share up-to-date information, developing things, true news. And they did it without having to go through multiple layers of approvals or there wasn’t a delay, it had to be immediate. And so I think the trick going forward is has any communicator continued to have that rapid response or rapid sharing of information without getting mired in bureaucracy?

Alyssa Zeff:
Another beautiful thing that happened, we always talk about being employee centric and really focus on what employees need to know. In this year, with so many things that were happening and so many things that were happening so fast that became the filter that communicators used. And it was, what do we need to focus on right now? What’s the most important thing right now? And I hope that’s a filter stays because it’s so valuable in helping employees to succeed.

Alison Davis:
Yes. And I think that one way that I like to think about it is what is the one thing that employees need to know or do about whatever this topic is. So the old way of doing things is let’s tell them the history of whatever and the context and the background, and then really deliver what the key point. And I love the fact that during this year, people have really focused on here’s what you need to know. Here’s the thing.

Alyssa Zeff:
Right. Absolutely. All right. So I know we’re perfect, but maybe we missed the boat a little bit on something. What do you think was one trend that maybe we weren’t so right on?

Alison Davis:
Well, I think there was one trend we were pretty spectacularly wrong on and that, I mean, just really got it wrong. I mean, just going to own that. And that’s we had predicted the resurgence of print. And the reason we predicted that was we said, “Hey, in a world where everything is electronic, print actually does break through the clutter.” I still believe that is possible. But what actually happened is print just became impossible, logistically, in so many ways, even things like posters became very difficult to put up in break rooms or cafeterias or whatever it was. So print, we got pretty wrong.

Alyssa Zeff:
Yes, I think you’re right and I think that the nature of this year, print became logistically impossible. However, I do think that print was extremely valuable for office-based, workplace-based communication. So posters about social distancing, floor markers, things like that. Print was essential in those environments.

Alison Davis:
And I'm glad you mentioned floor markers because I think one of the interesting things that we did for a client or two was we thought about what I would call sort of environmental. I don’t mean environmental like global warming. I mean the workplace experience, because how many people can be in a conference room? What is the path you take? Like paths in a supermarket. So It’s not just a poster, it’s thinking about what the experience is and how you can use printed pieces in some way, which could end up being window clings, to help people deal with the workplace.

Alyssa Zeff:
I will own something else. And believe me, there’s a lot of recognition of the irony right now of me owning this on a podcast of something that we got wrong, which was podcasts. And the numbers on podcasts were climbing so astronomically year upon year, month upon month, in terms of downloads and listens. But then the pandemic kind of brought that to a halt, as commutes were cut back and finding that work-life balance, podcast numbers dropped dramatically in March-April. They started to climb again and they are starting to climb again. So it's not something that I would abandon, but if I’m looking back on 2020, it wasn’t something that organizations especially spent a lot of time investing in building new ones because the investment wasn’t there and the priorities shifted.

Alison Davis:
Yeah. Actually, I’ve had conversations lately with a couple of organizations that want to start podcasts now.

Alyssa Zeff:
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that we kind of get a reset on that one because now that there’s a handle on the employee workforce and demographics and where people are, they understand where they make the most sense. So I look forward to seeing what organizations do with podcasts moving forward, but acknowledge that it wasn’t necessarily a 2020 trend that took off as much as we thought it would.

Alison Davis:
No, other things really kind of came to the fore and podcasts, they just settled down for a while, but they may come back again.

Alyssa Zeff:
Yeah, for sure.

Alyssa Zeff:
All right. Let’s go back to some where we got them right. Maybe we just do a little quick fire, little back and forth on what we got right. I’ll start. One was the rise of activism. Hello, 2020. I think we over predicted, under predicted how active people would be, employees and just around in general.

Alison Davis:
It’s incredible. It’s a thing. I’ll do one.

Alyssa Zeff:
Okay.

Alison Davis:
Quest for community. I mean, I’ve been having so many conversations with communicators about how people, and particularly if some employees are working remotely, are looking for those connections with their colleagues that would come naturally if we were working in one place, but are much more difficult to achieve now.

Alyssa Zeff:
Yeah, for sure. I’ve got another one. We called it manager’s unbound, really, just on the role that managers were going to play in communication. Wow. That was so unbelievably important this year, as teams looked for information. The first place they were going was their managers to understand what they were supposed to do, where they were supposed to do it. Managers needed to define expectations differently this year. It really became, it fell heavily on managers to communicate to employees what was going on and what needed to happen next.

Alison Davis:
It’s a big one. I think everybody’s still struggling with this one. Managers are, communicators are struggling with how to help managers. I mean, I think managers understood this year the importance of communication, but there’s lots of challenges.

Alyssa Zeff:
Definitely. You have one more?

Alison Davis:
I think so. Something we call “Zombie video” and what we meant by that was kind of old fashioned, very produced, very leader oriented, leaders sort of making proclamations to their organizations.

Alyssa Zeff:
Right. We predicted that that would end, right?

Alison Davis:
We predicted it would end and it has. I’ve even had an interesting conversation with communicators who said, “Our leaders didn’t really want to do a selfie video. It’s not what they’re comfortable with, but we convinced them that they should.”  And employees really responded.

Alyssa Zeff:
Yes.

Alison Davis:
I think there’s a new way of thinking about video, which is terrific. Much more authentic, much more, just real.

Alyssa Zeff:
Yeah. I mean, I think the technology, we used to give all these detailed tips on if you were going to record using your iPad or your iPhone or something like that, to try and make it look as produced as possible and where we’ve gone, you used the word authentic and I love that, is to this it’s okay if you’re recording a video and your child walks behind you and it’s okay if your cat walks across your keyboard. It’s this level of authenticity, it’s genuine, and employees are really appreciating it. And it makes it a lot simpler from a production value as well.

Alison Davis:
Yeah. It’s a big change. It’s a great change.

Alyssa Zeff:
Alison, this trip down memory lane was a lot of fun, but as I think we’ve hinted at, and I think you know what this means, we’re going to have to start thinking about what will happen in 2021.

Alison Davis:
Absolutely.

Alyssa Zeff:
I think we can see how accurate we can be next year as well.

Alison Davis:
Maybe this is, maybe we have a future. We can be trendy communicators.

Alyssa Zeff:
Yes. We’re like employee communication mediums.

Alison Davis:
I might not go that far.

Alyssa Zeff:
So for those of you who listen to us regularly, you know that now we would play a game. But instead of that, I think for this special edition of the podcast, and since we’re so close to the holiday season, Alison, I thought it would be nice. It was a crazy year. It was a very difficult year, but it wasn’t all bad. I thought maybe we could share a couple of things that we were really grateful for, personally or professionally, in 2020.

Alison Davis:
Yeah.

Alyssa Zeff:
You want to start?

Alison Davis:
Yeah, I’ll start. I’ll start with a professional one. I am grateful for the way leaders in organizations really stepped up and understood that they had a communication role that was not about only about sharing information. They needed to be present, inspiring, reassuring. I mean, I saw so many organizations, leaders did this and it was amazing and it was needed, and I’m very grateful for that.

Alyssa Zeff:
I will also start with a professional one. I’m grateful for the innovation I saw in organizations that we’re working with. In a time where it felt like, Oh my God, how are we going to deal with this? And just the creativity to reach employees and engage employees and motivate employees really shined in a huge way and I’m really grateful for it.

Alison Davis:
Yep. Now I want to do a personal one. I’m really grateful for, I think this year really helped me think about how important relationships are and who really matters to me in my life and I can’t necessarily get together with those people in person. I can’t get on a plane and go visit them. But the idea that we need to work at this relationship, because it’s really important.

Alyssa Zeff:
And I’ll build on that because mine was very, very similar. I’m grateful for those who did that, right? The people who, and I did that for and the people who did that for me, who rolled up their sleeves and made the extra effort to find connection and find ways to connect with each other this year, because it meant a lot.

Alyssa Zeff:
So Alison, thank you as always for being here. It’s always fun to chat with you. I look forward to seeing what 2021 will bring and working on those trends with you. And thanks again.

Alison Davis:
You’re welcome. And thank you, Alyssa.

Alyssa Zeff:
Thanks for joining us on Employee Buzz, where we laugh and learn.

Alyssa Zeff:
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