Economic downturn – a guide to

effective employee communications

Why is effective employee communication so important

during an economic downturn?

Economic downturns mean uncertainty – and uncertainty is bad for business. Few people thrive when
they are feeling nervous and insecure. Most of us work best when we have a clear picture of where our
organization is heading and what we need to do to contribute.
Regular, clear, engaging internal communications play a big part in reducing uncertainty. During a
downturn it is more important than ever to give staff a clear picture of the future, share information as
soon as it comes to hand and answer staff’s questions and concerns quickly and honestly. The
investment is small compared with the value to your organization of meeting these challenges:

· Maintaining productivity
In October 2008 Workforce Week reported that 48% of staff said that economic uncertainty was causing
them to be less productive. Effective employee communications which show staff where your
organization is heading, how it is dealing with the downturn and how they can contribute will help
counter this.

· Staying profitable and competitive

The economic downturn may cause demand for your organization’s products or services to fall. At the
same time, your costs may be rising. An effective programme of employee communications will help
staff understand the issues involved, suggest solutions and adapt as quickly as possible to any changes
your organization makes to stay profitable and competitive.

· Retaining your best staff

In uncertain times, staff focus on the things that matter to them most: their job security, opportunities to
develop their careers and the threat of increased workloads. If your organization cannot reassure them
on these issues, high performing staff will often look elsewhere.
Replacing staff is expensive. According to the US Department of Labor, it costs at least one-third of an
employee’s annual salary to replace them. With associated costs like lower initial productivity to consider
too, it makes good business sense to do everything you can to retain great staff. Employee
communications which address staff’s fears and paint a positive picture of the future will help you do this.

· Protecting your culture, internal and external brands

Uncertainty and bad news can lower staff morale and damage your organization’s culture, internal and
external brands. For example, they may break down a culture of teamwork, causing departments to
compete with one another for short-term glory. Similarly, they can affect the service staff give your
customers and, in turn, damage your organization’s external reputation. An employee communications
programme which keeps staff informed and engaged will help counter these risks.

Tips for communicating with employees during an economic downturn:

1. Don’t cut employee communications. Read more
2. Be visible, honest and open. Read more
3. Be timely. Read more
4. Manage rumors. Read more
5. Get your managers involved. Read more
6. Provide two-way communications channels. Read more
7. Focus on results and drive performance. Read more
8. Involve your staff to reduce inefficiencies. Read more

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 Economic downturn – a guide to
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Don’t cut employee communications

When budgets are tight and the future looks uncertain, the knee-jerk reaction is often to pull back to
‘basics’. In some organizations, this means cutting costs in areas like employee communications. This
can backfire: effective employee communications are more important than ever in a downturn. As global
professional services firm Towers Perrin advises its clients:

”A key way of managing the challenges in a downturn is maintaining communication.

Don’t leave a vacuum.”1

Make sure your executive team understands that a downturn calls for more employee communication,
not less. Remind them that the Return on Investment (ROI) in effective employee communications can
be huge. As Watson Wyatt’s 2007/2008 communication ROI study showed:

“Effective employee communication is a leading indicator of financial performance…a significant

improvement in communication effectiveness is associated with a 15.7 percent increase in market value”.

Firms that communicate effectively are four times more likely to report high levels of employee
engagement than firms that do not ( Watson Wyatt). And this gives them a big advantage over their
competitors.
So, if you haven’t already, involve your employee communications team in your strategic sessions. Make
sure they understand how the downturn is affecting your organization and what you are doing to counter
these effects. They will be able to recommend what to tell your staff and the best ways to do this.

How the Snap Internal Communications tools can help

Engaging. SnapComms provide a range of engaging tools which some of the world’s leading
companies use to keep their staff informed. Desktop Staff Alerts draw staff’s attention to important or
urgent messages and updates. Interactive Corporate Screensavers make staff aware of important
information in an appealing, visual way. The Snap Interactive Web 2.0 channels let you set up secure
staff blogs, staff forums and interactive helpdesks quickly and easily, with little budget or IT resource.
Measurable. The Snap Content Management System lets you run reports to gauge whether staff are
aware of your messages and reading your materials. In uncertain times, this can be particularly
important: many countries’ employment laws require organizations to tell their staff formally if they plan
to change how they operate.
Track performance. Snap Poll lets you assess how well your employee communications are working,
measure staff’s attitudes and understanding and spot trends. Snap Poll pops up on the computer screens
of chosen staff. It includes built-in reminders to encourage staff to take part.
Targeted. The Snap Content Management system lets you customize messages and send them to
selected groups of staff.

1
The Myth of Downturn Thinking, Towers Perrin, September 2008

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Repetition. The Snap Internal Communications tools give you a wide range of different ways to
communicate and repeat important messages without their becoming ‘wall paper’.
Reduce information overload. The Snap Internal Communications tools are built to bypass email, a
channel which is overused and often fails to get important messages across. Use Snap Mag to eliminate
emails, by collating general news and simple updates in an easy-to-read, one-stop format.

Drive performance. Use Snap Staff Quiz to encourage staff to share their ideas for saving costs or
working more efficiently, and to reinforce important messages and new ways of working.

Build community. Snap-Mag lets staff to tell their own stories in their own words. The Snap
Interactive channels let them take part in online discussions and blogs with their colleagues.

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Be visible, honest and open

"By stepping up and communicating more with their employees, company leaders will enhance their
company's standing, consolidate their position of trust in challenging times
and head off any inaccurate rumors or fears."
Harris Diamond, CEO of Weber Shandwick

No news is good news? For your employees, it’s rarely the case – and certainly not in an economic
downturn. In fact, recent research shows that 71% of people felt that their organization should be
communicating more about the current economic downturn than they are (Weber Shandwick, October
2008).
If you haven’t already, talk to your staff now. Explain how the downturn is affecting your organization
and what you are doing to counter it. You may not have all the answers – and that doesn’t matter.
What does matter is that you take the lead: just because you’re not talking about the downturn with
your staff doesn’t mean they’re not talking about it. They almost certainly are, and, unless you’re giving
them accurate, balanced and (where appropriate) positive information, they’re probably painting a far
worse picture of the situation than they should be.
So tell staff what you know, what you don’t know, and when you will give them more information.
Explain the steps your organization is taking to identify issues and resolve problems. Don’t make
promises you may not be able to keep.
Be as open as you can with information about your organization’s performance. Even if the news is not
good, staff will appreciate your candor. It will help gain their support for actions that may follow.

How the Snap Internal Communications tools can help

Snap RSVP is a meeting request that behaves like a desktop staff alert. This tool is ideal for getting
the best out of events like briefings or CEO road shows. You can include explanatory text and ask staff
to choose the session they want to attend. When they reply, Snap RSVP automatically enters the
appointment in their Outlook calendar. Simple reporting tools in Snap Content Manager let you see
which staff are attending which sessions. This helps you plan logistics (e.g. room sizes and catering) and
lets you close off specific timeslots as rooms fill. Snap RSVP is particularly useful in uncertain times when
it is so important to communicate face-to-face. Use Snap RSVP to make sure that staff come along to
these sessions.
Snap Video Credibility, conviction and passion are best conveyed visually. When a face-to-face
meeting is impossible, use Snap Video to let staff see the commitment and intent in your senior leaders’
eyes (and hear the passion in their voices). Snap Video is a desktop staff alert that delivers video to the
desktops of employees you select. To make sure as many staff as possible get the information, you can
set Snap to prompt staff to watch the video and encourage them to click through for more details.
Snap Blog/Helpdesk These are secure, easy-to-use, interactive Web 2.0 tools. They are built
specifically for employee communications and need little IT resource, training or budget to put in place.
You can customize pre-defined templates and settings in a few simple clicks.
Use these tools to set up a CEO or senior manager blog. These can act as an ongoing ‘town hall
meeting’. The direct, informal nature of blogs appeals to many staff and encourages them to approach
their senior team with questions and comments.

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Be timely
Put new information out quickly. Coordinate your internal and external messages. Staff should hear
company news from the company first: nothing is worse for morale than learning about changes to their
organization from the media or family and friends before they hear about them from their employer.
Sometimes, however much you would like to, you cannot brief staff before you release information
publicly (e.g. to the stock exchange). In these cases, organize a staff briefing to coincide with your
public announcement.
Keep track of when staff last heard from you and schedule in regular updates, even if you do not expect
to have anything ‘new’ to report.

How the Snap Internal Communications tools can help

Pre-schedule messages The Snap Content Management System lets you pre-schedule your messages
so that staff receive information at the same time as you release it externally (e.g. to the stock exchange
or media). Formats like desktop staff alerts and scrolling news feeds get the message across quickly.
Snap News Ticker If you use RSS feeds in your press releases or website, set up a scrolling news
feed. This will give staff the release automatically, as soon as it becomes public. (It is especially
valuable for public companies which must update their stock exchanges before their staff.) And it’s
efficient: automatic RSS feeds mean staff don’t need to take the time to opt in.
Alternatively, if you want to write a special announcement for staff, you can easily create an internal
scrolling news feed and schedule it to appear at an appropriate time.

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Manage rumors
Manage rumors. Rumors thrive on uncertainty and, if this is the only ‘information’ staff receive, they may
accept them as the truth. (“If the rumors weren’t true they would have said so.”)
To manage the rumor mill, put new information out as soon as you can. Let staff know you’ll be
updating them regularly, to encourage them to look out for your updates. Keep your ears open for
rumors doing the rounds and correct or confirm them quickly.
Consider setting up an online discussion forum as a ‘rumor mill’ to let staff post anonymously any rumors
they are hearing. If your senior team is reluctant to sanction a formal rumor mill, remind them that this
won’t stop the rumors circulating. Bringing them out into the open lets you address them quickly.
Remind managers to treat their informal conversations carefully when there are staff around. Overheard
or misheard ‘corridor conversations’ can undermine formal employee communications and create rumors.
Limit the potential damage by using secure electronic channels for ‘manager only’ communications.

“Today, whatever you say inside of a company will end up on a blog. So you have a choice as a
company — you can either be proactive and take the offensive and say, ‘Here’s what’s going on,’ or you
can let someone else write the story for you.”
Rusty Rueff, a former HR executive at PepsiCo

How the Snap Internal Communications tools can help

Snap Interactive makes it easy to set up secure online staff forums that are ‘authenticated’ to
individual employee’s computers. You can specify the level of access, moderation and anonymity for
each forum or group of staff. To make sure staff receive quick replies to their comments and questions,
you can set up automated desktop staff alerts which notify specified moderators that there are new posts
for them to moderate or answer.

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Involve managers
Staff would rather communicate with their immediate manager or supervisor than any other level of
management, especially during uncertain times. These people best understand their personal
circumstances and roles and can tailor information to suit. They are also the people staff feel most
comfortable approaching with questions and feedback. So use your management team. Make sure they
know how and what to communicate – and that they do it.
Most staff work best when they understand the big picture. What will the organization look like if it’s
successful? What do they need to do to help it succeed? How is the downturn affecting the organization
and what does this mean for them? Your line managers and supervisors are well placed to deliver this
information. Give them the general messages and tools they need and encourage them to translate the
information into what it means for their departments and staff.
Measure and manage how well your line managers communicate with their teams. What gets measured
gets done. Use the feedback to help your managers understand what they are doing well and how they
can improve.
Set up a wider network of employee communications champions, supporters and coordinators to back up
your managers and core communications team. These people can help you get your messages across in
an unthreatening, informal way and let you know the issues and questions staff are raising.

How the Snap Internal Communications tools can help

Snap Poll can help you measure how well your managers are communicating. Use a short poll to check
how well each employee understands important messages and use this feedback to show individual
managers what they are doing well and where they can improve.
Snap Blog Get with it and
encourage selected managers to
blog about the current economic
situation and related company
issues. Encourage staff to ask
questions and seek more details.
Snap Blog will help staff realize
that managers are human too and
are doing all they can to minimize
the impact of the downturn on the
organization.
Snap Helpdesk is a secure,
interactive helpdesk. It lets
managers meet online to discuss
strategies, share ideas and plan
and avoids the risk of misheard
‘corridor conversations’. This is
especially useful when managers
work in different locations or time
zones.

Snap’s special targeting and scheduling features let you use a desktop staff alert or scrolling news
feed to update managers before their staff receive the information. This gives them time to plan how
they will react, pull together other useful information (e.g. context) and prepare answers to questions
staff are likely to ask.

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Provide two way communications channels

Encourage two-way communication. Invite employees’ questions, concerns, feedback and suggestions.
Welcome all kinds of feedback including negative comments. Sometimes people simply need to vent
their frustrations during difficult times before they move on emotionally. Acknowledge staff’s emotions
and probe to understand the real issues behind them.
Use face-to-face meetings for sensitive issues and allow plenty of time for managers to hear feedback
and answer questions. Staff may think of more questions after the meeting, so make sure you have
other channels in place (e.g. staff suggestion boxes) to address them at a later time. Staff opinion polls
may be useful too, to gauge how staff are feeling about the downturn and the steps your organization is
taking to manage through it.
Web 2.0 tools are a useful, time-saving way to back up face-to-face meetings. They let staff take part in
genuine conversations to get their views across and questions answered.

How the Snap Internal Communications tools can help

Snap Poll lets you to ask staff for information on specific issues. Use it to encourage staff to give
feedback and suggestions between face-to-face meetings.
Snap Forum lets you run virtual meetings where people can share ideas and opinions and let off steam
if they need to. Snap Forum lets people post ideas anonymously. This is a good way to find out what
staff really think. Snap Forums are secure. You can moderate the conversations and target them to
specific groups, preventing negative feeling from infecting the whole organization.

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Focus on results and drive performance

Focus on the things that matter most: your organization’s goals, progress and performance. While
economic downturns almost inevitably force organizations to cut costs and review productivity, make sure
you balance these messages out with more positive messages too. Highlight genuine good news stories
and focus on future opportunities as well as the current plan.
Play to your strengths. Reinforce the values and ways of working that make your organization
successful. Talk about how they will help the organization manage its way through the downturn and
thrive in the future.
Keep the focus on meeting your performance targets. Don’t let negative views of the economy be an
excuse for failing to perform.

How the Snap Internal Communications tools can help

Snap Mag is an electronic staff magazine that makes it easy for anyone in your organization to
contribute news articles. Use it to highlight local success stories. Even in a recession there will be good
things going on: superb customer service, successful projects, staff achievements outside work.
Interactive Corporate screensavers are a visual, engaging way to get positive messages across.
Use them to paint a compelling picture of the future, profile top performers and show encouraging
progress against targets. Countdown clocks on screensavers are a great way to motivate staff when the
end of the financial year is in sight.
Scrolling News Feeds Keep the focus on what matters. Send a daily news feed to the desktops of
selected staff, with the latest sales, production or performance figures.
Snap Staff Quiz Use simple quizzes to increase staff’s skills and knowledge and keep them motivated
during the downturn. Some humorous options and a prize always go down well.
Snap Help Desk Provide an interactive, online helpdesk to let staff ask questions about any aspect of
the business or their role. Snap’s features let you nominate moderators, build up a knowledge base as
conversations evolve, and tag and search the information you collect.

Click here for end of

year sales tips

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Involve staff to reduce inefficiencies

Involve staff by asking them to suggest ways to reduce costs and work more efficiently. Enlisting their
help sends the message that ‘we’re all in this together’ and staff’s suggestions can dramatically improve
the business.
Share the good ideas and success stories. Printed or online staff magazines and newsletters are an
engaging way to do this. Use them to tell stories: what are departments or individual staff doing to
reduce costs or work more efficiently? Offer rewards or a personal ‘thank you’ for good ideas.

How the Snap Internal Communications tools can help

Snap Staff Poll pushes staff surveys and opinion polls directly to the computer screens of selected
employees. Use this tool to encourage staff to submit ideas to reduce costs or working more effectively.
Your Snap Administrator can specify how often the poll ‘pops up’, to encourage as many people as
possible to take part.
Snap Interactive is a suite of online tools which let you set up secure discussions among chosen
groups of staff. Discussion forums are an excellent way to gather ideas to improve your organization.
Snap Mag is an engaging, easy-to-use format that lets any member of staff contribute articles for an
online staff magazine. Encourage staff to submit short updates about what they or their department are
doing to improve the way they work.

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Snap tools: an overview

Snap’s innovative tools help you communicate with your staff and involve them in your business in
engaging ways that best meet your needs and theirs:
· Right time: the Snap tools let you contact staff and let staff respond at the time that suits them
best (e.g. during logical pauses in their work);
· Right people: the Snap tools let you target different groups of staff in different ways;
· Versatile and easy to use: the Snap tools connect with other tools (e.g. the intranet or
SharePoint), letting staff click through to them quickly and easily.
Snap is a cost-effective, hosted, fully managed solution. In-house versions are also available.

Snap Shots Screensavers – interactive corporate screensavers

When staff are overloaded with information, communicating with them becomes a challenge, especially if
they do not see your messages as urgent or important. Screensavers are a great way to make staff
aware of your main messages without intruding, annoying them or adding to the email burden. Think of
them as engaging, regularly changing, interactive billboards around your business.
Snap Shots work like standard screensavers – with some important advantages. You can:
· change them quickly and easily;
· target them so that different groups receive different content;
· communicate without interaction or solicit a response from staff;
· deliver messages at times when staff are most receptive (e.g. outside busy times of the day or
during natural pauses in their work);
· tempt staff to find out more with click-
through links;
· brighten up office areas. Think of it as
changing billboards around the business;
· let staff upload a personal image as their
own screensaver.

Options for engaging screensavers include:

· sequencing images with text;
· countdown clocks;
· flash animation;
· Html screensavers.
You can also upload PowerPoint slides and
animated sequences.
You can design screensavers internally, typically in less than half an hour. Websites like
www.bigstockphotos.com make it easy to find useful images. You can also develop templates (e.g. in
PowerPoint, Photoshop or similar applications) to advise staff about events, issue invitations and
announce breaking news, and update them on the screensaver in just a couple of minutes.

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Snap Staff Quiz – staff quiz

In thirty days people typically forget 80% of what they
have learnt if it is not reinforced. One answer is to back
up the information you give staff with a short, engaging
quiz. The Snap Staff Quiz tool was developed for this
purpose. It has the bonus that it can be fun for staff and
build morale.
Snap Staff Quiz is quick to set up and easy for people to
answer. It ‘pops up’ on employees’ computers with
options to complete now or defer. You can choose which
staff you send it to, theme quizzes with logos or images
and set automated reminders. All these features encourage staff to take part. Think, too, about offering
a prize or setting up ‘silent quizzes’ that staff can opt into through a hyperlink.
Snap Content Manager is easy to use. It updates data every minute and reports automatically. When
the staff member submits an answer, an optional personal pop-up display shows their individual score
and the correct answers. This is a good way to reinforce information.

Snap Ticker – scrolling news feeds

The growth of the internet and other technologies has brought an explosion in the information available
to us. The challenge is to find the correct, most up-to-date information without wasting time ‘wading
through treacle’. Snap Ticker builds on the power of RSS but is more flexible and easy to customise.
When a scrolling news feed appears along the bottom of their computer screen, staff can choose whether
they read it immediately. If they are ready for an interruption they’ll take a look. If they are deep in
thought, they can ignore it and it won’t interrupt their flow. They can click through on it later at a time
that suits them better.
The most powerful feature of Snap Ticker is that you can write your own feeds and push them out to
selected groups of staff. Use Snap Ticker to update staff quickly. It’s easy to use: simply type in a
headline, add the details of a link (e.g. to an intranet page, website or document on a shared network)
and decide your target groups. This format is ideal for call centres as it lets you keep people informed of
the latest updates without interrupting their flow of work.
Snap Ticker lets you take advantage of external sources of information too. It can push out information
updates from any source that is RSS-enabled (including your own intranet) without requiring staff to opt
in (although this is an option). This helps keep staff informed and be effective in their roles.
Snap Ticker contains other useful features. You can nominate staff from different departments (e.g. the
sales team or engineering department) to manage the Snap Ticker for their own audiences while, as
overall administrator, still seeing all the messages posted. You can set the ticker to continue scrolling
on-screen until the staff member clicks on it. This is a good way to guarantee that staff view important
content.

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Snap Staff Poll – Staff survey tool

Involving staff is one of the best ways to build
engagement. A Snap Staff Poll or Survey lets you do
this. Use it to take a “temperature check”, for initial
research before you launch a more comprehensive (and
time-consuming) survey and to measure how well your
communications are working. Understand what’s hitting
the mark, which areas you need to improve and how
well your managers are communicating (e.g. in
cascading information or building engagement). This
information is useful to convince senior managers of the value to the business of what you are doing.
Snap Staff Poll is different from other surveys: it is easier to use and is pushed directly to the desktop
(not delivered by email). It ‘pops up’ on the employee’s computer with options to complete now or later.
Your Snap Administrator can specify how often the pop-up reappears until staff fill in the survey. You can
also set up ‘silent surveys’ that staff can opt into through a hyperlink.
Snap Staff Poll is quick to set up and works best for short, punchy surveys: up to 10 multi-choice
questions (though other options for answers are available too). A prize incentive and the automated
reminder encourage staff to fill in the poll.
You can set up Snap Staff Poll to allow confidential responses. These can be valuable in times of change
and uncertainty.
Click here for examples of Snap Staff Poll questions.

Snap Staff Alert – desktop staff alerts

Snap’s Staff Alert is a powerful tool to broadcast breaking news (e.g. a security alert or important
update). It is a desktop staff alert that pops up on the targeted employee’s computer screen.
Snap Staff Alert is persistent: you can set it up so that the message stays
on the screen until staff have seen and acted on it. You can report on who
has or has not opened the full message and clicked on the links that it
contains. This is a useful feature if you need to be able to show that you
are complying (e.g. with an internal policy or legal regulation).
Other features include ‘read now’ or ‘read later’ options, and options to
display the full message immediately. You can preset the size, position and
prominence of the desktop alert window for each message.

Snap RSVP – RSVP alert tool

Snap RSVP is a meeting request that behaves like a desktop alert. This tool is ideal for getting the best
out of events like briefing sessions or CEO road shows.
You can include explanatory text and ask employees to select the session they want to attend. When
they reply, Snap RSVP will automatically enter the appointment in their Outlook calendar.
Simple reporting tools in Snap Content Manager let you see which staff are attending which sessions.
This helps you plan logistics (e.g. room sizes and catering) and lets you close off specific timeslots as
rooms fill.
Snap RSVP is particularly useful in times of change or crisis when it is so important to communicate face-
to-face. Use Snap RSVP to make sure that staff come along to these sessions.

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Snap Video – video alert tool

Snap Video is a desktop alert that delivers video to
employees’ desktops. So your CEO can’t be at the
meeting? No problem. Use Snap Video to let staff see the
commitment and intent in your CEO’s eyes and hear the
passion and empathy in his or her voice. Snap Video’s
targeting features mean that you can deliver it to different
employee groups as they need it.

Snap Staff E-Mag – electronic staff magazine with an important difference

Research shows that the average office worker is interrupted 11 times each hour with messages that
have nothing to do with the task they are performing. For example, most emails, particularly those sent
to all staff, contain general information that does not need to be read there and then. Each interruption
has a cost. It takes time for the employee to focus back on their work.
Snap Staff E-Mag lets anyone in the business enter this general information into a one-stop magazine
format which an editor can approve before publishing. This format reduces interruptions and emails,
helps you get information across in an engaging, visual way and, by encouraging staff to become
involved, builds a sense of community and engagement.
Snap Staff E-Mag is not delivered by email but in a way which is more likely to attract staff’s attention:
each time you publish Snap Staff E-Mag, a ticker bar appears and scrolls three times at the bottom of
staff’s computer screens. Staff can click-to-read there and then, or go to their message history to read
the latest issue at a time which suits them better.
Snap Staff E-Mag is designed to be scanned, and ‘read more’ links take people to your intranet or
documents on the network to get more information. Snap can report on these links to show you how
popular a particular article is with staff. This lets you know what type of articles you need to provide to
attract your readers.

Embedded email links let readers reply to authors directly. Depending on the
number of responses, they may decide to take the topic further, calling a
discussion group, summarising comments in the next edition of Snap Staff E-
Mag or setting up a Snap Employee Blog or Forum for more debate.
You can display the magazine as a logon screen. This is a good way to make
sure staff read it. (Most of us like to start our day with something engaging
to read!)
You can target SnapMag to different groups. For example, individual
departments may want their own version of the magazine.
Your company culture and demographic may mean that senior managers are
reluctant to use tools like blogs and forums. They may fear losing control or
fuelling dissent. Under these circumstances, Snap Staff E-Mag can be a great
alternative. It lets you distribute ‘safe discussion’ directly to staff’s computer
screens

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Snap Interactive – staff blogs, forums, helpdesks and Q&A spots

If your company culture and demographics suit using social media tools consider Snap Interactive.
The Snap Interactive tools have the following features. They
are:
· developed specifically for employee communication;
· cost-effective and easy to put in place;
· secure, hosted solutions authenticated to each employee’s
computer (or logon profile);
· easy for busy people to use

They include:
· search tool to help you find important information;
· promotional tools to encourage use;
· reporting tools to let you measure value and ROI.
You do not need to enlist the help of IT to set up these tools. The Snap Interactive tools are
communication tools, designed specifically for the communications team to use and manage easily and
quickly. Setting up a new forum or changing a blog does not become an “IT project”. This lets you try
out new concepts quickly and easily.
The Snap Interactive tools are easy for administrators and end-users to use too. Administrators can set
up new forums or blogs quickly and simply, and specify which employee groups have authoring,
commenting, and reading rights. End users do not need to remember and enter user names and
passwords: automatic user authentication keeps your network secure.
Extensive reporting options make it easy for you to measure value and show ROI. You can report on the
total time individuals spend using the tools, their demographics and the forums they find most useful, as
well as the more traditional traffic statistics.

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