Why are they not engaging?

“I’m too busy...” This is a common reply when internal communicators ask their audiences why they are not reading or engaging with their content. ⤵️
 
I don’t believe them.
 
All of us are busy, yet we find the time to work on our important projects, eat dinner, or pick up our kids at school. Why? Because these things matter to us.

“I’m too busy” is a catch-all answer that (almost always) means something else.

So, how can you get a better understanding of what they really mean?
 
💡You can start by using the “five why” technique. It is a simple and powerful method to find the root cause in such situations.
 
Here’s what it looks like…

1️⃣ Why are you not engaging with our content? – I don’t have time (1st why).
2️⃣ Why don’t you have time? – My work is more important (2nd why).
3️⃣ Why is your work more important? Because my manager says so (3rd why).
4️⃣ Why does your manager say that? – Because she told me I shouldn’t be “scrolling on my phone” during work hours (4th why).
5️⃣ Why doesn’t she want you “scrolling on your phone?” Because she thinks it's unproductive (5th why – potential root cause).
 
So, while this is a hypothetical situation, you can see how this process can help.

If you accepted the first answer, you might think there is nothing you can do or look at ways to make the content shorter and faster to read.

If you look at the 5th answer, you see that the issue may be that the corporate content is delivered on mobile phones and/or that the manager perceives corporate content as not useful.  Not linked to time at all!
 
It is important to understand why employees are not engaging with your content so that you don’t solve the wrong problem.

What is your employees' most common reason for not reading your corporate content?  Let me know in the comments below. ⤵️

Need help figuring out why your employees are not engaging? Let’s talk. Send me a message.