Hey Reader,

Each week in this newsletter I answer a question from a reader. This week's question comes from a Senior Internal Comms Manager in the UK who asks:

Ooooh, great question. I really like this because it shows you have ambition and desire to really drive results and outcomes. You're in the right place my friend.

Delivering great campaigns is one thing. But actually driving behaviour change through these campaigns is another. You might pour lots of time and energy into an incredible campaign (think clear messaging, the right channels, superb creative) but if you're not laser focused on what behaviour you want to change and what specific result you want to see afterwards, it might all be a lot of effort for nothing. And it will be very hard to measure.

Deep down, we all know that simply sending information doesn't equal changing behaviour. And yet, that's still how many internal comms campaigns are designed.

This is a topic we tackled together in The Curious Tribe, where we were joined by the brilliant Kateryna Byelova. Kateryna has spent years building internal communications and corporate cultures from scratch for huge organisations with up to 350,000 employees, mostly in heavy industries like metallurgical, oil and gas. She holds a masters degree in communications from Johns Hopkins University where she specifically studied changing behaviour through communication. So she's got both the academic chops and the real-world battle scars to tackle this and her session was aptly titled "Driving behaviour change through internal communication".

Kateryna opened her session with two questions.

1. How many of you have launched an internal comms campaign this year?
2. And how many of you are confident it actually led to behaviour change?

The first one is easy to answer, isn't it? The second can be more challenging.

And that's something many comms pros struggle with.

Kateryna walked us through the five-step framework she uses to design campaigns that actually change what people do. Let's look at some of her expert advice on how to drive behaviour change.

[And of course the full event recording with her framework and the Q&A that followed is available inside The Curious Tribe, exclusive to members only.]

Working in internal comms is awesome. But it can also be really hard.

Maybe you're the only internal communicator in your organisation. Or maybe you're a communications leader who is expected to have all the answers. You're probably facing challenges that other people in your organisation rarely understand.

Finding peers who truly get your work and can help you can be difficult.

The Curious Tribe is my membership community for ambitious internal communicators who want to transform into strategic partners, while connecting with peers and having fun at the same time.

The tribe has 75+ members from all around the world with an NPS score of +81. 90% of members renew for a second year or more.

Are you the next member of The Curious Tribe? 👀

Ok back to business. Let's have a look at some of the steps Kateryna shared.

Step 1: Define the behaviour you actually want

Kateryna's first piece of advice was blunt and direct: most of us skip the most important step. When a stakeholder comes to us and says "we need a campaign about X," we jump straight into creating content and coming up with creative tactics. But her very first question is always this:

• What exactly do we want employees to start doing, stop doing or do differently?

Not "we want employees to understand the new strategy" or "we want to create awareness of XYZ". But deeper than that, focused on employee behaviour, for example "we want employees to start every team meeting with a safety check" or "we want managers to have a career conversation with every direct report this quarter." Specific, observable, measurable behaviour.

It sounds obvious really, but I see in my own work that many comms professionals skip this step and never set a clear behavioural objective. But if you can't define the behaviour, you can't design a campaign to change it and you definitely can't measure whether it worked.

Step 2: Understand what drives or blocks that behaviour

Next, Kateryna introduced us to the Theory of Planned Behaviour, which identifies three factors that shape whether someone will actually do something new.

The first is attitude: does the employee see the personal value in this behaviour? Kateryna was emphatic, she says we spend too much time explaining why the company needs employees to change and not enough time explaining what's in it for the individual.

The second is subjective norm: do employees believe this behaviour is expected and supported by the people around them? For example, if I think my manager doesn't care, or that none of my colleagues are doing it, I'm not going to do it either. Social proof matters enormously here, a psychological tool which is heavily used in marketing and not used enough in internal comms.

The third is perceived control: do employees feel like they can actually do this? Do they have the skills, the time, the resources? If it feels too complicated or overwhelming, people won't even try.

She brought these three factors to life with a story about someone trying to lose weight through a new meal plan. The person could see the value (attitude: positive). Her husband wasn't exactly supportive, maybe he was eating pizza while she ate salad (subjective norm: tricky). But her friends were doing it, she had a doctor who explained everything clearly, and a support group who kept her going. That perceived control (having clear steps and people in her corner) is what made the behaviour stick.

"This is exactly how our employees think too," Kateryna said. "They need to see the value, they need to see that it's supported, and they need to feel like they can actually do it."

There's more, it's inside the Tribe

Kateryna went on to cover how to design your campaign around those three behavioural drivers, how to measure actual behaviour change (not just open rates) and how to reinforce the behaviour until it genuinely sticks. Her 5 step framework is so useful and one tribe member implemented it in her own role almost immediately.

The full session including the Q&A we had at the end is available in The Curious Tribe video library.

If you're not a member yet, this is the kind of session that's waiting for you inside. Come join us.

Btw if you're not following Kateryna on LinkedIn yet then I highly recommend you do. She's got that wonderful combination of serious academic expertise and grounded, practical advice. You can find her here.

Thanks for reading and stay curious,

Joanna

Find me on YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn and check out my book​

Want to work together?

• Join The Curious Tribe. This is my membership community for ambitious, curious communicators who want to achieve more in their roles and have fun at the same time. Membership allows you to work directly with me for 12 months, make deep connections with other communication pros who 'get it' and improve your skills through training and learning. More info here.
• Ready to review your channels and content but don't know where to start? Download my practical Internal Comms Audit Playbook to guide you through a DIY audit - no expensive consultant needed.​ This has ready-to-use templates and checklists to give you a systematic way to do your own audit which you can repeat every single year. Get it here.
• Take a shortcut. I've developed a collection of tried-and-tested templates, checklists and how-to guides for the key processes you'll need in your role as an internal communicator. You can download my Internal Comms Cheat Sheets here.​

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