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Your Captive Audience, But… 

 On one hand, communicating with your staff at a company-wide level is pretty simple: a regular newsletter or post, all-staff emails, and video meetings when required. None of it is rocket science (unless you work for NASA or SpaceX). 

 A lot of it is also virtually ignored by employees, despite them being your captive audience. That’s not necessarily because your workforce doesn’t care, its more a case of those communication methods being relatively low engagement. Just being exposed to something doesn’t guarantee it has a real impact. 

While this 2019 report claims time spent treading each email has increased, it also states the average time spent reading an email is just 13.4 seconds. Which in our always-on, multi-screen lives is very little time, with very little engagement. 

 And its where a podcast can provide a solution. 

Engagement or Engagement? 

Podcasting is an exceptionally good medium for high engagement. News Corp-funded The Growth Distillery recently released The Podcast Playbook, highlighting podcasting’s  

          High listener engagement and deep connection  

As well as figures including 

          92% of podcast listeners say they are engaged while listening, with engagement extending far beyond the episode. 

          73% of podcast listeners feel a genuine connection to the host with podcast hosts seen as the most trustworthy source across all mediums 

A 2022 Rajar (UK) survey reported 

          Of Podcast listeners, [68%] listen to whole episode 

 OK, this may seem obvious because listeners choose to listen to podcasts. They seek them out, subscribe and even interact with hosts on social media. It makes sense they listen for longer, with a high engagement rate.  

 Let’s use the improv world’s Yes, And approach here. Yes, people listen longer and more actively to podcasts. And that tells us something: deliver content your audience cares about with authenticity, and you’ll win their attention. From an organisational perspective, there’s a lot of upside. 

 Listen Actively to Promote Active Listening 

A podcast with well-presented, interesting information relevant to your workforce has the potential to make an impact. This may mean reviewing the information you typically share with your wider team. If you’d like to have a positive effect on organisational culture, find out what matters to your employees. Do some digging and uncover the bigger pictures that link your entire staff.  

Armed with that knowledge you can leverage the high engagement and trust listeners report in podcasts to deliver important information, highlights, wins and a broader cultural understanding.  

Then you can make your podcast available to your staff internally, or even publish it as a touchpoint for stakeholders and consumers like American Airlines has done, or a spotlight on staff as SAHMRI does.  

It allows your workforce – and beyond – to absorb the information you present at a time and in a place that suits them. Which should win you more than a mere 13.4 seconds of their time. 

OK, But How…? 

An organisational podcast doesn’t have to be an intimidating project, and at The Voice Market we’re ready to help it happen! It can be as simple as you providing voice recordings from team members, and selecting one of our voices to be your narrator. 

With a simple script – even dot points – we can voice, mix and produce your podcast ready for you to share.  

If you have questions or want detailed advice you can drop us an email any time, and we’ll get back to you.