Coronavirus Q&A email inbox soars in popularity among employees

There are many channels communicators are using to reach employees—virtual town halls, CEO videos and the intranet to name a few.

Is an email Q&A inbox on your list? You might want to consider adding it to the mix.

Launched by the internal communications team at Cognizant, a dedicated email inbox for questions about COVID-19 has been extremely popular among the technology firm’s 300,000 employees—200k of which are in India. Analyzing the inbox questions has become essential to its communication strategy.

“This has been really useful,” says Stephanie Dorn, director of global internal communications. “This has really helped drive the next phase of communication that our leadership team needs to focus on.”

For example, after analytics indicated 20% of questions centered around work from home policies, a temporary work from home policy was put in place within a few days.

Analyzing the email inbox

Managed 24/7 by a 12-person team, questions are answered within one business day. The team currently receives more than 100 questions daily.

Analytics of the more than 1,600 questions received since the email box launched on March 10 reveal what’s top of mind to employees.