Editors: How to reach an audience that doesn’t care

The majority of employees don’t care about the employee publication. Here’s how to change that

At a dinner party I spoke with a 28-year-old woman about employee publications. This woman, a married mother of a newborn, works at a global financial company which employs nearly 200,000 people. She’s worked there since the age of 22.

I asked what she thought of her company’s internal publication—a newsletter I read every month at Ragan headquarters— and she scoffed at the notion of actually reading her company’s employee newsletter. When I told her I’d read her company’s employee publication on numerous occasions, she looked at me in semi-shock. She wasn’t quite sure what I meant, in fact. After explaining why I was familiar with the publication, she said, “I just got it today, and I threw it away.” “You don’t read it?” I asked. “No,” She answered, again, in semi-shock at the suggestion that she’d actually read the thing. “But why?” “Why would I?” “Because, well …” I stammered. “Because it’s about your company.” She simply shook her head no. I asked what she would like to read in the publication. She had no answer to that question. The mere thought of actually reading the employee publication remained utterly absurd to her. So I shifted the questioning. “What are you reading right now?” I probed. “Books about parenting and babies,” she said. “OK, so what if the publication had tips about parenting and a story you could read to your baby?” I asked. “Well,” she began, “yeah, I suppose I would read it then.” So Ragan’s saying publish stories about parenting and newborns?