Improving Your IT Communications Through Interdepartmental Collaboration Frankie

Improving Your IT Communications Through Interdepartmental Collaboration Frankie Frain, Jenn Stevens, Carlin Corrigan Emerson College

About Emerson ● Boston, MA ● ~ 4500 students ● Focus on Communication and the Arts ● 10 Academic Departments including film, performing arts, and journalism

Quick Poll • Does your institution have a formal internal communication policy? • How many of you participate in drafting or sending communications to campus from your department?

A Most Embarrassing Email

A Most Embarrassing Email Subject: e. Common has been Shut Down We have shot down e. Common at y: 03 this morning and experiencing difficulty. We will bring e. Common back up as soon as possible and send you an email letting you know. Thank you for your patients.

No Communication Strategy Can Mean… • • • Help Desk chaos Rumor mill/social media Only outages and bad things are announced Under and over communication The wrong populations are targeted

Comm Team, Activate! • Meets weekly (agenda dependent) • Meets ad-hoc on Slack

Who is on Comm Team? • Staff of all levels from: • • • Instructional Technology User Services IT Infrastructure Enterprise Systems Library Open to guest visitors!

But what do we actually do? • Draft and review messaging. • Coordinate the messaging volume. • Develop a voice and brand that is both unified, follows styling standards, is accessible, and follows best security standards.

Emerson IT Brand

What else? • • Design posters Open houses New IT employee handbook Guides and info on our support center Social media (blog, Twitter, Instagram) Define communication process during emergencies Allow technical staff to focus on solving issues

Quick Poll • How many of you review campus communications by committee before sending? • If yes, does your committee include nonmanagers?

What we didn’t expect… • A cross-divisional group increased investment in and knowledge of projects across the department. • Developing communication revealed holes in planning. • Prevent bottlenecks - anyone in the department can draft communication – not just management!

What we didn’t expect… (cont. ) • Having team members in different roles helped with perspective. A former student gave insights we wouldn’t have had. • Team members from outside departments help us avoid being too technical. • Allows us to utilize our personal talents! Content generators, designers for style, fonts, graphics, etc.

So many lessons learned… • Avoid developing messages as a group. Assign a single author and workshop as a group. • Keep the most important action in the first line and/or subject line. • Keep emails short and link to blog entries for more info. • If possible, template emergency communication (outage/spam message, etc. ) to save time.

Just a few more… • Need a “driver” to keep the team on task. If the charter is to develop strong communication – other conversations should be moved to a different group or subcommittee. • Team members with verbal/written communication strengths are vital, but SMEs are equally important and the two will learn from one another.

Just a few more… • Workshopping as a group is a skill! It requires trust and practice. It took us years to feel peak confidence with our workshopping process.

Quick Poll • How many of you are considering forming a Communications Team at your institution?

A Most Embarrassing Email Subject: e. Common has been Shut Down We have shot down e. Common at y: 03 this morning and experiencing difficulty. We will bring e. Common back up as soon as possible and send you an email letting you know. Thank you for your patients.

Subject: [IT Alert] Registration Delayed Emerson College IT Good morning, During today’s 7: 00 am first-year undergraduate registration, our system stopped functioning and we were unable to complete registration. We understand the impact to our students and take this very seriously. This is our top priority. We have tentatively rescheduled registration for first-year undergraduates to tomorrow at 7: 00 am. All other registration dates will be delayed by one day. Please see the revised registration schedule for all dates and times: [LINK] As we investigate this issue, e. Common will be unavailable. We expect to restore access to e. Common at 12: 00 pm today. As updates become available, we will continue to email all impacted students. We sincerely apologize and encourage you to email helpdesk@emerson. edu if you have any questions. Thank you, Emerson College IT Online Help Center | @Emerson. IT | 617 -824 -8080 User Services | Infrastructure | Enterprise Systems | Instructional Technology Group

Questions?

Frankie Frain Director of IT Infrastructure francis_frain@emerson. edu Jenn Stevens Director of Instructional Technology Group jennifer_stevens@emerson. edu Carlin Corrigan Director of User Services carlin_corrigan@emerson. edu