Internal company podcasts are fast becoming a popular communication medium for businesses to reach and communicate with employees. The reason is simple; businesses are becoming aware of the challenge of keeping their employees informed and connected.
By exploring how to start an internal company podcast, they are approaching communication problems from a different angle and perspective.
Why bore your employees with email when you can engage them through an internal company podcast. Internal company podcast shows a 60% employee engagement compared to other forms of internal communications.
As you’ll realize at the end of this piece, you’ll have an understanding and the functioning of an internal company podcast. This piece aims to guide companies on how to start an internal company podcast and leverage its numerous benefits.
What is an Internal Company Podcast?
Simply put, an internal podcast is a podcast available to only your employees or team members. An internal podcast is produced for distribution in-house. There’s rarely a difference between internal podcasts and the regular ones, except that you have to choose who has access on an invite-only basis.
An internal company podcast is “private, restricted, and solely for communication within the workforce”. Think of it as a corporate broadcast, relied upon to communicate the organizational goals and objectives.
No need to sugarcoat things; many of your employees ignore emails and do not have time to read the age-long company bulletin, but they will listen to your internal podcast if you have one. It’s not just companies switching to internal podcasts; even schools and other congregations are making a move.
How Does an Internal Company Podcast Work?
You will need a private RSS feed to run an internal company podcast. While they share similarities with regular podcasts, you cannot search for these podcasts on podcast directories.
Being invite-only, here’s how an internal company podcast works;
- Your employees will sign up using their company-assigned email address.
- Access is granted through the unique RSS feed link.
- The audience ate automatically subscribed to receive new episodes of the internal podcast.
- The target audience cannot share access to the internal podcast without your permission.
- The podcast can be downloaded for offline listening on their preferred listening app.
Why You Should Consider Starting an Internal Company Podcast
According to Forbes, there are several advantages to starting an internal podcast; the ability to incorporate diverse learning methods, unifying remote workers across the organization, and how it helps build a perception of a forward-thinking company.
While there are numerous reasons why you should consider starting an internal podcast, here’s why we think you should start one;
1. Building Company Culture
An internal podcast can help you develop your company culture and philosophy beyond being a buzzword. Your internal podcast could be a medium to entertain everyone on the team. You can deploy an internal podcast to share a glimpse of what happens daily across the organization.
You can use your internal podcast as a means for the entire organization to get to others from across the globe.
2. Onboarding and Training New Employees
As part of the onboarding process, you can record a couple of episodes that showcase how the business started from scratch. This will also include the mission and values of the founders of the company.
You can also record a few podcast episodes as part of your company’s generic onboarding process. These internal podcast episodes can be used and re-used over time.
3. Empowering Teams to Share Ongoing Projects and Features
Assuming that your COO is reworking the processes in the company, a podcast can be deployed to inform the rest of the employees what is changing and the reason for the change. In this instance, the information will be relayed during the week’s internal podcast episode.
It could also be when your UI/UX teams deal with an interface bug lingering for weeks. You can ask them to share how they dealt with the problem to further inspire everyone in the company.
4. Unifying the Workforce
An internal company podcast can be a rallying point for the entire workforce. This is best for companies with physical offices in numerous companies and a large team of remote workers.
If you notice that your Slack messages and emails are not sufficient, an internal podcast could be what you need.
Examples of Companies Using Internal Podcasting
If you are looking to start an internal podcast, here are some blue-chip companies with an existing internal podcast;
Deloitte – The Green Room Podcast
In 30 minutes, Deloitte utilize The Green Room Podcastin reaching their employees globally. The podcast relies on experts to provide answers on some of the tricky questions that might hinder the productivity of employees.
American Airlines – Tell Me Why Podcast
With about 6,700 daily flights serving about 50 countries, American Airlines is no doubt one of the biggest carrier in the United States. For a carrier this big, there’s a lot of decisions behind the scene.
The Tell Me Why Podcast reveals all the decisions taken and the reasons behind those decisions. What started as an experiment has become a vital internal communication channel for over 130,000 employees.
Netflix – We are Netflix
We are Netflix is hosted by Lyle Troxell, a senior software engineer. It’s about Netflix employees talking about life and working at the movie streaming company.
The internal podcast has gone public now, and it’s been a level of success for the company. In an interview with LinkedIn Talent, Amir Moini averred that listening to the podcast supersedes reading the Netflix culture memo.
Tata Steel – Steelcast
There’s no better way to learn about the steel industry than what is offered by Tata’s communication team via Steelcast. The podcast team speaks to all levels of employees in the podcast show.
Steelcast reveals happenings in the UK steel industry, bringing everyone on the same page. Through the podcast episodes, they can tell stories from about 26 countries where Tata Steel operates.
Others include;
- East Riding Council – I Head It Through the Grapevine Podcast
- GuideSpark – Engage Podcast
- TD Stories – The Power of Wow Podcast
How To Launch an Internal Company Podcast
There’s no difference between starting an internal company podcast and any podcast or show. Rather than starting a podcast for the general public, the content is directed solely to anyone in your workforce. Let’s explore how to start an internal company podcast;
1. Let it Be Backed by a Plan and Goals
As a company, you can only start an internal podcast if you have created an action plan. It would help if you had a clear-cut goal on what you intend to achieve. This could be in line with your organizational goals.
The podcast’s goal should align with one of the benefits of internal company podcasts. You can channel your internal podcast towards attracting and retaining top talents, improving remote communication with your workforce, streamlining the recruitment onboarding process, and many more.
Upon setting the goal, what next is the measurement of the goal. More importantly, identifying the best internal podcast content that will help in the achievement of the goal.
2. How and Where Will Your Internal Podcast Be Published?
This is an important question to answer when you are about to launch an internal podcast show. Even though you will add a podcast section to your company’s website, you will still need a podcast hosting platform.
From the podcast hosting platform, your internal podcast will be distributed to your workforce across the podcast listening apps they prefer.
3. Put Together a Podcast Production Team
The team can be part of your existing marketing teams, or you create a podcast production team from scratch. To run an internal podcast show effectively, you must build a team around guest outreach, research, recording and editing, publication and marketing.
The job of your podcast production team is to ensure that no aspect of the internal podcast is neglected. You will need a podcast show host, an audio engineer, a graphics designer, an outreach manager, and a script writer.
4. Identify the Approval Process
Regardless of the goal of your internal podcast, it is still a communication tool, and it is pertinent that an approval process is ironed out. Every podcast episode needs to go through the approval process to ensure that the host is speaking in line with the brand tone.
It is also important that the internal podcast is consistent with the brand image. Therefore, gatekeepers might be needed to ensure that the internal podcast serves its goal without jeopardizing the overall organizational goal.
5. Invest in the Right Podcasting Equipment and Tools
Don’t let anyone tell you that you’ll need to cough out thousands of dollars to get the best equipment to start a podcast. With basic tools, you can record decent podcast episodes. You will need a podcast microphone, pop filter, headphones, mic stand, recording and editing software, and a mixer.
Know that the quality of your internal podcast is a reflection of your equipment and software. If you can acquire excellent ones, this will translate to a fantastic internal podcast.
6. Always Promote Your Internal Podcast
Who will you be promoting your internal company podcast to? The entirety of the workforce. Right from your first episode, you need to bring the show to the notice of everyone. Use the existing internal communication channels to promote the podcast.
Send an email to the entire workforce. When a new episode is released, remind everyone via a company-wide Slack message. Leverage your company’s social media outlets, and mandate everyone to subscribe via a memo or bulletins.
What You Need to Start an Internal Company Podcast
To kick start your internal podcast, you’ll need to have four things in place;
- Podcast recording equipment
- Podcast recording software
- Audio editing tools
- And a podcast hosting platform.
With these four in place, you are ready to start producing amazing internal podcast content for your workforce.
How To Start an Internal Company Podcast With Disctopia
Your podcast hosting platform has a major role in the success and quality of your internal podcast. As a podcast hosting platform, we can provide a home for your internal company podcasts. We’ll allow you to decide how your audio will be stored and distributed to your audience.
Disctopia operates with your content’s security in mind and provides visibility to your analytics through our True Play dashboard. That means you can monitor your internal podcast’s performance and employee engagement.
We’ve covered how to start a podcast in several articles on Disctopia Insight. Once you publish the first episode of your internal podcast, you will also set limitations on who can access the content. In less than 120 seconds, you can get started and set up an internal podcast on Disctopia.
Final Thoughts
We emphasize that companies need to stop competing for their employees’ attention. There are many distractions out there stemming from project management tools like Slack, Asana, and even social media. However, podcasts are intimate mediums through which you can create an organic and friendly relationship with your employees.
At Disctopia, we strongly believe that internal company podcasting will experience increased adoption globally over the next few years. While we’ve seen companies like Netflix, Spotify, American Airlines and a few others adopting it, more will still join the fold.
