Once upon a time…..and even today – storytelling works very well for employer brands

This is not a fairy tale. It’s a real-world insight into why corporate storytelling adds impact to internal communications.

In fact, communicators often share a story about how a well-known CEO of a reputed company started all his internal meetings with a story. Yes, he was a great storyteller, but more importantly, the CEO knew that storytelling was an important tool for executing his company’s overall internal communications strategy, and that internal messaging can help employees feel more connected, engaged and aligned with the overall business strategy.

In today’s age of information overload, it is imperative that all of us learn the art of telling an interesting and compelling story to make a deeper connect. Just look at how Instagram Stories has emerged as one of the most popular tools on Instagram with over 500 million people using it every day.

As internal communicators, by incorporating storytelling into your internal communications strategy you will find that your employees are not only grasping your content in an easy--to-digest way, but that by making an emotional connect, they are also relating to it more.

As corporate storytellers, The Information Company’s (TIC) experience shows that once you have started incorporating storytelling into your narratives, you will reap the following benefits:

• Connected workplace with more engaged employees
• Greater alignment with the organisation’s goals
• Increased effectiveness of change management programmes
• Improvement in your employer brand

The structure for storytelling

So how can you use storytelling to improve your overall internal communications strategy? Just follow these simple rules:

1. Create a clear structure
2. Tell a story with a purpose
3. Ensure the audience can relate to the theme, idea or message
4. Show action in your story
5. Feature likeable characters
6. Appeal to the audience’s emotions
7. Use your own experiences to make a stronger connect
8. Add an element of surprise
9. Don’t forget to weave in the necessary information in the story, and
10. Highlight challenges and how to overcome them

Plan the storytelling

Some other important points internal communicators would do well to incorporate into the IC strategy:

• Plan your stories in advance
• Make them relevant to your target audience
• Use the right tools and channels
• Experiment with different content types
• Use interesting visuals
• And yes, use generative AI to create/ edit/ enhance your stories faster

Storytelling is a communications tool whose popularity is growing in a highly inter-connected world, as it is an effective way for people to connect with others.

The stories behind the research

You don’t have to believe everything you read. But the fact is that several research studies have proved the effectiveness of storytelling in internal communications.

Here are a few interesting human behaviour insights:

• Employees respond better: A Harvard Business Review article demonstrates that human beings are naturally wired to respond better to storytelling than most other forms of content. This is because a narrative promotes the production of oxytocin in our brain. Oxytocin is a hormone associated with trust. According to the report, character-driven narratives consistently increase oxytocin synthesis.
• Stories improve recall: A Stanford University study on the power of storytelling found that people often struggle to remember and understand statistics when they’re presented as raw data. However, when placed in the context of a narrative or story, people are 22 times more likely to remember the data. Using stories to share statistics helps companies to connect with customers on both an intellectual and emotional level, said the study.
• A few years ago, researchers Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn showcased the value of storytelling by listing insignificant objects on eBay with a heartfelt, well-written, and purposeful short story about the item in the description section. The items, which were originally purchased at a garage sale for no more than $1.50 apiece, resold for nearly $8,000–highlighting how a smart storytelling strategy can contribute to raising the perceived value of an item and generating massive returns on investment.
• Storytelling is a competitive advantage. There are tens of millions of content pieces being created, and even more being shared, every day. Consumers are oversaturated with information. As a business, it’s all too easy to blend into the noise. A business may genuinely have a better product or service than a competitor, but at the end of the day, decision-making is much more emotional than it is logical. The ability to tell a good story is essential and can make or break how well a business differentiates itself in the market as well as makes a profit. Just like individuals can become more influential and fast-track professionally by having a strong personal brand, so can a business.

It’s often said that you can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been. Well, storytelling helps us understand who we are and where we’re going. It enables us to create meaning in our lives and make sense of the world around us.

So go out there, tell stories—and be a part of something bigger than yourself!