Not long ago, I met with an HR executive who was considering using an outside communication firm. She wanted to level up the company’s benefits communication but was feeling disheartened.
“Sharon, our employees don’t read,” she shared (more than once) during our conversation.
After the call, she sent over the company’s current benefits guide, and the problem became very clear. It was 52 pages of wall-to-wall copy.
Like so many HR teams, they were thinking of words as the commodity of communication and were assuming that more words would produce more value. But the reality is that words are cheap and only getting cheaper. They are losing value with every AI prompt that can generate pages and pages of copy in seconds.
In other words, it’s not about words. Attention is the real commodity
More so than ever, the job of HR leaders and communicators is to capture the raw material of attention, hold it for as long as possible and convert it into something useful—awareness, positive sentiment or desired behavior. We need to leverage every tool and technique at our disposal to get employees to focus and engage.
Knowing that attention is the commodity is a great first step. Getting it, keeping it and converting it is where the magic happens.
Twenty years ago, people could focus on a single task for an average of 2.5 minutes before they were distracted. Now, researchers tell us it’s about 40 seconds. At work, we are constantly switching between tasks—reviewing a spreadsheet, asking AI, checking email, joining a meeting or pinging a coworker, sometimes all at the same time. We can no longer expect employees to read a 250-word email, let alone a 52-page guide. Words on words on words doesn’t work.
There are levers you can pull to help
We have landed a list of attention-adapted communication strategies that work—techniques that produce high-impact communication for low-attention windows. I want to share five of these strategies with you now. These are all tactics you can employ to help improve your internal communication outcomes in today’s prompts-to-produce-words world.
1. Carve to the bone.
If you’re creating 32+-page benefits guides and 5+-page leader toolkits, you are actively teaching your employees not to read your communication. We need to start rebuilding trust by delivering communication that is as short as possible. That means cutting your first draft down by 50%-60%. (AI can help with a simple prompt like: “Cut this draft by 50%. Use the fewest words possible while keeping the meaning intact.”)
Here’s an example of just two sentences we recently used to launch a client’s new global intranet: “AcmeHub is our new intranet, and it’s way better than what we have today. Go there for news, tools/apps and to socialize online with colleagues.” Just two years ago, we could never have convinced a client to distill their message down to this extent.
2. Make it literal.
There’s not much I love more than a clever email subject line or headline. (“Take the Meh Out of Medical” is a personal favorite!) But we’ve been A/B testing content more than ever, and it’s clear: Right now, employees prefer literal and prescriptive over cute and clever. They are simply too busy and distracted to process figurative language.
We’re seeing some of our best communication outcomes when we combine these components:
| TELL EMPLOYEES: | Exactly what they’re looking at | What they can expect | What you need them to do |
| FOR EXAMPLE: | Your January Acme E-Newsletter | This email will take you 2 minutes to read. | Read it now, then download the app. |
3. Provide a TLDR.
This one is easy. Provide key takeaways at the very beginning of your communication (like we did for this article), so employees get your main points even if they only give you 20 seconds of attention. AI can help with this, too. Use a prompt like: “Summarize this article into the three most important takeaways. Write them as short bullet points a busy employee could scan in 20 seconds.”
4. Make it visual.
The neuroscience is clear: Our brains process visuals before they process language. Wall-to-wall words won’t capture or hold attention, and your message will be lost. It’s more important than ever to think about your visuals first. How can you use typography, icons, infographics, charts and imagery to make your communication easier to scan, process and remember? Visuals can boost your communication’s emotional intensity, increase likability, aid encoding and more.
5. Plant a seed.
When you do capture attention, convert it into an immediate action that supports a longer-term objective. Here’s a quick example: A typical “Open enrollment is coming” email will share dates and perhaps preview benefit changes for the next calendar year. You may get 60% of employees to skim it and move on.
Here’s a better use of the attention you’ve captured. Add a sentence at the very top of the email that reads: “SAY THIS: Hey Siri/Google, remind me that open enrollment starts on October 15.” Or include a link employees can click to add open enrollment to their work calendar. Instead of capturing attention just to lose it seconds later, convert that attention into an action that supports your active enrollment targets.
It’s time to shift from volume to value
We are living in the future. AI can generate pages and pages of words (even great words) in seconds. But more words won’t get your employees to know what you need them to know, feel how you want them to feel, or do what you need them to do. To get to that place—where HR communication creates clarity, builds trust and inspires action—you need to pull just the right levers.
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