This model is structured around five streams:
Formal internal communication, the traditional work of comms teams, sharing leader updates, business changes and new policies.
Collaboration, encompassing all the ways that employees work together in groups to achieve outcomes.
Social and cultural, helping to engage employees with the organization, and with each other.
Intranet, the mainstay of internal communications and content publishing.
Modern work practices, reflecting the changing ways that digital tools can help to get real work done.
For each of the streams, there are three levels of maturity plus an outline of potential benefits to be gained by increasing maturity.
Hands up if youâve ever been in a Zoom or Teams meeting, probably with mute on and camera off, and secretly been messaging somebody else in the meeting about what is being discussed or something else entirely?
I suspect that quite a few of us are guilty of using what are effectively back channels â parallel or sub-conversations that are carried out in the background. As digital meetings have ramped up in 2020, the back channel remains an intriguing facility with both positive and negative connotations.
Formal and Informal Back Channels
Wikipedia defines the back channel as a âreal-time online conversation using networked computers that takes place alongside live spoken remarks.â Broaden network computers to mobile devices and we have a reasonable working definition for the back channel.