Less Chatter, More Matter: The Communications Podcast

#69 5 communications things you need to do to prepare for EOFY

• Season 1 • Episode 69

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We're getting close to the end of financial year here in Australia, and with it comes the age-old debacle: how do we communicate our results to varying audiences?

Well, this is where communications professionals come in, and it's also why this time of year isn't just stressful for the finance and investor relations folks. This time of year can include a variety of comms requirements, from the communication of results to shareholders and investors, through to employees and news - it's all about how you do it.

All of which we've got covered in this week's episode of the Less Chatter, More Matter podcast. So, get stuck into it and find out what our five tips are to preparing your comms for EOFY.

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Mel:

Hi, and welcome to Less Chatter, More Matter, a podcast about all things communication without the waffle. I'm your host, Mel Loy and in this show, I will give you short, punchy, practical communication tips and insights You can start using in your communication practices right away. I'm a former corporate communication executive who happily took a redundancy, started my own business and never looked back. These days I use my 20 plus years of experience to help guide organisations of all shapes and sizes in how to communicate more effectively. I'm wife to Michael, cat mum to Cookie, aunty to 12 nieces and nephews, a yoga teacher, and a group fitness fanatic. I promise these episodes will always be short, sharp, and helpful, so let's get amongst it. Hi there, listener, and welcome to the show. Thank you for tuning in for another week, or if it's your first time here, a big welcome to you too. As we are rapidly approaching the end of financial year here in Australia, things are certainly getting very busy. I've had a lot of inquiries about training, which tells me there's some of you out there trying to make use of what's left of your L and D budget. Also, we're starting to field inquiries about support for organisations annual reports, and I honestly can't believe we are here for another year again. So it is about this time of year that companies start preparing not just the annual report, but also annual general meetings of shareholders for those public companies, and the release of full year results, either to the stock exchange or to your stakeholders. Now, obviously the investor relations and finance folks are very heavily involved in this, probably up to their eyeballs in spreadsheets and auditor's reports right now. So my commiserations are with you, but we comms folk also have a big role to play in supporting the launch of these materials. So today I'm going to share five things comms pros need to do to support businesses in preparing their end of year results and annual reports. Now, also, you may want to go back to episode 16, way, way back in the archives, where I had a bit of a rant about how we really need to do better than the traditional annual report. And in that episode, I shared a bunch of alternative options. So maybe worth you going to check that out. Okay. Let's get into today's episode though. And the five tips, and the first one is Don't just think about shareholder sentiment. Also think about public sentiment. If you are a publicly listed company, you may notice there's often a tendency for senior leaders to, and the board, to focus on what shareholders are going to think about the response. And you know, there's good reasons for that. Shareholder confidence is a big contributor to how viable a business is. And if people see shareholder confidence dropping, So does your share price, and that's bad for business. Also, the board is obviously accountable to shareholders and the annual results are usually a precursor to the AGM where shareholders vote on things like board appointments and remuneration. So yes, we want to keep shareholders happy, especially when it comes to talking about the dividends. However, it is a balancing act between what's important to shareholders and what's important to Joe public. And what I mean by that is, your messaging for shareholders obviously wants to focus on the great results because if they are great that's good for shareholders. Shareholders want to know the business has turned a great profit because that means they get paid great dividends. And for the retirees or the mum and dad investors out there, they often rely on those profits to make a living, see them through retirement. But shouting from the rooftops about how much profit your business has made in the middle of a cost of living crisis is obviously not going to go down too well with the general public or with activist minded political parties. And if public sentiment towards your company is on the downward trend, that leads to fewer sales, fewer word of mouth referrals, and basically a poorer bottom line. So how do you balance that messaging? Well, firstly, address the elephant in the room. Don't try and avoid the fact that you've made a profit in this cost of living crisis environment. Talk genuinely about cost of living pressures and how you are genuinely aware of its impacts on your customers, on your people, even on some of your shareholders. Secondly, you can still speak positively about your results, but focus on what those results will mean for your shareholders. This is where reframing messaging can be really useful. So, for example, if you do have data on the shareholder makeup of your business, maybe you could say something like, you know, for the 75 percent of our shareholders who are private investors, many of whom are retirees, we know this dividend payment will go a long way in this environment. So you can see there, it's really about, well, what does this mean for people? And there is definitely a, uh, perception that shareholders have a lot of money, that they're big corporations and some of them are, but many of them are those mum and dad investors. So you can really hone the point there. Thirdly, if your business is engaging in corporate social responsibility programs that do help address the cost of living, talk about them. But again, you have to be genuine in your messaging and have really good proof points about the difference those programs are making. Okay, the second thing is think about employee sentiment. External sentiment is important, but one thing I've noticed is companies often don't focus on the internal sentiment and remember your employees can be your biggest advocates or your biggest detractors with publicly listed companies. I know you have to be careful with your timelines. I get that the market has to know first before anyone else does, and there's very good legal reasons for that. Which means you have to be really quick off the mark to then communicate with your people get them up to speed really quickly. As soon as the results have been published at the stock exchange. But in private companies, you do have more leeway, and you can spend more time getting your people up to speed first, before sharing your annual results more widely. Either way, you still need to tailor your message to your people. And this means knowing them really well. So for example, you should be able to answer questions like, Have they had a tough year with lots of change or lots of uncertainty? Are they also impacted by cost of living pressures? What's the current sense of morale or engagement like? Do many of them have a financial stake in your company? So for example, through share options, you also need to remember that even your people don't have the same context you have in terms of a really deep understanding of the financial results. So what do you do? Firstly, and most importantly, acknowledge your people - say thank you for their contributions. It's not enough to simply just share whatever message you sent to your external stakeholders like here's what we sent out to the market today. It's also here that you need to acknowledge any other current events, or relevant circumstances. So, for example, maybe you need to acknowledge that people have been through a lot of change in the past year or that, you know that the cost of living crisis has impacted both your customers and your team. This is about being thoughtful, showing empathy, because remember, nobody cares what you know until they know that you care and you are talking to humans, not robots. Secondly, talk specifically about how their work has contributed to the results. So use tangible examples, and it's even better if those examples demonstrate the organisation's strategy, purpose, or mission in action. Remember that employee performance and engagement Increases significantly if they can see a line of sight between what they do every day and the purpose of the organisation. And so this, the annual results is a really great opportunity to show that purpose and strategy in action and how your people have helped to bring it to life. Thirdly, like all comms, be as transparent as possible. People know when information is being hidden from them. You want to build and maintain trust with your people because again, they can be your biggest advocates and trust builds loyalty. So don't just talk about the good results. Put your big girl pants or your big boy pants and share the tough stuff as well. And finally, there should be call to action for your people. Now that you've presented all this information about the results. So what? What are the next steps? How are these results relevant to them? And what, if anything, will that change about the focus for the organisation and their work for the next 12 months? Okay, the third tip is to prepare leaders really well for sharing their results. Leaders are the public and internal face of your organisation, and how they share the results internally and externally has a big impact on your business's reputation. So, for example, if they share them in a really dull way, they don't take the time to explain the results, they don't acknowledge the bad stuff, or they get defensive when asked questions. That does nothing to boost public and employee sentiment in your brand. So there's a few parts to preparing leaders. Number one, practice, practice, practice, and practice some more. They really need to spend time to get very familiar with the messaging so that not only do they know the results inside out, and they're very confident in those results, but they can then present them in a way that is genuine and authentic. So they're not just reading off the song sheet, they're putting it into their own words. And that resonates really well with all audiences. Of course, the caveat here is to make sure the results are still being portrayed accurately. So just be aware of any of the loose cannons you might have in your leader cohort. Secondly, pepper them with questions. Come up with all the possible questions people could ask, whether that's from the media, shareholders, customers, employees, or other stakeholders. Then, get your leaders to practice answering these questions. Make sure they're tough questions. They have to get used to being asked the hard and uncomfortable stuff because the more they're prepared for those, the better they'll respond in the moment. And thirdly, give them materials to help them get across the results and share them with their teams. But remember they need to be tailored to each team. So don't do all the work for them. Leave space for leaders to add in their own messaging about how the team has specifically contributed to the results and what that means for them going forward. Okay... number four, get creative. Boring results are not memorable. That's the crux of this one. And too often we see results presented simply as a table or a series of charts. And for some audiences like analysts, that's totally okay. But for most other audiences, that's boring as all hell and can also be largely meaningless. Now I'm not saying, saying you should go to the extreme and be super cringe, but how can you present your results in a way that is creative and therefore memorable? So firstly, use storytelling. People remember stories, not bullet points. So what stories can you use to help show the progress your company has made in the last year that has led to these results? Stories could be things like interviews or profiles of customers or employees, maybe a like behind the scenes view of how a successful product or service was developed. Uh, even a showcase of some of your ESG programs in action and the great impact they've had. And secondly, use visuals. So remember that the majority of people are primarily visual thinkers. So simple things like infographics can go a really long way to engage in your audience and make the stats really stand out. Thirdly, use a variety of media, not just a PDF statement. So think about microsites, video, photography, really engaging presentations, interactive things, maybe even a physical display. I don't know what that would look like, but that could be cool. The point is think outside the box, especially if you have a really great story to tell. And finally, please, please, please avoid the temptation of the talking head CEO or chair video. So, so boring. Nobody is paying attention past the first 30 seconds if you're lucky. So it ends up being a complete waste of time to do in the first place. If you do use a video featuring those key leaders, maybe just consider having their faces to top and tail the video and do an animation or video compilation in between the intro and outro. Maybe their voice could overlay that. Now, finally, and this is perhaps the most important tip, make sure you simplify your results. If you want to see examples of results that need simplifying, just go to any insurance company's results and have a read through their statement to the ASX. Now, we spoke a little about this with Kate Norris last week on the podcast actually, but this is a core skill that all communicators need to develop. You need to be able to take complex ideas or data, and turn them into communications that people actually understand. And yes, the analysts might gobble up the waterfall graph and the table of numbers with so much glee, but nobody else will. In fact, most of your audience, shareholders, customers, and your employees will not be able to decipher what those things even mean. So your job is to make those numbers and results mean something to your audience. And there's a few ways you can do this. Firstly, get rid of the corporate and financial jargon. Talk in plain English and if you have to use specific terms, make sure that you explain them. So for example, you might even need to define what you mean by revenue or profit after tax. Remember the curse of knowledge. People don't have the same depth or understanding of knowledge that you do on the results. Secondly, use simple graphs or charts or visuals that help explain the components of the results. So for example, if you made 200 million dollars - how much of that was made up from sales of products, services, investments, you know - that could be put in a nice infographic or a simple graph. Uh, how much of that spend goes back into the business on things like wages and rent and so on. So a really simple chart could help explain that in one easy step. Now, thirdly on graphs, like Kate said last week on the podcast, one graph, one story, simplify the graphs down to one core message and make sure that you still explain what the graphs shows either verbally or visually or in writing. Fourthly, use comparison. So for example, if your gross revenue was 200 million dollars for the year, how did that compare to last year's revenue? And how does that compare to your competitor's revenue? So put it in context to show whether it's, that's a good or a bad or a neutral result. And finally, reframe the results in ways that are meaningful to your audience. So for example, if you made 200 million dollars in gross revenue, what does that mean in terms of how many products you sold or how many customers you served? So again, put that in frame of reference that your audience may, will understand that's relevant to them. Otherwise, what does 200 million dollars actually mean? Okay, so it's time for your episode wrap up. So today I shared five tips for preparing to communicate your company's end of year results. And these tips apply whether you are a private or a public company. Number one, consider public sentiment. You need to balance your messaging so that you retain that shareholder confidence without damaging your reputation with the broader public. And in a cost of living crisis, this is more important than ever. Number two, consider your employee sentiment. So tailor your message to your employees and make sure you really genuinely acknowledge their efforts. They can be your biggest advocates or your biggest detractors. Number three, prepare leaders to share the results with their external stakeholders and their people. And that means heaps of practice in answering questions and getting to know the messaging so well. so well that they can put it in their own voice and communicate the results genuinely and authentically. Number four, get creative. Get away from the PDF document and the talking head videos. If you want your results to be memorable, then they have to be presented creatively. Use the power of storytelling to your advantage. It is time to start thinking outside the box. And number five, simplify the complex, especially for the public and for your people, get rid of all the financial mumbo jumbo speak plain English, reframe the results in a way that are meaningful to your audience and use simple graphics to help tell the story of your results. Ultimately, the key message is this. Make sure you're communicating your results in a way that works for the different audiences you're presenting to. And there is absolutely no one size fits all approach. So that's all we have time for in today's episode. And if you have any more ideas or questions on this topic, please get in touch. I would love to hear from you. Just shoot me an email. And don't forget, you can sign up to my mailing list where each fortnight you'll receive an email with heaps of tips, resources, and a list of all the upcoming comms related events that come across my desk. And if you love the show, please consider being a reviewer. It will only take about 30 seconds to write and review the show, but that 30 seconds can translate into a lifetime of helping others find the show and learn as well. We'll be back next Thursday with another fresh episode of the podcast. In the meantime, keep doing amazing things and bye for now.