Leadership Communication Blog

ROI Forum at Microsoft: Leadership Communication Best Practices

May 20, 2021

Communicators are determining how to best support executives in communicating with their teams who work in remote and hybrid operations. Our recent ROI Forum brought together senior communication and HR professionals from more than 20 Fortune 500 companies (virtually) to learn best practices in managing leadership communication globally.

As our Forum host, Microsoft shared how they built a global function that aligns its top leaders and supports them in driving change.

Prior to the ROI Forum, attendees received care packages with smoked salmon from Seattle’s iconic Pike Place Market for a little taste of Puget Sound. During the Forum, attendees were able to meet each other and share leadership communication best practices. They even had the chance to win a fun picnic basket filled with treats from Seattle Chocolatier Theo—just in time for summer!

Microsoft’s Global Employee and Executive Communication team (appropriately referred to as GEECs—think “geeks”) has more than 700 communicators worldwide and is hyper-focused on enabling executives with easily shareable content that employees want.

With a multi-layered employee listening ecosystem, the GEEC team can access weekly leadership communication trend reporting and summaries to inform executive communication, presentations, social and meeting materials. It’s a constantly refreshed cycle of content that employees want—and digestible communication actions that executives can take.

In addition to providing compelling content, the team also built an infrastructure of more than 15 digital, social, leadership, environmental and event-type channels that allow leaders to have an authentic voice and presence, while fulfilling the diverse needs of the employees.

In other words, they’re transforming executives into employee whisperers, converting employees into Microsoft evangelists and delivering meaningful results.

ROI Forums

ROI Forums provide a unique, invitation-only opportunity for Communication and HR senior leaders from Fortune 500 companies to share best practices, exchange ideas and discuss the latest issues and emerging trends.

In addition to the ROI Forums, we host events exclusively for ROI Partner Group members, including summits, lunches and coffee chats.


Contributors:

Tania Ulrich ROI Internal Communication Agency Employee.
Tania Ulrich

Senior Consultant

Tania's decade-long career in the hospitality industry has taught her the art of education and persuasion. No matter the industry, she believes in meeting your audience where they are and delivering a message that speaks to them.