Is Your Digital Team Set Up for Failure… or Success?

Their influence is felt in improved reputation and stakeholder satisfaction; better investor communications, more successful recruitment, and the list goes on. These are just some of the crucial company results that effective digital channels, and the people who run them, bring to the biggest organisations in the world.

The companies at the top of the Corporate Digital Communications Index prove that in companies of thousands of people, a tiny percentage of overall “headcount” is worth every penny and most likely dangerously undervalued.

It’s no surprise the digital team often struggles

Apart from being over-stretched in terms of resources, these teams face other problems: constant firefighting; siloed company structures and competing demands from colleagues; disagreements over what “good” looks like on digital. If you don’t address them, your digital team – which is filled with naturally intelligent, collaborative, idealistic and highly organised self-starters – will lose morale.

How can you stop that from happening?

Maybe it’s impossible right now to increase budget or headcount to these over-stretched teams, but our research suggests that a few cost-effective actions can increase the effectiveness of corporate digital teams and keep them contributing to your reputation and stakeholder goals.

1. Think ahead. Give the digital team room to set a long-term strategy and regularly revisit it. Allow the team to have specific responsibility for this.
2. “Sell” digital. As a manager, once you have signed off on the digital team’s strategy and projects, help them sell digital initiatives within the organisation.
3. Recognise the team. A little goes a long way to keep the team driving standards higher and higher.
4. Give the team authority to say “no”. The best digital estates are efficient and disciplined about platform structure, design, story selection and editorial quality.
5. Ensure that effective measurement is in place so they can understand how they are performing. Are website visitors meeting their goals and does a visit to the corporate website improve reputation?

Finally, reconsider your resources

This is the number one frustration for digital teams, so consider even a small increase in team size. Just one more person to fill a skills gap can significantly improve how digital channels perform in terms of reputation, stakeholder management and profitability.

Does this resonate with you?

Download our free research report, “Secrets of Corporate Digital Leadership” or get in touch about how our benchmarking, visitor research and consultancy services can help optimise your organisation’s digital channels.