How Microsoft fosters its comms ecosystem from the C-suite to the front line

A brand’s story is best told through its people — that’s true both internally and externally. But it’s also important to consider the individuals telling an organization’s story, and the steps communicators can take to put them in the best position to share their views and experiences in an impactful way.

At Ragan’s Internal Communications Conference this October in Seattle, Josh Luebke, senior communications manager at Microsoft, will share how comms pros can follow his company’s lead in boosting both the voices of organizational leaders and employees across the company. Doing so effectively can have major effects on improved employer branding and cultural morale.

“We’re at a point where this collective set of voices — employees and leaders alike — is shaping company reputation,” Luebke said.

Internal leadership supporting the external brand

Luebke said that positioning leaders in ways that emphasize their personalities can help relate internal culture to the outside world based on visibility and their status as a trusted representative of the company’s culture. Rather than just a logo, audiences can relate your brand to a person.

“Leaders are your most visible experts,” he said. “Not only in their field but in their business categories, leaders are a trusted source. It’s different than the brand because there’s a face connected to it. People can understand and relate to other people.”

Luebke added that communicators at Microsoft are working to create a comms ecosystem for leaders that transcends simple company announcements and instead gives them channels to entrench themselves as cultural beacons. This helps make them effective messengers of what it’s like to work at Microsoft for both prospective employees and the outside world.

“We’re creating a community for these leaders and their teams that are supporting them to share, amplify and create conversation,” he said. “We’re promoting company products and news, and supporting always-on thought leadership and giving leaders and their teams communication frameworks to be successful in their respective fields.”

He also said that once Microsoft moved from a less formalized style of leadership messaging to a regimented leadership comms program that left room for individual voices, results followed.

Luebke added that there’s science behind how his team determines what leaders are right for certain messages.

“We have a data dashboard through Power BI where we track how our content is performing against key audiences,” he said. “It’s a great tool to get everyone on the same page for benchmarking, measuring success and spotting strategic gaps. It also helps us figure out which leaders are top voices to carry our news.”

The employee’s role in brand storytelling

Leaders aren’t the only people at Microsoft with perspectives to share. Luebke and his colleagues ensure that employee stories get told as they help showcase the diversity of thought and backgrounds in the company. That means determining pathways to paint a picture of Microsoft’s employee experience through storytelling.

“If you’re talking to your mom at the dinner table, and she asks, ‘What’s it like working for Microsoft?,’ we want to capture that moment and then program it,” he said. “We want employees to be supported to tell that story on the brand’s behalf — but more so because they’re our biggest fans and they want to share what it means to work here.”

According to Luebke, using employees to parrot company values isn’t enough — giving people an avenue to authentically share their experiences creates a more robust culture and more vibrant business.

“At the end of the day, it’s not about broadcasting a corporate line,” he said. “It’s about helping people — employees and leaders alike — tell their own stories in ways that reflect who we are and why the work matters.”

Register for the Internal Communications Conference here.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports and hosting trivia.