As the virtual office moves from temporary fix to long-term solution, employee communications are more critical than ever — but a blanket staff-outreach email is not the solution. Nor is a one-off company Zoom call.
A targeted, intuitive employee newsletter and intranet may be, though, and Blue Ash-based startup Cerkl is ahead of the curve with its personalized staff communications tools. Cerkl, a 22-employee startup, offers clients employee-outreach resources like tailored email newsletters, a personalized intranet, and an immersive mobile experience. These solutions work almost like Netflix or Spotify; the technology learns what users engage with and enjoy, then disseminates more of that content to them.
This instinctive platform keeps employees connected with their company and co-workers — a feat that’s great in theory, but only works when employees are actually interested and engaged. That’s where Cerkl’s unique selling proposition comes into play.
“A lot of internal teams err on the side of blanketing the organization with one message so everyone sees it, but in times of crisis [like Covid-19], there are more complexities,” said Cerkl Business Solutions Architect Karine Stallings. “Cerkl enables people to share information, but not everything to everyone. It’s a reduction of email, keeping it to mostly high-level, newsworthy and hard-hitting communications that employees need to know.”
Now, Covid-19 may highlight the value of this kind of targeted employee communications, but Cerkl founder and CEO Tarek Kamil saw a need for this over 10 years ago. Kamil was serving on his community’s local schoolboard, and left meetings baffled by the low-attendance rates and disengagement rates among parents. Then he discovered the problem — a dilemma internal communicators know all too well.
The school board was technically communicating with parents. They sent an email newsletter regularly, but the content-inundated parents didn’t have the time or focus to read it. They skipped over it, and therefore missed details like volunteer opportunities and events.
“He realized that instead of pushing out the same content to all stakeholders, why not reverse engineer how they receive communications and focus on what excites them,” Stallings said. “If they have targeted information, they’re more likely to be engaged with the school. That’s how Cerkl was born.”
Kamil’s children were the first Cerkl subscribers, followed by small nonprofits, and eventually a game-changing Cincinnati-area client: St. Elizabeth Healthcare, a massive healthcare system with thousands of employees.
“They saw the power in [Cerkl] and said they would love to use it. That was the first time Tarek saw the greater need for Cerkl’s offerings,” Stallings said. “He and his team conducted 300 interviews with internal communications professionals working at companies across the country. He found out what their biggest challenges were and refined Cerkl for larger enterprises.”
Cerkl went from a handful of kid testers to over 2 million users per month, with nearly 250 clients nationwide, including new clients like Fort Lauderdale-based Citrix. Numbers are only growing with the pandemic’s impact on the workplace, Stallings says. By May, Cerkl welcomed an uptick in business interest across industries, with new clients, including a major software company, signing on.
As a communicator herself, Stallings is happy to see companies value the often overlooked yet integral internal communicators, particularly as their responsibilities grow daily — a trend likely to continue in the months and years to come.
“Internal communicators are underwater. Companies know good communications is important for the employee experience, but sometimes these communicators can’t show value,” she said. “Now there’s an interesting trend where communicator positions have been elevated in the company. Employees need to stay informed and engaged, especially when there’s not a water cooler to rely on."
