Kimberly starts things off by sharing more about her career journey. She explains how she started her career in journalism, but made a career change in 2009 when she moved to Tampa and fell in love with the Kforce mission and family. With her journalism background, Kimberly was more strategic in her approach for effective communications and used that skill to help Kforce reform their internal comms with two overarching goals in mind:

  • Increase speed to make to reach offices quickly.
  • Be transparent in all messages.

With those goals at the forefront, “Kforce Live” was born: a live, company-wide broadcast that highlights projects, team wins and lets the CEO and President speak candidly and directly to Kforce employees all over the country. It’s achieved enormous popularity, and is now utilized for many internal initiatives. To get buy-in and support from her executive team on Kforce Live and other important comms initiatives, Kimberly emphasized how seamlessly internal communications is related to employee engagement, culture, turnover, and more.

Kimberly also talks about the mantra she follows when it comes to internal communications and why it’s so effective. With S.M.A.C.K, Kforce always strives to:

  • Speak honestly
  • Make technology work for you
  • Audience is key
  • Curveballs engage
  • Keep up.

Metrics Matter

Kimberly is a firm believer that because not every person communicates the same way, so you need to leverage various vehicles to communicate the same message. Even more important is tracking all of those communications to see where you are getting the most people’s attention and decide what content is garnering the best engagement. To test different mediums, Kimberly has infused technology into traditional marketing methods such as email, voicemail, etc. She advises to start simply and see if you could be doing more with what you do every day. Think about the simple customer experience and maximizing the channels you use every day to get their attention and send messages.

Female Leadership: Why it Pays to Ask for What You Want

Kimberly switches gears and also talks about her personal life, and confides how tough it is sometimes as a working mom of two. She explains how having more female executives in leadership is really helpful for up-and-coming female employees, and why women at the top tend to better understand that more flexibility builds more passion and engagement with the company.

Kimberly also believes if you’re not your biggest fan, who will be? Women need to track their ROI for their projects as well as their own knowledge, so they can easily prove the value they’re creating. Her final piece of advice: stand up for yourself and ask for what you want.

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