A voice for the people who work there
Electricity North West had a brand voice built for customers and regulators. We gave them one for talking to colleagues, drawn from thirty three of them and written to be used rather than filed.
Most tone of voice guides stop at the front door
Nearly every organisation has a tone of voice. It is written for customers, regulators and the public, and it is usually well looked after.
What it rarely does is tell an internal communicator how to write to a colleague. The result is a company that sounds like one thing to the outside world and something else entirely on the inside.
Electricity North West wanted to close that gap, so the company sounded like the same company in both directions. That meant starting with the people who would have to write it and read it.
Adapt the voice they had, do not invent a new one
Take the external brand voice as the starting point and work out what it means when the audience is a colleague rather than a customer.
Build the answer from what people across the business actually said, not from what the comms team assumed.
And make it a working tool. Something a manager could open on the morning they have something difficult to write, find the bit they need, and get on with it.
We asked the business, then did the hard part
Ran six workshops in two days
Thirty three colleagues from Comms, HR, DSO, Engineering, Operations, Regulation and Compliance, and Finance and Business Services. Small groups, so quieter voices were heard as well as confident ones.
Made it easy to be honest
Group discussion, Teams chat and live Vevox polling running side by side, so people could answer out loud or anonymously depending on the question. That mix is why the data was worth having.
Found the pattern and reported back
A findings summary went to the business inside two weeks, setting out where the group agreed, where it split, and which of those differences actually mattered.
Landed on four principles
Helpful, Genuine, Straightforward and Respectful. Each one checked against the existing brand guidelines, so the internal voice extended the external one rather than competing with it.
Wrote a guide built to be used
Thirty two pages, interactive, so writers could jump to the situation in front of them. Worked examples, the awkward cases and the grey areas writers regularly encounter, made clear.
Handed over the keys
Amends through March, then an editable version handed across so the guide could keep growing with the business instead of dating the day we left.
Four principles, agreed by the people who use them
What it took
In our words
Internal Tone of Voice
An internal voice your people recognise and respond to, built from what they tell us and written up as a guide your teams will actually open.
See the serviceDoes your internal communication sound like the same brand as everything else?
Fifteen minutes, free, no pitch deck. If we are not right for you, we will say so and point you somewhere better.
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