Hitachi, Innovation & Influence: Modernizing Internal Communications Globally with Stephanie Roberts

Brian Tomlinson: Hi, and welcome to a brand new Aspire to Inspire Podcast episode. My name is Brian Tomlinson, and I’m the head of content at Staffbase. Today’s guest is Stephanie Roberts, the head of global communications at Hitachi Industrial Equipment Systems. And with over six years at Hitachi and more than two and a half years living and working in Tokyo, Stephanie is going to bring us a unique perspective as an American woman navigating that leadership on a global scale.

She leads communications for a global organization spanning more than 12 countries and 9,000 employees and spends her day crafting comms strategies that help to connect across cultures and, most importantly, drive impact. Stephanie, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Stephanie Roberts: I’m doing great. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Brian Tomlinson: Absolutely. Let’s dive in at the deep end. I saw you had a post on LinkedIn that went pretty viral not too long ago, talking about this topic of basically the org structure. Where does comms sit within an organization and who they should report to? Because we know that different organizations have different ways to structure. Sometimes it’s reporting to HR, to marketing, to, I don’t know, corporate development, all sorts of places. Let’s kick that off. Where should comms report to and why?

Stephanie Roberts: Sure. So I did not expect the reactions that I got, but I think this is a very passionate topic for communications professionals. But the gist of my post was I’m very adamant that communication should report to the CEO. And especially if it’s a centralized comms function. I also understand there can be some variances based on org size or overall organization structure. But if you’re a large global organization like the one I’m in, it should definitely be reporting to the CEO because communications is a strategic function. Bottom line, no different than HR, finance, or any other partner function to the business.

Brian Tomlinson: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s one of the narratives that runs around in the comms circles. It’s like one of these things that we know that it actually should be, but a lot of times for different reasons, it’s not. Across your career, how have you seen that structure, though? Have you ever been in a place where you definitely were working and thought, “Okay, we’re definitely not placed in the right area?”

Stephanie Roberts: Not as bad for me personally. I mean I have had different reporting structures. I’ve reported into marketing, I’ve reported into strategy and other areas, but fortunately never into HR or legal or IT or anything like that. But it wasn’t until recently that I reported to the CEO. That’s as of October of last year. That was only after a lot of education and influencing internally and benchmarking other organizations. Because I think one positive thing we are seeing is year over year, more and more communications leaders are reporting into the CEO as companies are understanding the importance of communications as a strategic function.

Brian Tomlinson: No, absolutely. I think that’s actually great that you could actually influence that. Would you have any tips for a comms exec who may be having that struggle and could maybe want to do exactly that same thing? Is how can I influence to be able to position comms as this strategic function? Do you have maybe just two or three quick tips as this is what I did to really tackle that?

Stephanie Roberts: Yes, I think one big one is you can use other companies’ missteps or mistakes in some ways to show the implications of where things went wrong and what that would impact to the business. When you think about the CEO, their top of mind is how is this going to impact the company financially or reputationally? So pulling some of those statistics, looking at other companies, that’s one thing that helped. And then as I alluded to, like the benchmarking, looking at what other companies are doing, best practices, and using that to position yourself in your function.

But honestly, it took a lot of education, understanding. But also, I think I’m fortunate where my CEO understands the importance of communications, and that’s not the case for everyone. I think that’s a big thing, too. If your CEO doesn’t understand the importance of communications, it’s an eternal uphill battle. So I had a few things in my favor for sure.

Brian Tomlinson: That’s perfect then. Maybe let’s just jump on. When you and I spoke before, we were talking about the modernization of comms. And that could be everything from technical tools to AI. How do you see that moving forward? Because AI has been this theme in comms and in internal comms over the past two years, just like every other one of us. But we’re starting to see this discussion around authenticity and the human side and AI and how to balance that. How do you see that moving forward in terms of traditional face-to-face communication versus modern platforms, AI, everything coming together and converging?

Stephanie Roberts: Sure. Yes, I think AI, it’s still really a tool for us, a tool to use in our toolbox. It can’t really replace anything yet. I’m not saying that it can’t eventually, but especially when we’re talking about internal communications, AI, maybe it’s good for helping you with creating a storyline or an outline or something like that. But it really lacks that emotion and it lacks that empathy. And that’s where the human factor still comes into it. And then, as far as AI or face-to-face, it also depends on region.

What I’ve found in my role, especially in places like Japan, face-to-face is still very, very important. So we can’t downplay the importance of things like town halls. Employees still appreciate that and it works probably better than any other channel. When you look at other regions, China, they still like the face-to-face, but they’re more open to more of the electronic type of means. So there’s different variances. You have to understand your audience, understand the different cultural aspects as well.

Brian Tomlinson: That’s definitely true. It’s going to be different if you have a business where everyone’s sitting at their desk or something like retail or health care where you have people who are constantly on the move. So really catering to those frontline employees as well. I think it definitely ends up being a mix . . . How have you seen that in your experience in terms of if you have these, let’s say, deskless employees or so? Do you think that there we can do, as communicators, do a better job of bringing people together and making sure that they get the communication, see the vision of the company, and understand how their role impacts the bottom line?

Stephanie Roberts: Absolutely. And that’s a struggle that all of us face. In my organization, a third of our employees are working in factories or otherwise without a desk. And it’s always a challenge to reach those employees. So a lot of the time, right now we have to rely on the traditional cascading approach through those daily stand-up meetings or toolbox talks or lunchroom type of things. But we also want to find a way to better meet those employees. Is that on a phone or an app or something like that where employees can access at any time that they want?

So that’s something we’re looking into. But also, we’re using the other traditional things like the electronic monitors in factories and trying to push messages to there. But I think that’s a consistent issue that I face and other communications peers face as well is trying to get every employee to understand the direction of the company. And in so many companies, you see a majority of employees don’t understand the vision or the direction no matter what channels we try. So of course, there’s always room for improvement but it’s very challenging.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes, absolutely. That’s a challenge I think that nearly every communicator faces at some point, right? Speaking of then the Hitachi business, it’s, to some extent, a very technical industry and it might feel as a bit niche. How do you manage to simplify a lot of these complex topics to try and engage that broader audience? Do you have some ways that you go about doing that?

Stephanie Roberts: Yes, I think the best way is trying to make it relatable to the employees. Just one example, some of the industrial products that we produce are things like air compressors or coating and marking equipment. And to the average person, even some of the employees, they might wonder what does this really have to do with me or why should I care? But then you turn it into, okay, this coating and marking equipment, you buy a gallon of milk or a carton of eggs every week and you always look at the expiration date to know if it’s good for you or not. Well, our equipment helps put those expiration dates on there.

So it’s something like that or like air compressors, they’re hidden in factories usually. But one fun example is the Bellagio, the fountains. Our compressors are underground to help push up that water and make the beautiful displays. So when you put it into examples that are more relatable to employees, I think it makes it a little more interesting to them and not just like a box in a factory.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes, telling that story. It’s a different thing showing the Bellagio fountain versus just like, “Oh, here’s a compressor.”

Stephanie Roberts: Yes, exactly.

Brian Tomlinson: Definitely.

Stephanie Roberts: That way to make it interesting.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes, no, absolutely. I think that’s actually the beauty of B2B businesses. It’s these things that we just don’t see and we kind of take for granted. But they’re so important to just our day-to-day lives, and a lot of times employees, they aren’t told that enough, that what you do matters.

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly. I think you hit another point is just helping them understand their impact and how that helps society really. The other part of the compressor business are portable compressors used on construction sites, as an example. When you see the guy or woman with a jackhammer, it’s helping power that. But think about the impact of that. They’re helping create the roads or the bridges to get to work or get to the doctor’s appointment and things like that. So it’s good for society. So when you think beyond the box or beyond the product and the impact on society, I think that’s really one way to get employees more engaged and understanding of the impact they are truly having.

Brian Tomlinson: Yeah. I think that’s really where this push for modernization is also so needed, and especially in internal comms, because the people who will a lot of times miss that information are actually the ones, just like you said, sitting in the factories, the ones who really need to know why what they’re doing is important. I think it all, at the end of the day, everything will tie together as this system.

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly. Yes, that’s one thing we’re trying to improve certainly is reaching those frontline workers and helping them understand their impact on our business and the customers and subsequently society.  

Brian Tomlinson: Yes. Maybe let’s touch on, because Hitachi, obviously, is a Japanese company. And I think, for those of us who have worked in international organizations, we know how different cultures and communication can be. If you reflect a little bit just on the time that you’ve spent in Japan, what’s probably one of the most valuable lessons that you’ve learned across cross-cultural communication? And how can a comms leader try to apply that and inspire their teams to improve their communication in a global organization? 

Stephanie Roberts: Sure, yes. I think the first and foremost thing that I learned is to really stop and listen. I think being an expat, if anyone out there ever becomes an expat, you’re going to have a lot of pressure to perform. The company is investing quite a bit of money in you. They have expectations to turn things around or improve things very quickly. So you want to go in and make an impact naturally, especially if you’re a type A like me. But what you really have to do is just stop and listen, talk to the people, understand the culture, talk to the people that have worked at the company for decades.

I’m not saying that they always know best, but you have to understand some of the background first. And then use all that to assess and propose changes and work with the people to do it together. And especially going to Japan from the US, you know they are almost polar opposites in terms of so many things, from the way decisions are made to the way you communicate with each other, the direct versus the indirect. It’s a lot of reading between the lines in Japan, which can be very difficult to start.

I’m from the US, so if I was in the meeting in the US and I don’t agree with someone, I’m not afraid to say, “Hey, I don’t really agree with that, here’s why.”  But in Japan, you don’t get that. Sometimes you’ll just get silence. Other times you’ll get, “We’ll consider that,” which I’ve now learned when someone says, “We’ll consider that,” that usually means there’s not a good chance for you. So it’s just learning some of those cues and the non-verbals to understand, but those are things I didn’t know going in, only learning on the ground. So I guess in summary, I would say, understand the culture, but listen, learn before trying to just drive change or do things the way you did them in your home country.

Brian Tomlinson: Yeah, I think that sounds like definitely solid advice to always listen more than you talk. Especially when you jump into a situation like that.

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly, yeah. Sometimes it can be hard, though, when you feel the pressure and there’s so many things you want to improve, but you just have to slow roll it there.

Brian Tomlinson: How do you — because I think that’s a good topic you just hit, there’s so many things. How do you manage to prioritize everything you have on your desk? Because most of the busiest people that I know tend to be people who lead comms.

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly.

Brian Tomlinson: So I think that the calendar’s full, so many topics. How do you go about prioritizing what needs to get done now?

Stephanie Roberts: That’s a good question. I think obviously it has to be a matter of is something a risk to the company, of course, in terms of reputation or otherwise. What are the stakes of something? Can this have a huge impact on the company or your executive or something like that? Obviously, that takes priority over other things. But then I think, what has the greatest impact to the employees? Ideally, the most positive impact to employees.

Try to drive some of those changes because, going back to the employees, it’s if your employees aren’t engaged or aligned with the direction of the company, that impacts your overall productivity, which impacts your products or services you’re delivering, which impacts the customer experience. So it all starts with the employees. So that’s how I like to think about communications is we really need to prioritize the employees because if they’re not all in, the rest of the chain is impacted.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes, absolutely. It’s the base, it’s the foundation of every company.

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly.

Brian Tomlinson: Now, okay. Let’s also jump over to — before we get to our favorite topic of LinkedIn.

Stephanie Roberts: Oh, yes, my favorite topic.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes, mine as well.

Stephanie Roberts: Oh, okay. I thought I’m the only nerd.

Brian Tomlinson: No. Oh, no. That’s a deep rabbit hole that we can go down.

Stephanie Roberts: Yes, I could talk about that for two hours, I think.

Brian Tomlinson: That’s why we save it for last.

Stephanie Roberts: People start asking if I get paid by LinkedIn or something just because I always promote it. I’m like, “No, you’re doing yourself a favor by being active on LinkedIn.”

Brian Tomlinson: Yes, absolutely. Maybe let’s jump directly into that as well. Because you basically decided last year that you’re going to be really consistent on LinkedIn. What would you say have been the biggest benefits to you and your personal brand, but even also potentially for the company? What do you think those biggest benefits have been by just showing up on LinkedIn on a consistent basis?

Stephanie Roberts: I think there are so many benefits, but especially personally and to your own brand. And when I made that decision one year ago or so, I decided I’ll post one time per week, which isn’t a huge dedication of time or anything. But even the impact of that has been astounding. I’ve grown over 10,000 followers in one year, which I know that’s not huge compared to some of the other creators. But for posting once per week, I think that’s pretty good.

And just the network I’ve built, having peers outside of my company to just bounce ideas off of, to talk communication, share ideas, having that extended network that I didn’t have before, that’s very helpful in and of itself. But then for the personal brand, I’ve had so many opportunities to speak, to be on podcasts, be quoted in articles, you name it. But those channels, those mediums, they can’t find you if you’re not active on LinkedIn, if you’re not doing anything, right?

So I think being able to share your expertise, be seen as more of a thought leader, there’s literally no downside to that. I think the biggest takeaway is people should really start building their brand before they need it. So many people, they lose their job or they’re in a tough place, and then they decide to get active on LinkedIn. But really you need to do that well before that time, so you’re always prepared.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes, I couldn’t agree more. I think it’s huge, huge opportunity there. Even if we talk about executives, if we talk about someone in comms, who being strategic, it’s an amazing way to take your executive team or your CEO, and help them build their own personal brand, which really, in turn, helps build the brand of the company, especially on that executive level as well.

Stephanie Roberts: Yes, I think you’re exactly right. And I think there’s two points to that, too. As a comms leader, you don’t want to be one of those people just telling your executives what to do without doing it yourself. So you can be the case study. If you start being active on LinkedIn yourself, then you can share those results or have your executives see that success. And for those that are kind of on the fence, which is often a lot of them, maybe it helps convince them. So I think that’s one part, helping convince your executives if they’re not all in.

And then the second part, like you said, so many people are researching the CEOs before joining a company. I’ve seen some research, it’s over 80% of people are researching a CEO while interviewing with a company. And then that’s just prospective employees, right? But your current employees, they’re on there, they want to engage directly with the CEO, understand their thoughts. The investors are looking, customers, potential customers, like every stakeholder internally and externally is looking to see if the CEO is active on LinkedIn.

Whether you’re showing up or not, they’re still looking for you. So you might as well use that as another direct channel to all those stakeholders and actually make sure that your message is shared the way you want to. So I think it’s a positive. Obviously, it needs to complement your earned media strategy and other strategies, but it’s a way to directly reach your stakeholders without having to convince those media publications or pitch them to get you in their publication.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes, absolutely. Because your view of the world, you can easily put it out there.

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly.

Brian Tomlinson: I think that should be standard for an executive, especially a CEO is linked to a LinkedIn presence, but also, to go one step further, also probably a personal website just for stuff like SEO, et cetera, right? Because what you just said, and our friends in HR should take note of that too, is like all of that is actually a part of employer branding, because someone is coming along. Who is the CEO? How does he see the world? How does he run his company? Do I want to be a part of that? Because you, as a prospective employee, you want to make sure that the values that I have match the value of this company.

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly.

Brian Tomlinson: And I think it’s something that, for some reason, is not on the radar. So are you trying to push that as well for your executive team? I’m not sure how strong LinkedIn is in the Japanese market, but what do you think about that?

Stephanie Roberts: Yes, I think that’s another interesting thing to me is in Japan, LinkedIn is still not widely used. I think last I checked only 4% or 6% of the population uses LinkedIn. And when I talk to a lot of my colleagues, they still view it as a job-finding platform. It’s not really a networking or a personal branding or anything like that. So it’s still a little behind. But as far as our executive team, one year ago, we got our CEO active on LinkedIn. Now he’s all about it.

Again, he only posts once per week, similar to me, but I recently ran the analysis looking at his LinkedIn versus the corporate page LinkedIn. And just the results are astounding. He’s had half the number of posts as the company page, but all the results in terms of the engagement, everything like that, is two to three times greater than the company page, despite half the number of posts. That’s what we see time and time again in the research.

Brian Tomlinson: We, of course, have this marketing view from our side leading content, right? It’s absolutely the way to go, like personal profiles. If you think about it just psychologically, people follow people, there’s something that you can get from people that you just can’t get from a brand, no matter how cool you think your brand is. Right?

Stephanie Roberts: Right, yeah.

Brian Tomlinson: And it’s just something that you can leverage. Our executives get easily, I don’t know, 5X the amount of reach and so on compared to company pages. You can have an executive who has 2,000, 3,000 followers who gets more reach than your company page, that has 30,000. So really integrating that into how you strategically communicate can really just raise the bar.

Stephanie Roberts: Yes, exactly. And that’s something we’re trying to expand as we think about the next fiscal year and trying to incorporate more executives. Maybe not necessarily the executives in Japan, but globally, ones that are more open to it. Because I think there’s so much opportunity there and a lot of people aren’t fully leveraging it.

Brian Tomlinson: Absolutely. I think it’s still such a huge opportunity.

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly. I know. It’s still surprising to me how many CEOs aren’t really active on LinkedIn.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes. Just like you said, it doesn’t take more than once per week, right?

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly, to see significant results. I can’t even imagine if we did two, three times per week what the results would be, but once per week, that’s enough people. People really dig it.

Brian Tomlinson: Got to start somewhere, right?

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly, yes.

Brian Tomlinson: If we’ve now convinced everyone viewing to give LinkedIn a try, what would be your top three tips for getting started?

Stephanie Roberts: I think the first would be, be yourself. Especially if you’re a CEO or a senior leader in an organization, people want to know your story or how did you get to where you are, what are some of your leadership principles, a bit of a personal touch. I know not everyone is comfortable getting totally personal, but showing a little bit of your personality is always good, of course. A second point would be, don’t turn it into a billboard or an advertisement. Nobody wants to just hear about you pushing your products or services all the time. Kind of goes back to what you were saying, people want to hear from people, not the brand itself.

And the other would be, definitely engage your communications team. I wouldn’t go rogue and do anything like that. There’s so many landmines out there right now, with especially things like DEI in the US or different policy things happening. So I think CEOs especially are held to that higher standard. People are watching closer. So I think just, obviously, do this in line with your communications team to make sure that messaging comes across the way that it should and there’s no risks. We understand the different stakeholders and the possible implications.

Brian Tomlinson: Great. Maybe let’s switch over into — because you just touched on some topics that are hot, for example, in the US is DEI, for example. And I’ve seen a ton of posts also on LinkedIn the last weeks about how long everybody felt like January was.

Stephanie Roberts: Yes, 100 days.

Brian Tomlinson: Yeah. There’s this feeling right now, and I think that’s wherever you go, that we are somehow in crisis. And I think DEI is just one of these topics that falls under that. How should we be adapting? How should we be approaching our communications, both internally and externally, during these times?

Stephanie Roberts: I think with all these hot-button issues happening, and as you called crises or potential crises, I think this is where it’s really important for communications leaders, especially, but you don’t just have to be a leader. Any communications professional is to really understand the landscape and what’s going on. So I think this is the part where we want to be seen more as business advisors. Business advisors first, communications professionals second.

And being able to understand the whole landscape and even consult or advise your CEO or C-suite, that’s where we can bring in the value. So what I’m getting at is you have to understand the landscape and keep a close eye on what’s happening to be able to counsel your C-suite or CEO on, do we need to say something? Should we not? What are the risks of doing so or not doing so and such? So I think that’s the key point, is knowing when to say something or when not to.

And then also, I think employees, especially, are really curious, like within Hitachi, not just my company, but many Hitachi companies, a lot of questions are coming up for employees, is Hitachi going to retreat on DEI like we’re seeing many other companies? So being able to have answers to those questions and a consistent message, of course, is important. And then there’s the tariffs thing, too, which is more relevant in the US, but for global companies, we’re seeing a lot of those questions as well. Is this going to impact our company? What do we need to be thinking about?

So being more proactive about it and communicating about these things without someone prompting you. I think that’s the best thing you can do in communications, to be more proactive to help ward off some of those concerns.

Brian Tomlinson: Yeah. I think that’s the caretaker of the brand when you look at comms, to some extent.

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly, like the guardians of the brand and reputation, absolutely.

Brian Tomlinson: Yeah. This definitely comes down to a core function.

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly. That’s why we’re the strategic function, not the service function.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes, exactly. Nobody comes and says, “Could you now please take care of the brand?” By then it’s too late.

Stephanie Roberts: Yes, as the company is burning.

Brian Tomlinson: Yeah, that’s definitely meme-worthy at that point.

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly.

Brian Tomlinson: Burning dogs. That’s a free one for your next post. It’s just a burning dog meme.

Stephanie Roberts: You’ve probably seen the dumpster going down the river with the flames. Hopefully not for me.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes. Definitely don’t hope that for anyone.

Stephanie Roberts: No, no, never.

Brian Tomlinson: Maybe just as we look to wrap up another big topic and that’s measuring for impact. So I think we in comms over the years, a lot of times we get the feeling that we don’t have a seat at the table. And this comes back also to this org structure topic of where are you placed? Are you placed in such a way that you’re a strategic function or are you just a service center? And a lot of times what we tend to see is that because we’re not in sales or something like that, it’s hard to show the ROI. And if you don’t have a CEO who understands comms, it’s just like in marketing, that gets hard because they don’t get that there is this ROI that you maybe just can’t really see.

And this is something that we’re thinking about a lot. It’s like, how do we evolve into the future to get away from just measuring views and clicks on our intranet to something that we can better show the strategic impact that we have as communicators? So I know that’s a really broad question, but I think it’s something that’s on everyone’s mind. How do we elevate ourselves and our function by showing the impact that we make? So I thought maybe we could just have a quick talk about that, how you see that, and what we potentially need for the future.

Stephanie Roberts: Yes. I think this is a great topic and a very difficult one, of course, that many of us struggle with because so many of us, we are still measuring the clicks or the open rates or things like that. And it’s difficult to tie it to monetary value. So one thing that I’ve been thinking about personally is for our intranet. And if it’s difficult for the employees to find information or maybe the searchability is pretty lacking, things like that, is there a way that I can maybe tie that to lost productivity time?

Maybe if we take the average hourly rate of employees times X minutes per day or something like that, and actually showing the C-suite or the CEO, this is a rough estimate of lost productivity because our intranet is not optimal or easy to use or something like that. So I think that’s sometimes the only way to truly get through to many executives is what’s the impact on our bottom line? That’s one thing that I’ve been thinking of, but the overall measurement, I would love a way to measure impact. I haven’t really found the ideal way to do that. But I think that’s the next step that we really need to get to. And personally, I would like to get to as a comms leader as well.

Brian Tomlinson: Yeah, like really being able to show that all the work that you do that it does impact the bottom line because it does affect the employees, which comes back to what we talked about earlier, actually, is that storytelling and that vision getting through to those frontline workers.

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly.

Brian Tomlinson: That we are increasing production, that we are increasing efficiency. I remember a few — I did an intranet project a few years ago and I saw this statistic from Google Cloud or something saying that basically, employees spend something like two, two and a half days per week just searching for information.

Stephanie Roberts: Really? Oh my gosh.

Brian Tomlinson: And when you think about that, it’s like, well, okay, maybe I should make it easier for people to find what they need so that they can  actually work.

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly.

Brian Tomlinson: I think a lot of these things tend to get lost within the conversation because it sometimes becomes just too technical and not really considering that we live and work in a system, an ecosystem.

Stephanie Roberts: Right, yeah. I haven’t seen that statistic, but I might need to steal that from you.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes, it’s probably from five years ago, but I am guessing —

Stephanie Roberts: Maybe it’s not three days per week.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes. It probably hasn’t gotten better. That is how I would look at it.

Stephanie Roberts: Exactly.

Brian Tomlinson: Maybe before you wrap up, something just came to my mind. So on LinkedIn, we see video becoming a thing. LinkedIn is pushing their vertical video. Do you or have you tried or do you see a future also for things like short-form, vertical video, internal podcasts, so different mediums of delivering the message and information to employees? And what’s your take on something like that?

Stephanie Roberts: Absolutely. Personally, I haven’t tried the vertical video yet, but maybe eventually.

Brian Tomlinson: It’s the goal, I’m holding it to you now.

Stephanie Roberts: Now it’s on video and I’m committed to it. Maybe I can do it once sometime, we’ll see. But for the internal communications aspect, we’ve also been trying to do a bit more video, not as much the short form yet, but that would be ideal in the near-term future. We need to cater to the TikTok era, in the short bursts of information to really keep the engagement of the employees. But we’ve been trying to do some of that on social media and such. So we’re looking in the ways to do that. But to answer your question, absolutely. I think video always performs far better than traditional written or any other channels. So I think it’s definitely the way to go and something that we’re looking into as an organization.

Brian Tomlinson: Cool. I think with you at the forefront, you’ll be definitely pointing everyone in the right direction going forward. So with that, let’s wrap it up. Thank you so much for taking the time. I know we have the different time zones. You’re sitting in Japan, I’m actually sitting in Hamburg in Germany, so thank you again for joining us.

Stephanie Roberts: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. This was great.

Brian Tomlinson: Awesome. Everyone, thanks so much for watching for another episode of the Aspire to Inspire Podcast. We will be hoping that you join us for the next one. See you later.