Connecting the Dots of the Employee Experience with Jill Stracko, Director of Global Executive and Internal Comms at Uber

This episode features an interview with Jill Stracko, Director of Global Executive and Internal Communications at Uber. Jill’s impressive career spans from Washington D.C. all the way to Silicon Valley. Jill led President Barack Obama’s writing team in the White House and once served as Senior Legislative Correspondent to then-Senator Joe Biden.

On this episode, Jill sits down with Amanda to discuss her 3 principles of Internal Communications: informing and inspiring, connecting the dots, and exclusivity. They also discuss keeping PR and internal comms aligned and their love of the Oxford Comma.

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“In terms of how I just personally think about internal communications, there’s a couple of principles. The first is informing and inspiring. Making sure that employees understand what’s going on because it’s easier to do your job if you understand how decisions are being made. And then inspiring. You really want people to always be reminded of why they came to work at this company and why it's amazing. So, always trying to find those stories that remind people of that and show the innovation that’s happening around the company, the cool stuff that’s happening. The second is connecting the dots. I feel like it’s really important as internal communicators and then also helping leaders, making sure that you remind people how their day-to-day work fits into the company strategy and the priorities for the year and the company mission and values. So, that’s our responsibility. It’s leaders’ responsibility. It’s our responsibility to help leaders remind employees of that. And then the final thing is exclusivity. Our work should not just be a regurgitation of something that’s put out externally on a blog post or in a news story. Internal Communications is different and should be different from external communications. And I like to think of it as, you should get this information because you work at this company. And you’re getting the inside scoop, the behind the curtain view, the story behind the story.” – Jill Stracko

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Episode Timestamps:

*(01:52): Jill’s background

*(04:12): Jill’s 3 Principles of Internal Communications

*(06:00): Segment: Story Time

*(06:26): How Jill’s team rebranded Uber’s mission statement

*(09:52): Amanda and Jill bond over the Oxford Comma

*(11:29): Segment: Getting Tactical

*(15:34): How to align internal comms with PR 

*(19:15): How Jill is keeping employees aligned during remote work

*(32:01): Segment: Asking for a Friend

*(38:57): Biggest challenge IC leaders will face in 5 years

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Links:

Connect with Jill on LinkedIn

Uber

Amanda’s LinkedIn

www.simpplr.com/podcast