🛒 Internal Communications Introductions: Leslie Letts

Global Director, Internal Communications & Community Engagement for Worldwide Operations at Amazon

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In This Edition

• 🪑 Create Kitchen Table Moments for Employees

• 🧡 Invest in Internal Communications for Frontline Employees

• 📢 Learn by listening to your Employees

About Leslie

Leslie Letts is the Global Director, Internal Communications & Community Engagement for Worldwide Operations at Amazon. Letts joined Amazon in 2011, leading the Amazon Devices PR team, before moving to Tokyo in 2016 as the APAC Consumer and Corporate Communications Director supporting Japan, Australia, Singapore, India, and China.

After three and half years, Letts relocated to Amazon Nashville in her current role. Before joining Amazon, she was Director, Product PR for Hewlett-Packard in San Francisco. Letts has more than 25 years of internal and external communications experience, and holds a Master’s Degree in Integrated Marketing Communications and a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from the University of Kansas. Letts lives in Nashville with her husband, 9-year old daughter, and three four-legged kids.

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What sparked your professional path into Internal Communications? 

Six weeks into my first role at Amazon, I attended an All-Hands which sparked my interest in internal communications. At the time, I was working on PR for devices, focusing on consumer electronics. I enjoyed learning about what we were going through as a company from different perspectives. I continued in my role until a few years later when I volunteered to go to Japan for an assignment to take on external and internal communications.

Once again at an All-Hands, I had another fascinating experience. I listened to the presentations with no idea what was being said as the event was in Japanese. Afterward, I told the team even though we have a small minority who don’t speak Japanese, they need to know what’s happening. At the next All-Hands, we translated it into English in real-time. Then at the next one, we had multiple screens and the experience was even stronger.

As an employee, being able to learn about all that is happening at the company enables you to be a brand ambassador. The more we can create those kitchen table moments for employees for after work when they are asked at dinner — “how was your day?” — and they can share a highlight from work, the greater the impact we can make. Moments like this help people stay engaged and connected to the work they are doing.

When I returned to the U.S., I took on internal communications for North America and APAC. Now, I oversee all of internal communications for our worldwide operations.

What is your approach to internal communications?

A silver lining of the pandemic has been that many companies realize how very important it is to communicate with your workforce, especially if you were still asking people to come to work to help others at a very uncertain time. As communicators, we had to make sure that they felt safe, heard, and thanked at a time when no one knew what was going to happen.

In our internal communications, we are transparent, warm, and factual. We know that most of what we say is probably going to end up being external. Whatever we tell our frontline employees, we are okay with telling the world.

During Covid, we made even more of an investment to communicate in real-time with our frontline employees. We share every internal message with our external PR team so they are prepared to respond to press inquiries.

You spend more time working sometimes than with your own family, so having employees that feel included, respected, and aware of what’s going on where they work builds happier employees and is so important for companies these days.

What is one project you are particularly proud to have accomplished?

Before the pandemic, the main way in which we communicated with our frontline workers was through our managers. These conversations happened at the start of shifts, but Covid hampered the ability to have live conversations like these.

We accelerated a proposal to build surround-sound communications for our frontline workers by building a communications portal in A to Z (the digital app our employees use). It’s accessible via mobile, and we can push notifications, news stories, videos, and more information. We also created a program to share 90-second snapshots with news and uplifting stories. The news feed is being rolled out globally, and the content will eventually be available in our break rooms, so we will have the ability to cross-promote it.   

I’m proud of this tool because there was never a more important time than during the pandemic that employees needed to know we were supporting them, caring for them, and thanking them in real-time. We brought this information to the palm of employees' hands for those who aren’t sitting at a desk.

How is Amazon’s “Every Day is Day 1” philosophy woven into internal communications? 

We are always getting to invent and make things better. I feel lucky that it’s a culture of getting to build. We solve problems. It’s a green field of opportunity to create. For my team, we’ve gotten to do it for the betterment of our frontline employees.

What are the skills that are most important for someone to succeed in Internal Communications?

Having prior experience in PR and external communications has been helpful for my team. There is a very delicate balance between what we need to say, how we say it, and ensuring that we're okay if it does get out in the world. 

It’s important to be able to problem-solve and have judgment with crisis communications. There’s an importance of being an advocate for employees and simplifying the messages of the employer. And of course, all the basics of communications — writing and speaking well — take priority. 

How do you continue learning about the field of Internal Communications?

I learn by listening to our associates. We are doing more and more research internally to evaluate if the content is resonating. We’re embarking on evaluating how we can be better at communicating through surveys and focus groups. We’re really evaluating employee sentiment after the information is shared.

I learn a lot from the people that I’ve worked with as well. I’ve hired great leaders who complement my skill set. I’ve brought on someone to bring in these tools to focus on the technical research and measurement. I also have someone who is exceptional at leadership communications and working on an executive voice. 

I also follow the news. It’s less about the profession and more about what’s going on in the world. We have a daily bulletin. I listen to NPR every day. Alexa gives me my morning briefing. When you have the number of employees that we have, we are a good litmus test for what’s going on in the world. 

Our population is the size of a good city. We have people with different views and they work side by side. In our messaging, we keep that in mind to strike that balance. “What lives out there works in here” is what our Head of Operations HR says. This is so important to keep in mind with how we respond to events in the world.

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Thank you for reading The Switchboard. ☎️ Every edition is personally curated by me — Julia Levy. This post is based on a live interview conversation and edited for publication. Learn more about why I write.

🙏🏼 Do you want to recognize a colleague for the Kindness at Work Honor Roll? Share a story of a team member exemplifying empathy by August 1st. Learn More.