MailMerge: it’s one of the most annoying and time consuming tasks in HR.

When it comes to communicating with our employees, we’re far behind how other functions can communicate with their audiences.

Take marketing for example. Systems like Hubspot, Mailchimp, and many others allow marketers to personalize customer communications with ease.

Why can’t we do the same in HR? We have employee data, we just need the solution.

When managing HR at Atlassian and Squarespace, my team and I couldn’t find a scalable solution, so I looked to build one.

I teamed up with Culture Amp cofounder Jon Williams to build Pyn. Over the past year or so we’ve built a unique solution to send personalized and contextual employee communications flawlessly.

Here are five ways Pyn can help you leave MailMerge in the past...for good.

1. Only insert up-to-date information

When using Pyn, personalized information used in your communications always comes directly from your central source.

Ever find yourself downloading a list and updating the merge. Not once, or twice, but many times? It’s better to maintain one source of information and always pull data from that source.

Pyn inserts information that lives in your HRIS records, e.g Workday, BambooHR, Namely, etc.

2. Include or Exclude parts of content for certain groups

With Pyn you can add in sentences or whole paragraphs that will only be included if your recipient is part of a certain demographic.

Say, you want to send out information to newly promoted managers - with helpful information on how to run their first 1:1s, key responsibilities and other practical information.

But in addition, you want to add a sentence or whole paragraph with instructions specific only to managers in the support department. Or perhaps you want to add a few engineering manager specific responsibilities not relevant to readers outside engineering.

Including certain sections of content for certain demographics would take a lot of time with the traditional MailMerge process. It probably wouldn’t feel worth it. But with Pyn it would be easy!

3. Allow input from other stakeholders

A quick workflow allows other stakeholders, like a recipient’s manager, to optionally add some sentences to your message before it’s sent.

This can make a corporate message, created centrally, much more personal.

Say, you want to send out a standard new hire pre-boarding message on what to expect on their first day, but you’d like to give their manager the option to add in a thoughtful note should they want.

The message should still stand on its own, with or without manager input, but this optional merge of information scales well and feels more personal. It removes the headache of going back and forth with multiple stakeholders on multiple forms of communication just to gather input.

4. Send it to people (only) when they need it

Not only can you insert personalization, you can auto-send communication at the time when employees actually need it.

Sure, you want your messages to go out. But not every message has to go out at the same time. Pyn allows you to time communications to automatically go out when that employee experiences something.

For example, employees can automatically receive communications at key moments - from the first day in the job, to a promotion, to running your first 1:1, or a return from parental leave.

If it happens in your organization, Pyn can track.

Pyn constantly scans for changes in your HRIS and makes it easy to have messages go out automatically based on real events, so you don’t have to worry about it.

5. Send it to the right people

Because Pyn integrates with your HRIS data, it takes mere seconds to direct a message to a certain target audience. Simply include or exclude certain groups of your employee population

It’s so annoying to have to export a list and sort the data to find the right names and email addresses.

With Pyn, you could target to include all Support Managers who work in Australia excluding anyone who is a Contractor or People on Leave. Easy-peasy!

From MailMerge to Pyn - Bringing it all together

Say you have new manager communications.

Instead of the MailMerge process:

1. Create list 1 of new managers
2. Double check list one for mistakes
3. Create new doc with messaging for managers
4. Create new-new doc with messaging for managers in a specific department
5. Email new manager’s manager for feedback
6. Wait for feedback from the new manager’s manager…
   

Why not:

1. Always have the latest list of managers at your fingertips
2. Have messages sent automatically as soon as someone is promoted to manager
3. Personalize comms with the manager’s name, team, etc - all based on HRIS data
4. Add in specific manager responsibilities relevant only to their department
5. Include a few thoughts and/or expectations from that new manager’s supervisor
6. Specifically include or exclude groups that should receive your message.

With Pyn, the process of communicating with employees is so much easier and intuitive.

Now you just have to decide “How” you’ll send the communications. Want to Email folks? Sure! Prefer to send a Slack DM from your Head of HR to everyone? No problem.

Now sit back and check how many people have opened or read your communications.

Nice! 👏 Pyn

Leave MailMerge in the past

Request a demo today!