How to communicate with the HFC community

If you are a member of the HFC community and you have news or events you want to promote to HFC audiences or the public, marketing and communications can help. Please review the following guidelines and contact us as needed.

Members of the media: visit our Media Relations page to get help with your inquiries, stories, and resources

Summary

  1. All requests go to communications@hfcc.edu
  2. Best way to communicate with all employees is Employee News
  3. All-employee e-mails are for critical information only, and will be infrequent
  4. Available communications channels include Employee News, HFC website, HFC events calendar, social media, digital boards (new system coming online late in 2022), and bulletin boards. Headlines from Employee News are also sent to the employee portal at my.hfcc.edu.

See below for complete information about how to communicate with various audiences.

Messages for faculty and staff

What: We will publish HFC-related news and events weekly on Mondays in Employee News.
We will send a periodic e-mail reminder message with highlights.
When: Items must be submitted to communications@hfcc.edu no later than noon on Friday.
Please keep in mind:
1. Employee News is online 24/7.
2. Employee News often includes new events, published throughout the week, as time permits.
3. Employee News only includes content that is directly related to Henry Ford College, or to an official HFC corporate or community partnership.
4. Employee News items are pushed into the announcements section of the Employee Portal, where everyone who logs in will see them.
5. Deadline for Employee News content requests is noon on Thursday for the following Monday.

A note about All-employee (blast) e-mail:
Having been over-used and under-managed in the past, all-employee (or blast) e-mail is not a standard method for communicating campus messages.

We found that faculty, staff, and students receive far too much e-mail. We received a stream of complaints and saw our e-mail message-open rates continue dropping off. So, in 2017, we made a commitment not to send regular All-employee e-mails for internal communication. Instead, we aggregate campus news, messages, and announcements in our easy-to-use, categorized, targeted website called Employee News. We do include a single weekly e-mail reminder, usually on Monday, to visit the Employee News website.

Non-e-mail channels that you may effectively use to communicate with faculty and staff include the HFC website, Employee News, our online events calendar, social media, campus digital boards, and campus bulletin boards.

When will we send All-employee email?
1. Periodically during the academic year (and during news-heavy summer weeks), we will send highlights and a reminder about Employee News content.
2. Periodic All-employee email messages will be sent for critical content such as emergencies that affect all or nearly all employees, safety matters, closures, power outages, regulatory compliance, official Board of Trustees or Presidential notices, bereavement notices, and other messages HFC Marketing and Communications deems critical, time-sensitive, and audience-appropriate.

More specifics about blast email and professional use of email are here.

Instead of relying on email for mass communication, we ask that all units on campus work with us to plan ahead, so we can share your messages in a timely, effective way through our website, social media, and other digital and analog channels.

Personal notices such as births, marriages, promotions, etc.

You can directly publish notices about events in your personal life via the HFC Community Forum on the top section of the employee portal.

Acceptable uses of the Community Forum are quite broad, and may include just about anything that would be appropriate for general consumption.
The following types of content are prohibited:

  • messages that promote illegal activity,
  • messages that are discriminatory (racist, sectarian, sexist, non-inclusive, etc.)
  • Messages that solicit business activity for non-HFC enterprises. Individual sales of single items are permitted on a limited basis, but promotions of employee business activities are not permitted.

Social media

When you send your message to communications@hfcc.edu, let us know that you would like your message to be shared via HFC social media channels, if it is targeted toward faculty, staff, students, and the general public. We currently support a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube channel. We will expand our social media channels as resources and strategies align for our audiences' benefit.

Messages for the general public

Specify "general public" audience when submitting messages
Available channels include:

  1. The HFC website - submit news/events content and story ideas to communications@hfcc.edu
  2. Social media - submit content to communications@hfcc.edu
  3. Digital boards - submit content to ds.hfcc.edu

Messages for students

Specify "student" audience when submitting messages
Available channels include:

  1. The HFC website and the student news website - submit news/events content and story ideas to communications@hfcc.edu . Note that stories listed on this website are also pushed into the announcements section of the student portal, where they are heavily viewed.
  2. Social media - submit content to communications@hfcc.edu
  3. Digital boards - submit content to ds.hfcc.edu
  4. Bulletin boards around campus. HFC-related materials may be posted on campus bulletin boards, as long as they are posted and removed in a timely way.

If you have questions or need help with a communications issue that is not listed here, please send a message to communications@hfcc.edu.