Internal Communications

A Manual for Practitioners

Liam FitzPatrick, Klavs Valskov

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780749469337
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

Get internal communications right in your organization and the benefits are clear: motivated staff, better financial performance, a strong external reputation and delighted customers are just a few of the reasons why getting your message over to staff effectively matters. Internal Communications explores what good practice in internal communications looks like, providing a no-nonsense, step-by-step approach to devising an internal communications strategy.Written by experts with extensive experience as consultants and in-house leaders in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors, Internal Communications covers how to build an internal communications team and plan; devise messages and decide which channels to use; work with line managers and senior leaders; research and evaluate internal communications and support change within an organization.Supported by easy to follow models, example explanations of the core theory, and case studies, it provides students and internal communicators alike with the practical tools and advice they need to make a difference in an organization. The book is also supported by online resources, including slides for lecturers.

01

What internal communication is and why it matters

What you will learn from this chapter

We believe that internal or employee communication is now a widely accepted part of any organization. Much has changed in a short space of time as leaders around the world have come to acknowledge that good communication is part of the secret of success for any organization.

Once upon a time, talking to employees was not really something that concerned anyone much outside the personnel department and may have been seen as the preserve of trade unions. Now, we argue, communication is a well-established feature of modern organizations. But we argue that the role of the internal communication effort can be much more than a glorified postal service or town crier. At the heart of this chapter and this book is the belief that internal communication should be about adding value to the core mission of the business or project that it supports. If you read nothing else in this book remember this: internal communication is not about making noise for the sake of it – as a maturing profession we have the responsibility to make a difference and share responsibility for the strategic goals of our employers.

In this chapter we take a look at the recent history of the profession and practice. Then we introduce the idea that there are five generic purposes to internal communication. Finally we raise the issue of ethics – the concern of a professional.

Internal communication is coming of age

The word has finally got out that successful organizations communicate with their employees. It has been a while in coming, but over the last 20 years, discussion about internal communication (IC) has moved from its role in the context of industrial relations¹ to its importance in the CEO’s armoury of leadership skills.^2,3 We have come a long way from the world described by Roger D’Aprix in 1982⁴ where IC suffered from poor budgets, a lack of professionalism and a short-sighted approach.

As this journey has unfolded we have seen the evolution of a professional class of internal communicators and the growth of a new category of consultancy. There have been turf wars about where IC should sit within an organization: is its natural home inside marketing or HR or perhaps as an integrated part of the CEO’s front office?

Whatever the right answer is, the question would be irrelevant without the widespread acceptance that good IC is essential for the health of every organization – be that in the private, public or voluntary sectors. Once, the challenge was to find a senior manager who thought there was a need for a dedicated IC team – now these senior managers are crying out for help.

Less and less often it seems that IC managers need evidence to justify their existence, although there is quite a lot around if you care to look. A study in the United Kingdom into employee engagement was awash with data⁵ and consultants Towers Watson have done some impressive work looking at the links between good communication and business performance.⁶ Other writers point to benefits such as lower costs, fewer industrial disputes, more innovation, quality improvements, reduced absenteeism and generally higher productivity.⁷

Once, ‘Internal Communication Manager’ was the title you gave a loyal and blameless employee nearing retirement when you wanted to put him or her out to grass. Now, leaders can call on the support of an army of strategically-minded professionals who have spent years developing and refining the ability to translate business strategies into meaningful concepts for employees.

Once, IC was all about the media: company magazines, newspapers and even, in large corporations, sponsored films. Now practitioners are preoccupied with messages and providing counsel to leaders on their internal profile, progress on strategy implementation and running large-scale engagement campaigns based on real insight.

Once, belief in the power of good IC was the province of a few zealots. Now it seems close to becoming orthodoxy. Standing in its way is a simple challenge. Leaders know that good IC matters – but they don’t always know what good looks like. This is a massive opportunity for our profession and is what is behind our urge to write this book.

Definitions

Before we start we should clear up a few things with a couple of definitions.

Definitions matter for a number of reasons. Not least, we still remember our university lecturers challenging us to always start by defining our terms.

We are aware that we operate in a field that is rich with confusion. There is very little agreement in our craft about what different things mean, not just among practitioners but among the people with whom we work. And academics seem as confused. Multiple learned articles on the subject seem to spend ages wrestling with definitions before ending disappointingly with a call for further research.

In real life, confusion about communication is a convenient social device. We all love to blame everything on poor communication because the alternative may be to admit that we disagree with someone else or find their opinions offensive. Thus, failures in communication make a great all-purpose excuse when employees reject management attempts to cut wages, double hours and make life generally miserable.

A communication professional needs to get a few things straight otherwise we’ll be forever apologizing for things that are not our fault or having strange conversations with friends who think we’re experts in IT and telecoms or colleagues who think of us as secretaries for the executives.

So here are some semi-definitions which we will try to follow throughout the rest of this book.

Organizational communication

When friends moan about the colleagues who sit three cubicles away but never actually tell them important things, or you hear tales of whole departments not sharing vital information with each other, that is probably within the realm of organizational communication.

Communication is the day-to-day lifeblood of any organization. Without communication (and probably coffee) your organization would grind to a halt. Orders wouldn’t be processed, salaries wouldn’t be paid and it would be even more difficult to get the IT helpdesk to understand that you need help.⁸ Some organizations are very effective at communication and others are dreadful. There are whole books written on the subject and they make fascinating reading.⁹

However, is organizational communication the concern of the IC manager?

In most cases the answer is no. Everyone who comes to work is responsible for the communications they send to their co-workers. If people don’t want to share information or are careless about the quality of their communications, we would argue that this is not the concern of the IC function. In the same way that IT are not responsible for your e-mail mistakes and the switchboard can’t stop you being rude on the telephone, the IC team is not responsible for the failings of its colleagues – in general.

On the other hand, misunderstandings or poor interpersonal communication are often the result of people having different views of the world. If you think the most important thing in your workplace is the Christmas raffle and your colleague feels that customer service matters most you may discover a certain friction in your relationships.

Internal communication can help here. Writers such as Quirke¹⁰ talk about ‘connections’ and other writers¹¹ mention integration as an important part of the discipline. Although the challenge of getting everyone talking nicely to everyone else is probably beyond the ability of a single team, we can help ensure that people have the tools to collaborate or at least share the same view of the world.

However, this book is mostly not about organizational communication. It is about making people have a shared context, see things in the same light and work in an engaged way together towards a common purpose.

Internal communication

Internal (or employee) communication is concerned with sharing information, building understanding, creating excitement and commitment and, ideally, achieving a desirable result. A popular academic definition from a standard textbook goes like this:

The planned use of communication actions to systematically influence the knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of current employees.¹²

The main point that comes up when writing a definition is that internal (or employee) communication is:

• Planned – ie this is not a haphazard or accidental process.
• Systematic – ie it is a process that applies some science and discipline.
• About influence – ie employees can’t always be forced to do things: they have a choice about what they do and how well they do it so they have to be persuaded.
• More than ‘telling’ – ie although awareness is an essential starting point for any communications campaign, we are also concerned with affecting attitudes and behaviours. Later we will explore what it means to win over ‘heads, hearts and hands’. These are the essentials of communications planning, reflecting the widespread belief that professional communication advisers are not in the business of making noise for the sake of it.
• Multi-disciplinary – it is difficult to avoid the fact that information alone is not a strong driver of behaviour in the workplace. Communicators expect to work closely with colleagues across their organization to ensure that staff are trained, rewarded, motivated and resourced to do the job being asked of them. We need to understand that we’re only one of the cogs in the wheel and therefore we need to be excellent in working with colleagues in other teams to be successful.

You will see that we have been using the terms employee communication and internal communication interchangeably. Employee communication is more widely used in North America and internal communication is used elsewhere, but we do not think there is much difference between the two. We will mainly be using internal communication or ‘IC’ in this book and only refer to employee communication for stylistic reasons.

Employee engagement

You will hear the term ‘employee engagement’ thrown around a lot. This is a tricky one and we tend to avoid it because it can be taken to mean so many different things that it is often unhelpful. You will hear people talk about communications that are engaging when they mean arresting or eye-catching. Other people will talk about employee engagement as shorthand for reducing absenteeism or staff turnover while other people use it when they are talk...