Engaging Employees through Strategic Communication

Skills, Strategies, and Tactics

Mark Dollins, Jon Stemmle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000461947
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Öffentlichkeitsarbeit

Engaging Employees through Strategic Communication provides a detailed overview of employee communication and its evolution as a tool to drive employee engagement and successful change management.

Approaching the subject with the philosophy that internal audiences are essential to the success of any strategic communication plan and business strategy—particularly as they relate to driving change—Mark Dollins and Jon Stemmle give readers a working knowledge of employee communication strategies, skills, and tactics in ways that prepare students for careers in this rapidly expanding field. Providing the tools necessary to evaluate the impact of successful employee communication campaigns, they put theory and cutting-edge research into action with practical examples and case studies sourced from award-winning entries judged as best-in-class by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), PRWeek, and PRNews.

The book is ideal for undergraduate and graduate students in internal, corporate, or employee communication courses and will be a useful reference for practitioners who want to understand how to carry out effective employee communication engagement and change-management campaigns.

Please visit www.engage-employees.com to learn more about the book and its applications.

1
DEFINING EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATION AND ITS HISTORY

DOI: 10.4324/9781003024118-1

Employee communication is a lot like giving a traveler a map that has 1,000 different paths to get to a destination. It can tell you the shortest and longest routes to get there but won’t tell you where a bridge is out, where there is civil unrest or where there’s road construction—all insights that can impact the journey and what happens when you get there. There are clear pathways to getting there, but the decisions about which path to take, and when, are akin to the multitude of choices that the modern-day employee communicator must make.

Before we dive deep into what employee communication is, we need to define it and discern what makes it different from other forms of communication. Since it’s often included in the broader definition of public relations, we can start there. Glen T. Cameron in the book Public Relations, co-authored with Dennis Wilcox and Bryan H. Reber, defines public relations as “strategic management of competition and conflict for the benefit of one’s own organization—and when possible—also for the benefit of the organization and its various stakeholders or publics.” Similarly, in the book Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management, James Grunig defines public relations (as well as communication management) as the “management of communication between an organization and its publics.”

Although these concepts fit within employee communication, the goals of employee communication are more specific in nature, in both audience and practice, than these overarching concepts. Once considered the sleepy, “unsexy” stepchild of public relations, employee communication increasingly is viewed as a critical enabler of communicator career growth and of business performance. To that end, employee communication—often also called internal communication—is defined by Carole M. Howard in Public Relations Quarterly as “a tool to help achieve your business goals and these days, in many organizations, cultural change goals. After all, changing behavior, or preserving the behavior you want, is what employee communications is all about.”

Future executive and employee communication leaders, and future Chief Communication Officers, will be well served to take note of, and invest in, people, processes and innovation in this rapidly burgeoning discipline. Without it, any communicator is operating without a significant required tool to drive results for any enterprise.

Importantly, employee communication is not a stand-alone communication discipline. It is integrally tied to external-facing communication disciplines such as reputation management, crisis communication and even media relations. In fact, some global companies such as PepsiCo and General Motors, have used the expression “outside in—inside out” to clearly articulate the symbiotic connection between what’s communicated inside and outside any enterprise. Advertising about an organizations’ values—when they don’t reflect employees’ experiences—can lead to internal discord and external embarrassment. Communicating an internal change without assessing impacts on external stakeholders can result in everything from bad press coverage to regulatory or legislative issues.

While the disciplines and sophistication of employee communication practices can vary widely for organizations and practitioners, the function most commonly produces and delivers messages and campaigns on behalf of management, facilitates multi-directional dialogue, develops the communication skills of the organization’s participants and measures the impact of its efforts. For some enterprises, “internal communication” could include not only employees but also contractors, tenants and government or municipal professionals—such as police, security and firefighters. Although not on the direct payroll as employees, those workers can play critical roles in supporting the organization’s mission and business objectives and are considered to be important internal stakeholders.

The stakes are high for any organization to attract, retain and develop employees who can be the best problem solvers, innovators and executors of any organization’s agenda. And, just as important, organizations are recognizing that keeping hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of employees engaged in their work and connected to the mission and vision of the enterprise can make or break their success.

The floodgates have opened, both for the need for strategic workforce communication and for the training of people who have the communication skills to do that work.

Based on this, we can view the world of employee communication as an ecosystem. In this book, this ecosystem model (see Figure 1.1) will be used to explore the facets and provide the resources needed to understand and succeed in this field.

FIGURE 1.1 The employee communication ecosystem and how each chapter in this book fits within the model.

We begin in Chapter 1 with a dive into the definition of employee communication as well as the origins and history of the profession. This includes articulating the value it delivers to organizations (for-profit, not-for-profit) and providing an overview of the skills or competencies required to be effective with this communication discipline. We’ll also broadly introduce perspectives about the influence and interdependency of other communication disciplines on how it is deployed in an organization and how other influences (such as reporting relationship, budget and other resources and team structure) drive its influence in any organization. These elements are all part of the ecosystem related to business actions, strategies or initiatives employee communicators pursue as they assess the state of their organization and begin the path to determine what should be done moving forward.

Chapter 2 goes into the critical idea of what makes employee communication strategic. Apart from the tools and skills required for effective employee communication, making those efforts truly strategic demands unique, relevant insights from stakeholders, clarity on success measures, creative ideas and clear messaging that sticks. The idea of strategy weaves its way into various parts of the ecosystem, from the business actions, strategies or initiatives to the communication strategy to the communication and business outcomes. This chapter also will acknowledge the importance of flexibility and creativity in addressing internal and external influences that invariably drive the ability to execute a strategy and still deliver intended results.

While some skill sets for employee communication are consistent with other externally focused disciplines, in Chapter 3 we also explore competencies that are unique to employee communication professionals and provide insights into how internal and external communication skill sets ultimately produce the most effective employee communicators. Within the ecosystem, this fits under business actions, strategies and initiatives as the need for some skill sets, particularly those with social media, are evolving quickly with internal stakeholders. Additionally, this chapter will highlight how those skill sets, and an increasing knowledge of technology platforms, will be a key enabler of career growth in this space.

Whether an organization is for profit or not, it’s critical that any communication effort to “internal stakeholders” deliver on expected results for the enterprise. In Chapter 4, we answer the question of how to measure the impact of employee communication. Measurement comes up toward the end of the ecosystem cycle, related to communication feedback, analytics and reporting, and communication and business outcomes, related to actions and adjustments. This includes metrics such as awareness, understanding and belief as content-based metrics; digital metrics that, in many cases, mirror external social media metrics; and human resources (HR)-based metrics that reflect how internal communication efforts move the dial on performance.

Picking up from the broad-brush introduction in the first chapter, Chapter 5 goes more in-depth about what influences the discipline and how. This includes where the employee communication group reports and how that influences how it is managed, and how it interacts with other communication disciplines should be more than a check-the-box activity. This chapter will present insights on the influences of functions such as HR, Marketing and Legal can have on how employee communication is managed and relates to the business actions, strategies or initiatives in the ecosystem. The interactivity and interdependencies with other communication functions are equally critical, and we will introduce the concept of the increasingly invisible wall between internal and external communication and the opportunities and risks that this particular dynamic can make available.

Communicating internally in an ethical way, and in compliance with laws across the globe, isn’t negotiable—it’s table stakes. In Chapter 6, we will cover the increasing need for ethical practices in transparency and candor when communicating with employees. More recent examples of employee activism (such as Google’s global employee walk out over management’s handling of sexual misconduct in the management ranks) highlight why doing the business the right way—and communicating effectively—has significant consequences for internal stakeholders as well as customers and shareholders. Ethics plays a significant role in the ecosystem with how a communication plan is created and executed.

In Chapter 7, we discuss how one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to employee engagement. Empowering middle and senior leaders, and other key influencers, to drive change with communications increasingly is a strategy that must be deployed for effective engagement strategies. In this chapter, we will provide an overview of how to segment internal stakeholders, how to assess the unique needs of each cohort and how to build measurement and reporting that will drive effective execution. This step looms large early in the ecosystem model related to the communication goals and employee segment insights as well as the overall communication strategy.

The best-laid plans and best-prepared content won’t work if they don’t reach their intended internal audiences. In Chapter 8, we’ll explore the critical partnership needed between communicators, information technology (IT) function leaders, HR and Legal to examine everything from technology limitations to governance and capital investments to reach increasingly mobile and diverse employee bases. This focus on working together as an organization factors strongly into the ecosystem related to the communication goals and employee segment insights. This is because assumptions about hitting the “send” or “post” button—when it comes to reaching employees—often are met with the harsh reality of issues with technology or policies that needed to be reviewed. We introduce ways of auditing existing channels, assessing needs for new channels—before a crisis emerges, and a critical capability is not available.

The C-Suite’s influence through communications with internal stakeholders is among the strongest that any enterprise has and it is explored in Chapter 9. While Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) clearly must address a wide range of external and internal stakeholders in running their organizations, the responsibility for advising on strategy, messaging, tone, feedback and channel delivery falls most often with the employee communication leader. In the ecosystem model, we explore how employee communication professionals shape the CEO and C-Suite’s internal communication agenda related to the communication goals and employee segment insights, as well as the communication strategy overall. We’ll also look at how employee communicators can earn the role of trusted advisor while representing the voice—and communication needs—of the employee.

The rapid explosion of Change Management Officers (CMOs) in organizations across the globe is proof positive that the discipline of managing change is here to stay. That’s why change management communication is the focus of Chapter 10. Often housed in the HR function, HR leaders are tasked with enabling management to drive large-scale change agendas, including the ecosystem elements related to the communication strategy, planning and plan execution. The key enabler of success is a comprehensive change management communication discipline. HR increasingly is looking to Communication functions to supply that expertise. Understanding change management models such as Prosci’s ADKAR (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement) presents communicators with unique opportunities to build strategies, channels and content, and this chapter will provide a clear view of how to align communications with change strategies.

Although change management may sound uninspiring to many, through effective storytelling—a core communications competency—it can make the difference between broadcasting an idea and empowering employees to live its promise. In Chapter 11, we introduce the critical purpose of a master narrative, the importance of proof points/smaller stories to continue moving the organization and help it see progress in the story, and the skill base that leaders must develop to translate a corporate journey credibly and transparently into motivation. Storytelling factors into various phases of the ecosystem, from the very start with the organizational purpose, mission and values to the communication strategy, planning and plan execution.

Unlike the early days of employee communication—which deployed static/ broadcast media and methodologies—contemporary employee communication work has evolved to much more dynamic models. In Chapter 12, we explore why, and how, today’s successful employee communication capabilities are reliant on constant feedback loops, multi-directional communication models, measurement, analytics and reporting. At the same time, we introduce the importance of traditional communication competencies in helping communicators balance both the art and science of communication to internal stakeholders. We illustrate how this evolving discipline is more directly being deployed to business drivers such as organizational health and employee engagement, as well as how it fits into the ecosystem segment related to communication strategy.

While change management and general employee engagement in business priorities are big focus areas for employee communicators, there are several more areas that are increasingly engaging professionals in this space that are explored in Chapter 13. From diversity, equity and inclusion, to focused roles ...