Internal Communications

In the past, managers mainly focused on the communication with customers. Today, managers dedicate the same attention to their employees because they realized that employees are major contributors to a company’s success.
Thus, an important question for companies is how to establish successful relationships with employees through internal communications. This will be the issue of this posting.

Internal Communications and the Changing Environment
The business environment has strongly changed in the last decades. These changes also affect internal communications.
In many ways today’s employees are different from former employees. Today’s employees obey modern values, they are more knowledgeable, and they have higher expectations of their careers. Modern employees have the skills and the expectation to be increasingly engaged in their company’s vision and strategy. Managers need to recognize that they should provide information to employee and that they should listen to what their employees have to say. By doing this, employees will be able to contribute all their strength to their company’s achievement of its goals.
Besides the employees, also the workplace has changed dramatically during the last decades; tighter staffing, longer hours, greater workloads, and more emphasis on performance are the norm. The increasing number of layoffs (often a consequence of outsourcing) has caused great uncertainty among the workforce.
Companies have to adapt their internal communications to the changing environment in order to recruit and retain the best talent. A forecast of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects a labor shortage of 5 to 10 million by 2010. Obviously, this environment will make it very hard to recruit and retain skilled workers. Companies better should prepare themselves for this situation by establishing good internal communications.

Organizing the Internal Communication Effort
There are some things that should to be done when a company wants to organize its internal communication effort. A first step can be a communication audit. A communication audit can help to determine the employee’s attitudes about a company and can functions as a base to develop goals for effective internal communications. These goals should support the overall mission of the company and reinforce their employee’s beliefs that they are important to the company.
An important question that needs to be answered when a company’s internal communications are organized is where internal communications should report. The answer to the questions depends on the specific situation of a company. However, regardless of where internal communications is positioned in a company’s organizational structure, the company should make sure that internal communicators work closely with external communicators. The messages sent to internal and external constituencies should be consistent. When company’s news becomes open to the public, employees should be informed beforehand.

Implementing an Effective internal Communication Program
Implementing an effective internal communication program is the final step of a organizing a company’s internal communication efforts. Regarding that issue several suggestions can be made:
First of all, it is important to communicate up and down. Organizations should give employees the chance to communicate upward to the management and create a workplace environment in which employees feel free and secure to ask questions and offer advice. The most helpful employee feedback can usually be achieved when a company’s supervisors communicates with employees through informal discussions.
The next suggestion is: Make time for face-to-face meetings. In order to provide employees the opportunity to access senior management, this senior management should hold regular, in-person meetings with as small as possible groups of employees. In these meetings specific problems can be solved and employees can ask questions in an open forum.
Although meeting face-to-face is very important, it is a necessity for companies to communicate online. Intranets make it possible to reach employees easily. For example, corporate news can quickly be sent to a great number of internal constituencies. Furthermore, a corporate intranet can be a platform that gives employees the opportunity to meet and share ideas.
Another suggestion regarding the implementation of an effective internal communication program is to create employee-oriented publications. Often it makes sense to hire a former journalist who writes these publications for the employees.
When a company tries to reach its employees, it should consider that modern ways of communications are visual. An increasing number of companies run their own television studios to communicate with their employees.
As mentioned earlier, companies should align internal and external communication in order to avoid confusion among constituencies. This suggestion also refers to the use of branding. Besides the external branding, a company should also thoroughly create an internal branding strategy (especially, when a company’s identity s in the process of change).
The last suggestion is: Consider the company grapevine. A company grapevine is an informal communications network. Employees use it to talk privately, share the latest anecdotes, and exchange information. A company should consider this informal network when implementing a communication program.

Management’s Role in Internal Communication
A company’s top management is especially important for internal communications because top mangers are a company’s visionaries and its culture carriers. Since all organizational communication starts with them, top managers should work closely with internal communication professionals to make sure that their messages are received and understand by the relevant audience.

Class Discussion and Online Recruitment Activity (02/14/08)
Last week, we had an online chat. In a group of three persons we discussed several questions that dealt with the issue of employee recruitment and retention. We talked about the opportunities of working from home, online recruiting, changes in work related values, the need for companies to adapt to the changing environment, corporate culture, corporate identity, work ethics, and many other issues related to employee recruitment and retention.
Based on the chat, each of us created a to-do list for managers who want to improve their company’s recruitment and retention capabilities. My to-do list was a result of previous literature research, a video called “Generational Divide,” which we found on the Wall Street Journal’s webpage (www.wsj.com/businessinsight), and our online chat. This is the to-do list I created:
1. Create an informal corporate culture if this is possible for your specific business.
2. Build a positive corporate reputation. Be social responsible.
3. Choose an organizational structure that is as flat as possible.
4. Provide the opportunity to work from home.
5. Do a lot of work through team projects.
6. Reward your employees. Do not only use money as reward. Positive feedback is important.
7. Give employees the chance to advance. Provide internal and external training opportunities in order to develop skills.
8. Make sure that employees develop self-confidence.
In class we talked about advantages and disadvantages of communicating via online chat. An advantage is that people who do not like to speak in front of a group (in our case the class) often have fewer problems with communicating via chat. Because they have more time to formulate their ideas, they participate more intensively. This is especially an advantage for international students who often need time to translate their thoughts. In an online chat, they have this time.
A disadvantage is the slow pace of the conversation. An online chat needs too much time to exchange little information. Often person have to wait for another person to write his or her response. If the persons that are communicating via online chat do not use a webcam, confusion can arise whether a person is responding or whether she or he needs more time to respond.

Personal Experiences/ Examples
When I had an internship in a logistics company, I experienced a successful method of organizing internal communications. The company had a suggestion box that was intensively used by the employees. Each employee who had a suggestion could write an
anonymous message and put in into the box. On regular bases, the management conducted discussion meetings with its employees to talk about the collected suggestion. But the suggestions were not the sole purpose of the meetings. The employees were given the opportunity to ask questions and the management shared new company information with the workers. The open communication channels of the company created a positive work climate. The employees liked to work for their company and strived to contribute as much as they could to its success. I think this is a really good example for good internal communication management.
As mentioned earlier, one big issue of our online chat was online recruitment. This topic is becoming increasingly important (see: http://www.indiawebdevelopers.com/articles/internet_recruiting.asp ). As I learned when I applied for an internship in a bank, many companies do not even accept non-electronic applications anymore. It is much easier for companies to handle electronic applications. Electronic applications are fast and convenient, can be replied to easily and do not create as much waste as real paper applications.

Links:
http://www.managementhelp.org/mrktng/org_cmm.htm

http://performance-appraisals.org/Bacalsappraisalarticles/articles/comstrat.htm

http://www.edelman.com/image/insights/content/Edelman_Employee_Communications_Trend_Report.pdf