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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Internal communications thought leaders on the value of the employee communications function

Internal communications thought leaders on the value of the employee communications function

Internal Communications Thought Leaders

I recently posted a vigorous rationale for maintaining a discrete internal communications function as a response to a growing chorus of voices who have deemed employee communications antiquated and irrelevant. As I prepared that post, I also reached out to some of the smartest people I know in the internal communications space for their own thoughts. Here’s what they had to say.

Brad Whitworth

Brad Whitworth, ABC, IABC FellowBrad currently works as a senior communication and marketing manager at Cisco Systems, but he has a long history in employee communications. When we met, he was a senior member of Hewlett Packard’s legendary internal communications team. He also ran internal communications for the California State Auto Association and for PeopleSoft. Brad has served as president of the International Association of Business Communicators, where he is accredited and a Fellow. Visit Brad’s LikedIn profile.

Many of our traditional approaches to employee communication — whether it’s town hall meetings, newsletters, emails, videos, magazines, bulletin boards, you name it — are being pushed aside by channels that focus more on collaboration and sharing information. The move away from traditional internal communication vehicles is one sign of a fundamental shift that is taking place. It’s a transformation that goes far beyond changing channels.  What many communicators (and their bosses) fail to acknowledge is that we’re in the middle of a power shift in communications away from a single source of truth.

For the longest time, employee communication programs were built around the simple premise that management knew more about anything and everything than employees. We built communication models around that concept. We had to find ways to get information from leaders’ heads into the hands and minds of all employees. We saw the employee as a blank slate upon which we could scribe all the key messages that they would need to know to be productive and happy employees. We would cascade messages through layers of leaders, we would use mass-media approaches to insure that everyone got the same message at the same time. It was predominantly a top-down model with some relatively feeble efforts to make it participative and two-way. Face it, our communication resources were usually stretched so thin that we had to rely on a one-size-fits-all approach. And we all know that one size does not fit all when it comes to hats, t-shirts or communication.

To be fair, the system that some have declared “dead” today worked fairly well when the only channels of communication to the work force were owned and operated by internal communicators.  In the face of increased competition (more sources of information and many more ways to get that information), the model started to fall apart. And technology is responsible for both dismantling the old model and helping shape new ones.

With the relentless march of technology out of the glass-enclosed corporate computer room, over employees’ desks and into their purses and pockets, we’ve now given our workforces even more powerful tools than communicators had back in the day. And as these tools have landed in the hands of the people who actually can use them to increase their own productivity, all sorts of new ways to share information have popped up. We have high-definition video cameras in smartphones everywhere in the organization. In the past, the only people who had access to broadcast-quality cameras were in the corporate TV studios. And those communication professionals could spend weeks producing a video for an employee audience. Scripted, produced, edited, polished and often effective. Of course, it was a challenge getting every employee in front of a screen to see the video. 

That’s all changed. In fact,  these new tools, channels and collaborative approaches have taken over organizations (and our personal lives) at a pace that’s faster than most communicators, IT organizations and corporate leaders can manage.

If anything is dead today, it’s the concept of central control. Internal communications teams can no longer “control” communication. I’m not sure that they ever did, but that’s another story.

That doesn’t mean the function or its need is dead. It’s merely morphed. I’ve told many internal communicators that their new role is to create an appropriate communication environment for their organization, and to make sure that all employees — from senior leaders to rank and file — know how and when to use it. Effective internal communications is now everyone’s job. And it’s our job to make sure that the system works for all to help the organization and its employees accomplish their goals.

Roger D’Aprix

Roger D'Aprix, ABC, IABC FellowRoger is something of a legend in internal communications circles, having championed proactive communication for decades. (I met him when my boss brought him in to speak to the internal communications team at ARCO in the late 1970s.) Roger has written some of the most important internal communications texts, including “Communicating for Change: Connecting the Workplace with the Marketplace” and “The Credible Company: Communicating with a Skeptical Workforce.” Roger led internal communication at Xdrox for 13 years beefore becoming a VP at the consulting firm Towers Perrin, then a principal at Mercer HR Consulting. He currently advises the leadership at ROI Communication. Roger is an IABC Fellow. Visit Roger’s LinkedIn profile.

BBC Internal Communications director Lucy Adams, who sees her former function as an anachronism to be deep-sixed by today’s organizations, inadvertently offers the precise argument against her assertion. She says, the “knowledge-based economy will rely heavily on employees making a conscious choice to give their creativity and their knowledge to their employers.”

Anyone who knows anything about today’s workforce knows two things: first, winning such conscious choices from the majority is a difficult task that requires the truth and nothing but the truth. Such unvarnished truth is the key to winning workforce innovation and competitiveness in a global economy. Second, you don’t earn that conscious choice without an equally conscious, fully strategized, ongoing process dedicated to that goal . That takes the effort and energy of leaders at all levels who are advised by knowledgeable staff, including dedicated, expert internal communication pros who understand what it takes.

To put that essential effort in the hands of communication people charged to persuade the public that all is right with the world is like asking a magician to give up his props. In the first case, the pretty lady actually gets sawed in half. In the second, the audience will completely reject any message that treats them like just another public without a comparable reality.

Angela Sinickas

Angela Sinickas, ABC, IABC FellowAngela is one of the most important thought leaders globally when it comes to measuring the business impact of internal communication. She has had her own practice for 15 years, before which she worked in employee communication strategy and measurement as a communication practice leader at Mercer HR Consulting; she also spent time as a communication unit leader with Hewitt. She also has corporate experience, running communications as a VP for Secomerica. When I met her, Angela managed internal communications for the Chicago Tribune Company. She is accredited by IABC and is an IABC Fellow. Visit Angela’s LinkedIn profile.

My surveys show that a lot of employees say they get too many emails; however, email is one of the most preferred sources on a great many company topics. And the survey data show that outside mass media are sometimes a current source of information for a significant number of employees on topics like the brand, industry news and customer satisfaction, but they are preferred as a source by very few. Similarly, the Edelman trust research shows that employees are also seen as a credible and trusted source by each other. However, whenever other employees are listed as a current source for a significant number of employees, far fewer say they prefer other employees as a source for new information. Internal social media have rarely been chosen as a preferred information source so far. I think that’s because it’s an opt-in channel so not everyone learns information at the same time, resulting in the few people who do see new information there telling other people about it before they hear about it from an official source, so in essence they learn about it through the grapevine. I find that social media are more effective for helping shape employee opinions about news, not for transmitting the news itself.

I found by examining my survey database that organizations that have at least one full-time communicator have employees who are much better informed on company topics. Once the companies without a dedicated communicator establish a full-time function, their information levels improve 20% or more within just a year or two.

On the “cascade,” if you mean that a topic like strategy is discussed at all job levels, I agree. However, my data show that companies who purposely use the cascade to transmit new information have lower levels of information on those topics than companies that push the information to everyone at once and then discuss them later.

Jim Shaffer

Jim Shaffer, IABC FellowJim, principal of The Jim Shaffer Group, focuses on communication as a driver to improving business performance and managing change. His book, The Leadership Solution, has been recognized by a number of CEOs as an invaluable resource and a “must-have” business book on leadership, change, and communication. Jim was a principal and vice president at Towers Perrin for 20 years before establishing his own firm. Jim, an IABC Fellow, is an early promponent of open-book management. Visit Jim’s LinkedIn profile.

I’m from the structure-follows-strategy school. Before discussing where internal communication should reside, it’s important to understand how it’s going to add more value by shifting its focus from activities to results—from outputs to outcomes.

Internal communication functions in most organizations are cost centers. They need to become value creators. They can become value creators by assuming three roles that will make them more relevant.

  • Move from a news and information distribution business to one that builds information rich environments where people have the information they need when they need it to perform at their peak.
  • Identify and eliminate root causes of communication breakdowns that prevent people from improving business results. The upside should be improvements in quality, service, costs, sales, productivity and safety at a cost that’s less than the gains created.
  • Build leaders’ communication capabilities from the CEO to the first line leader. The internal communication function should reduce the amount that it fishes for the leaders and increase the amount that it teaches leaders to fish.

Where it resides situational. Important criteria include where it can do best by the ultimate customer and where it can get the care and feeding needed to continually increase value to the enterprise.

Sharon McIntosh

Sharon McIntoshWhen Sharon was VP of internal communications at PepsiCo, she was one of my all-time favorite clients (as she was in her previous job, developing and running the intranet for Sears). She left PepsiCo recently to start AndThen Communications, a consulting practice. Over the course of her career, Sharon also was director of User Experience for Greatindoors.com, and a communication manager for Waste Management. Visit Sharon’s LinkedIn profile.

Is internal communications dead? Not yet. Is it in the middle of a rebirth? Perhaps. One of the big trends I’m seeing is company transformations. In fact, every one of my clients has used the term “transformation” in the past year.  Technology is advancing; consumers are raising their expectations; and Millennials are altering the workforce. As a result, companies are changing systems, structure and processes, often simultaneously and at head-spinning speed.

Sometimes it feels even change is changing.

Yet, as much as this transformation is required to operate successfully in the future, companies aren’t good at it. According to McKinsey, 70% of company transformations fail. Why? The number one reason is that employees resist change, followed by managers not modeling the new behaviors. This type of failure presents new opportunities for internal communications. We need to be sitting at the table with leadership, Human Resources, Operations and the other functions to collectively lead employees and managers through this change. Unless we step up, be strategic and measure our results during this tumultuous time, others will continue predict our demise. Because transformation isn’t happening exclusively to our companies – it’s also happening to us.

Comments
  • 1.I have to say my feeling on the role of the internal communications function is a bit of a mix of all of these opinions.

    External Vs. Internal
    A formal internal communications function – whether centralized or decentralized, depending on the organization – is key to providing a consistent voice and message to employees. Working hand-in-hand with external communicators is an essential part of this endeavor, to ensure, again, a consistency between external and internal messages.

    The Role of Social Media
    Recognizing that technology and how we communicate with one another has changed and continues to change is another key to the success of any internal communications program. Employees have a voice outside of the office, and they expect the same inside. Enabling them to share that voice not only empowers them, it can ultimately move the Company strategy forward. To make this work to everyone’s benefit, however, the role of the moderator is crucial – bringing it back to the internal communications function.

    The Cascade
    A cascaded message is only as good as the messenger. With more and more being placed on functional and business leaders, the role of the internal communicator is more critical than ever, to ensure the message is heard, understood and actionable, whatever that message may be.

    Alicia DiGennaro | February 2015 | Connecticut

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