Internal Communications in Context

Internal communication (IC) is a specialism within the broad discipline of public relations that is gaining increasing interest among practitioners, having once been seen as a minor area of importance. Professionals often saw IC as a box only to be ticked as they accumulated experience on the way up in their career. Commonly, managing messages for workers was a role that was given to a colleague at the end of their career; a secondment for a blameless and loyal but ineffectual manager.

IC is not new. Ever since humans have formed organisations there has been a need to share information and ideas about strategy. A Roman soldier serving on the remote northern border of the empire would need to understand the importance of his duty on Hadrian’s Wall. A Chinese bureaucrat of the Xin dynasty would have had to have an insight into the priorities of the Emperor.

As societies industrialised, organisations saw a need to communicate with their workforces in large numbers. Messages about health and safety or pay and performance needed to be shared and explained. By the middle of the twentieth century, large organisations often had quite sophisticated communication operations involving newspapers, magazines, film units and recognition schemes. Employee suggestion programmes and letters pages in media provided some level of interaction.

Many of these internal publications took a fiercely independent editorial line reflecting the journalistic instincts of many profesionals. The aim of internal communication managers was commonly to manage credible channels through which upper management shared news with staff. A degree of independence provided some credibility.

In the last 25 years things have changed. Shifts in industrial relations and attitudes towards workplace relations (Sparrow and Cooper 2003) have led employers to think about how they communicate with their employees. Organisational success is as much about the efficient deployment and motivation of labour as it is about cash flows, capital and sales. Alongside the reinvention of ‘Personnel’ as ‘Human Resources’, questions have been asked about how to talk to staff, and about the relationship between effective communication and organisational effectiveness.

Recently, senior managers have become more aware of their responsibilities as communicators. In the 1980s, discussion about employee communication was framed in terms of union relationships (Bland 1980: 37). The days are gone when the CEO’s only connection with frontline staff was limited to the occasional factory visit and the Christmas message. Today, leaders expect to be talking with employees on a continual basis and are willing to pay high salaries for skilled communication specialists (MacLeod and Clarke 2009).

As IC has become more important as a specialism, greater thought has been given to good practice, evaluation and the skills of those who practise it. It has spawned its own network of specialist suppliers, consultants, publishers and recruiters.

Defining the Practice

Any discussion of IC can quickly become confused for a number of reasons. Everyone communicates at work. People talk to their friends and colleagues about work, share opinions towards the boss or the departments on the next floor and about what was on the TV last night. Hargie and Tourish (2004: 5) cite Mintzberg who observed that a manager does not break off from working to communicate – communication is the essence of a manager’s work. In the modern world, this is probably true of a great many jobs, regardless of status or hierarchy.

It is therefore always useful to distinguish between ‘organisational communications’ (Conrad and Poole 2011: 28) – the day-to-day intercourse that takes place in the workplace between colleagues as part of their regular work – and the processes by which an organisation discusses context, news, plans and performance with its people.

Systems thinkers (Conrad and Poole 2011: 30) offer some explanation why this is a challenge for IC people. Essentially, organisations are defined by the relationships that they generate. If there were no communication in a workplace, one might argue that that organisation would cease to exist, let alone operate efficiently. Practitioners can find themselves drawn into the challenges of helping individuals manage their relationships with colleagues if they are not sufficiently clear about the boundary of their role.

A wide range of terms are used to describe the concepts underpinning IC (Welch and Jackson 2007: 177). For example, ‘engagement’ seems to be used to mean interested, committed or merely present, depending on who is using it, and includes a wide range of concepts (Bridger 2015: 4).

Anyone working in IC will be familiar with the belief that all problems are communication problems. Often it is easier to pretend that a workplace issue is simply a matter of misunderstanding. Managers can happily ascribe dissatisfaction with pay, a poor safety record, resistance to change or a broken IT system to ‘communication failure’ (Downs and Allyson 2004: 2). Clearly, most workplace challenges have a communication component somewhere but successful IC professionals tend to be adept at spotting what they can fix and what is the proper responsibility of other functions or professions.

IC is here defined as an organisation’s managed communication system, where employees are regarded as a public or stakeholder group with the intention of creating common understanding and commitment towards defined goals. This draws on the work of Yeomans (Tench and Yeomans 2013: 252) but adds an emphasis on outcomes or results. It assumes that IC is a mutual process – not a one-directional broadcast of management information. While it is possible, in other PR specialisms, to attempt to practise communications that Grunig and Hunt (1984) would describe as press agentry or asymmetrical, there is little point in anything but two-way internal communication. This definition also assumes that there is an objective for communication – it’s not about making internal noise for the sake of it.

In North America, employee communication seems to be the preferred term for what is referred to in Europe as IC. IC is used because it reflects the fact that not everyone who works for an organisation is an employee; many workplaces are populated by volunteers, employees of partner organisations or visiting contractors.

HR or PR?

As IC teams have evolved, they have often found themselves at the centre of a turf battle between PR and HR. It is an enduring debate that touches on some important questions.

Most significant is the question of how PR adds value to an organisation. Does PR exist purely to manage an organisation’s reputation or does the discipline have a wider remit?

If an organisation subscribes to a press agentry model (Grunig and Hunt 1984) of PR then it might be argued that an IC function can add more value if it is aligned with HR or another function. IC has much more to contribute to a modern organisation than simply acting as a broadcast news service. An IC function that is part of a human relations approach to management, where its remit is to help people stay and perform better at work, will display much of the mindset associated with Grunig’s two-way symmetrical model.

Why Bother with Internal Communication?

PR practitioners often approach IC from the standpoint of thinking about external reputation. Some practitioners see staff as a reputational risk. Anyone who has watched the news and seen workers interviewed at the factory gates following a difficult announcement will know the importance of getting the right message to staff. Some caution is needed in quoting exact claims about the likely return on investment to be had from spending on IC – it is very hard to isolate the factors that drive growth or profitability. However, it is obvious that organisations that communicate well and have staff focused on the same results tend to perform well to some extent or another.

It is also clear that IC is not a universal prescription for organisational success. Organisations have to be properly run, led, resourced and have the right products or services to satisfy their stakeholders. If an organisation has serious weaknesses in these and many other areas, no amount of inspired IC is going to save it.

So, IC potentially can help an organisation in a number of ways (FitzPatrick et al. 2014: 9):

• Legal compliance
• Making people want to stay
• Supporting a community and collaboration
• Helping people do the right thing
• Creating advocates
• Supporting major change.

Figure 13.1 Why bother with IC?

Meeting Legal Obligations

In most jurisdictions around the world there are specific obligations placed upon employers to communicate with their employees. At the most basic there are normally requirements to educate employees about safety rules, and labour law commonly entitles staff to be informed about things such as their terms of employment, rights of redress during disputes and disciplinary procedures.

European law also guarantees workers’ rights to be consulted over issues such as safety, the transfer of jobs, site closures and job losses. In some countries, national law gives employees a very involved role in business planning during difficult times and, in others, workers are represented as voting members on the supervisory boards of businesses.

In addition, European Union directives have enshrined continuing rights for employees to be informed and consulted about strategy and plans (EU Framework Directive 2002/14/EC).

In practice, it is the legal obligation to consult employees in hard times that is probably the greatest concern for the IC manager. The IC function is always the last stop in the process before a message is published and so the IC manager should know enough about local employment law to be able to spot when an embarrassing or costly mistake is about to be made.

This might, for example in the UK, include knowing the minimum period for consultation before redundancies can be made, or understanding workers’ rights to privacy. Additional regulations apply in specific sectors or situations such as when a company is listed on a stock exchange; normally significant announcements have to be made to financial markets before anyone else, including employees (see also Chapter 14).

Retaining Good People

A consistent theme in writing about human resources is the cost of employee turnover (the number of staff joining and leaving an organisation) and the value of employee commitment. The costs of finding good team members, training them and avoiding service or production gaps are considerable (McLeod and Clarke 2009: 16). Organisations normally aim for a level of stability in their workforces and try to avoid unplanned resignations. Holding on to experienced and skilled people comes up time and time again in surveys of what concerns senior managers (PriceWaterhouse Coopers 2010) and HR people.

Even at times of high unemployment, employers can struggle to keep the right people – staff with skills and commitment. While high unemployment, good salaries and good working conditions are supposed to go a long way towards discouraging staff from leaving, the most powerful reasons for staying are more emotional – and emotional factors rely heavily on good communications (Russo 2010: 147).

IC teams are involved in painting a compelling vision of the organisation’s direction, generating excitement about its objectives and achievements and celebrating people who are making a difference. Hertzberg in the 1960s suggested that relationships with supervisors or peers are significant motivating factors for employees. Good salaries or added benefits only matter when they do not live up to expectations. People will be encouraged to work harder by their membership of a work group (Robertson in Wright 2009: 150).

The concept of the psychological contract is often used to explain what makes employees stay and work harder. Most people, in return for working hard, expect their employer to deliver unstated obligations such as training, opportunities for promotion or even small perks such as a few extra hours off at the end of a very busy week. Crucially, the relationship relies on mutual trust – if people don’t believe that their boss is going to be grateful when they have made an extra effort, they are probably less likely to do anything out of the ordinary (Goudge 2006: 28).

While much of the psychological contract is shaped by personal relationships between an employee and his or her supervisor, communication has a clear role to play in creating a climate of trust and ensuring that people have reasonable expectations of how they will be treated by the organisation.

Gallup (Hartner et al. 2002: 271) have developed an employee satisfaction survey that asks just 12 questions to test levels of motivation in any given workplace. Of the 12 indicators, at least five are directly related to communication behaviours:

• knowing what is expected of me at work;
• receiving recognition or praise regularly;
• having your opinions taken seriously;
• understanding the overall mission well enough to see your own job as important;
• having regular opportunities to discuss progress.

Work by the Institute of Employment Studies (Robinson et al. 2004) has also highlighted the important role that communication plays in creating an engaged or committed workforce. In particular, their research stresses the need for employees to feel that they are listened to at work, and have the chance to speak up on issues that they think are important. These are things that the IC team should facilitate.

This theme was also developed in a UK study entitled Engaging for Success (MacLeod and Clarke 2009) that identified that staff who feel a high level of commitment to their employer work harder and are more productive. In short, communication has a vital role in making employees feel good about the organisations where they work.

IC managers support this role in a number of ways. They provide context around what the organisation is trying to achieve, they ensure that individual and collective achievements are celebrated in news stories in internal publications or though awards ceremonies and they provide opportunities for colleagues to come together socially or during activities such as charity or CSR campaigns.

Building a Collaborative Community

Closely allied to the need to retain people is the need to build a community of people who work together towards common goals. Humans are social animals and being part of a collective enterprise is a powerful psychological motivator for most (Sparrow and Cooper 2012: 192).

As organisations become more complex, leaders are realising that it is no longer acceptable to allow people to work in tightly defined boxes. Colleagues working in entirely separate parts of a company may hold answers to each other’s problems without realising it. IC managers have always had a large part to play in creating a sense of community. This can be as simple as helping to organise a summer party or as significant as helping to develop and explain an overall business strategy. Much effort is invested in explaining the shape of organisations or the purpose of different teams. It is common to see communication around purpose or the impact an organisation wishes to have in the world. These are all efforts to create a shared connection between people in the workplace with the ambition of making sure they work together rather than live in fragments.

IC teams are also involved in managing tools or channels that allow colleagues to raise questions that they hope their peers might be able to answer. An engineer might be wrestling with a technical problem, a sales person might be looking for advice on a product or a manager could need an important HR procedure. Tools such as Yammer or other apps can help encourage a collaborative culture and it is commonly the role of the IC team to launch, maintain and stimulate such channels.

Helping to get the Job Done

While it is the role of local managers and supervisors to ensure that day to day work is done properly, the IC function contributes to driving performance.

Towers Watson (Yates 2006) claim that companies that have robust IC can be shown to be more profitable and enjoy more sustained growth than their less-communicative peers. Similar claims are made by bodies such as the Great Companies Consulting Organisation (Leary-Joyce 2004: 5).

More specifically, Quirke (Quirke 2003: 5–15) talks about good IC as a mechanism for:

• creating a point of competitive difference;
• developing new products and markets;
• finding cost savings and improving processes;
• offering a way to build support for business strategy;
• promoting innovation;
• fostering continuous improvement;
• promoting knowledge sharing;
• prompting networking.

Commonly, IC teams find themselves involved in explaining strategy and priorities as well as performance. Often they publish information internally about market conditions, changes to operating procedures or to promote campaigns around quality, safety or customer service. In recent decades, for example, more and more businesses publish annual reports to employees covering everything from profitability to environmental performance or social policy.

Most importantly, an organisation is unlikely to be successful unless everyone understands what it is trying to achieve and is excited about those goals. IC is also often involved in equipping line managers and supervisors to explain the local implications of organisation-wide messages. Studies (Yates 2006) mentioned earlier strongly argue that business success is linked very closely to the ability of local leaders to create a clear connection between day-to-day work and corporate objectives.

Advocacy

A common theme among public relations practitioners is the value of turning employees into ‘ambassadors’ – people who are active in their community, speaking up for their organisation. The internet and social media make this role increasingly significant. Disaffected employees have more and more places to voice their opinions and committed employees are often quick to challenge negative comments posted online.

The strength of employee advocacy does not just come from the sheer number of staff who are available to act as spokespeople. There is evidence that an employee is considered a more credible source about an organisation than either advertising or the words of official representatives.

A 2003 study by MORI looking at the drivers of corporate reputation found that ‘knowing someone who works there’ is a very powerful driver of an organisation’s reputation. People are likely to place considerably greater weight on the opinions of a direct personal contact than they are on what they read in the press about an organisation or even their own experience (Dawkins and Lewis 2003: 186).

Employees talk about their daily lives on Facebook or LinkedIn. They are often proud to ‘like’ or ‘share’ positive stories about their employer, and PR agencies are creating whole teams to stimulate this form of employee advocacy. Employees can have powerful voices on some issues. For example, medical education campaigns encourage health care professionals to discuss with patients and friends the impact of smoking. Some organisations provide staff with briefings about topics such as planning permissions, and employees working in contentious industries will welcome guidance on handling questions from family and friends.

Naturally, the growth of social media creates a dilemma for an organisation that hopes to control its message tightly. On one hand the influence of many employee voices is considerable, on the other hand there is no guarantee that employees will remain consistently ‘on message’. Organisations that have punished employees for voicing legitimate or mild criticism are seen as bullying (Guardian 2005) and there are limits to how far an employer can fairly constrain the free speech of workers. Some organisations such as IBM actively encourage their employees to participate in online industry debates – within clearly laid-out guidelines (IBM n.d.).

Supporting Major Change

Periodically every organisation undergoes some form of transformation or change. It might be a new business strategy, a financial restructuring, a new government initiative or a myriad of other shifts in direction. Whatever its scope, employees need to understand what is coming, how they are affected and what they need to do.

Change communication is not just about sharing information. It involves creating a compelling case for change, reducing opposition, helping individuals make a personal adjustment and maintaining a sense of momentum throughout. However, employees are commonly thought to respond to announcements about change with some cynicism (Stanley et al. 2005: 429–459) or fear (Wim 2005: 133).

This calls for an awareness of the forces that shape motivation and create fear and excitement and it demands a vehicle for ensuring that senior leaders are hearing the voice of employees throughout the change.

Quirke (2003: 124) points out that change initiatives often fail simply because no one really cares, the bigger picture isn’t properly understood, people resent a loss of stability or because no one has actually explained either ‘what’s in it for me’ or the basics of what employees are expected to do differently. All of these are clearly challenges for the communication team. These are all reasons why it is argued that change programmes normally fail because leaders fail to communicate effectively throughout their process (Kotter 1996: 3–17).

Practitioners should make the distinction between change and transformation. Managers might change processes or physical aspects of a workplace but unless employees are ready to undergo some form of personal transformation in their thinking or behaviours then it is unlikely that the change is going to work as planned. A new canteen menu might involve telling people about a change. A drive to promote healthier eating at work will involve a personal transformation. A communicator attempting to support the latter will need an understanding of the motivations and attitudes of colleagues.

It all Starts with the Audience

Communicators have long known that simply issuing orders rarely drives the right behaviours – even in the military. This is particularly true in the world of IC where the ancient Chinese saying ‘Tell me, I’ll forget. Show me, I may remember. But involve me, and I’ll understand’ is taken particularly seriously. Several writers (Grunig and Hunt 1984; Quirke 2012: 225) have stressed the importance of dialogue and involvement in shaping behaviours. People are more likely to change how they work when they have had some say in deciding what that change looks like.

The value that internal communicators can bring lies in helping create a shared understanding among senior leaders and employees who may see the world very differently from each other and have different pressures, interests and pay packets. As with other professional specialisms within communications, the IC manager has to work to provide a bridge between the concerns of leaders and employees to make sure that they understand each other.

In order to do this, the IC manager should understand that few workforces are homogenous – most are made up of a diverse mix of people, professions, mindsets and cultures. For example, if one looks at the people who work in a hospital it is clear that doctors might have different information needs to those of kitchen staff; office-based administrators will see the world differently from the nurses working on an intensive care unit. Attempts to communicate with everyone in exactly the same way can only be partially successful. When dealing with a multinational organisation one needs to take into consideration a number of different issues including language, culture and different legal frameworks.

An IC professional needs to know some essential demographic information as well as understand the sentiment of the different publics or segments within their organisation. Table 13.1 outlines some of the details that an IC manager will need to master.

It is useful to know any significant recent history that might colour employee attitudes. For example, a redundancy programme five years ago may well be remembered and influence reactions to a mildly worded message about cost savings. A merger several decades back can decide how employees respond to announcements about trivial things such as Christmas bonuses or attempts to change working practices.

Quirke (2003: 12) divides employees according to their understanding of change and willingness to help into:

• unguided missiles (they want to help but are unclear where the change is headed);
• hot shots (they understand the direction of change and are keen to be involved);
• slow burners (they don’t understand the need for change but don’t want to help anyway);
• refuseniks (they understand the change but simply don’t want to be involved).

Difficult segments can demand disproportionate attention from communicators and with relatively little return. People who have decided to leave may not be worth additional communication effort, whereas enthusiastic supporters will benefit from direction and involvement (Barrow and Moseley 2011).

Another important point when considering specific messages is the fact that not everyone will be impacted in the same way. When talking about a change, some people will just need to know about it, some will need a more detailed understanding, while others will often need to be consulted in some detail. This thinking has been developed further by practitioners experimenting with social media and viral messaging. Gladwell (2000: 60) identifies the importance of knowing who in an organisation are ‘mavens’ – ordinary people known for being the font of all knowledge and ‘connectors’ – people who have abnormally large personal networks who are the epicentre of the informal grapevine.

Some suggest that the tools of social media allow IC people to pick out the most influential people in an organisation and target them directly (Ruck 2010: 33). This approach likens communications to a virus – a message spreads without needing to use orthodox management chains of command. Because people are more trusting of their peers than they are of remote senior leaders, these virally spread messages are more impactful.

Whatever approach taken to dissecting an audience, it is important to remember that the audience itself has a firm view over what it wants to know. Before an employee is ready to listen to corporate messages, he or she needs to have personal questions answered. D’Aprix suggests that there is a hierarchy of questions that need addressing in the following order (D’Aprix 2011: 257):

• What is my job?
• How am I doing?
• Does anyone care?
• How are we doing?
• How do we fit into the whole?
• How can I help?

The lesson for an internal communicator is that they must have a clear understanding of both the formal structures of their organisation and of the informal networks that exist externally.

Research Approaches

Like all management activities, IC needs data in order to be effective (Walker 2012: 1). Although there is a high degree of creativity and personal judgement involved in communications, professionals should not depend on guesswork about what people are thinking at the beginning of a communication task involved in changing attitudes. Senior leaders also commonly expect their advisors to use data to add weight to their arguments; where the discussion of possible tactics depends on personal opinion, the IC manager can struggle to establish their authority or credibility among other managers who are likely to have their own prejudices about how to talk to staff.

Broadly speaking, internal communicators use four main approaches for tracking employees’ understanding and attitudes:

• informal networking
• process feedback
• qualitative research
• quantitative research.

These techniques will be core elements in a communication audit, which is a prerequisite for the planning and development of any IC function.

Auditing

From time to time, internal communicators will want to conduct a full audit of their operations. A number of tools exist to help a communicator plan their review. A particularly good example is the HELiX Model (HELiX 2008) that has been developed in the UK specifically for the Higher Education Sector, but that, with some minor adaptation, would be a suitable foundation for studies in other areas.

It provides a checklist of areas to explore eight main themes which are summarised as:

• Organisation goals, ambitions and character
  • –Is there a clear set of goals that are reflected in local plans and that staff can explain externally?

• Leadership
  • –Are senior leaders committed to communication?

• Strategy, accountability and evaluation
  • –Is there a properly resourced and evaluated communications strategy that has clear roles for departmental heads?

• News and message dissemination
  • –Are there robust channels?

• Information sharing
  • –Are there tools in place so people can access and share the information that they need to do their jobs?

• Space and collegiality
  • –Does the organisation have facilities and processes that bring everyone together?

• Crisis, safety and security
  • –Are there procedures for handling emergency communications?

• The employee journey
  • –Is the staff experience consistent with the messages we want to send them?

Other audit models might place additional emphasis on issues such as the cost of operations relative to staff numbers or industry norms (where they can be defined), the quality and frequency of employee feedback and the ability of the IC team to reach all employees regardless of location, culture, role or language.

Planning – Where Do We Want to Go?

Earlier, IC was defined as concerning alignment towards common goals. As with any management activity, planning needs to begin with a final destination in mind.

When considering objectives, the internal communicator will want to think through the three core questions:

• What do we need people to DO?
• In order to drive that behaviour what do they need to Believe or Feel?
• And in order to shape that belief, what do people need to Know?

Often a communicator is asked to transmit simple facts in the mistaken belief that knowledge alone will bring about the right behaviours. Anyone who looks at the continuing behaviour of tobacco smokers in the face of overwhelming evidence of the harm they face will immediately appreciate this point. In order to achieve valuable objectives through communication in the workplace, emotions of colleagues need to be engaged. This is illustrated in Table 13.2.

Channels

For many years media was the main focus of IC. Organisations often had staff magazines or in-house film units long before they employed people called internal communications managers. IC is a management activity with the aim of driving specific behaviours and managers should begin planning by thinking about the desired outcome. Only when they have defined the end result are they in a position to think about which channels or media to use.

Quirke (2012) points out that different channels have different uses and that the IC manager should begin with the outcome that he or she wants before deciding on the best route for delivering the message. If people are to feel involved or consulted in a decision, sending a memo or putting a poster on the wall probably won’t have the desired impact. If people only need to be aware of a change in canteen opening hours, perhaps a series of all staff briefings might be excessive.

Every communicator needs a repertoire of techniques or channels that allow them to:

• push out messages
• enable employees to pull information
• campaign
• collect feedback
• build the community.

Push

Frequently communicators will need to broadcast messages and want channels that let them reach every employee in the organisation. Channels that ‘push’ messages out to employees might include the staff magazine, a memo passed through managers, an email to everyone, a notice posted on a wall or a New Year’s present left on every desk.

Figure 13.2 The structure for channels that internal communication professionals need

Source: Reproduced from Internal Communication: a manual for practitioners by FitzPatrick et al. Used by permission of Kogan Page

No one should be under any illusion that communication has been achieved because some form of broadcasting or distribution has taken place. All staff emails get deleted, videos on the intranet get switched off after 30 seconds, managers may not pass on emails or noticeboards may get ignored. Crucially, people may disregard a message if it does not seem relevant at the moment it is received.

The Role of Line Managers

Time and again writers talk about the importance of line managers as a channel of internal communication. In the 1980s Larkin and Larkin (1994: 1) identified the pivotal position that immediate supervisors play in creating meeting and making sure that employees understand how corporate messages affect them.

Table 13.3 What media?

The IC manager needs to be very clear about the purposes of using supervisors as a channel. Some organisations have created processes that involve a message ‘cascading’ through successive levels of management with each level adding or tailoring the message as they see fit. The challenge comes in preventing dilution or distortion while ensuring that local managers can interpret the message in ways that are relevant to their teams.

The Larkins reject the mindset of the military style briefing where managers are used as animated noticeboards to read out scripted messages that no one believes. Processes that rely on managers reciting a notice tend to have little credibility and quite possibly break down from head office.

Sinickas (2009: 12) stresses that line managers are not always actually the most preferred channel by which employees receive information. While a manager is best placed to translate a message, employees recognise that the manager has to be an expert in the subject under discussion. If someone else is better placed to understand an issue, employees would prefer to hear from them.

Line managers are most effective when an organisation needs:

• a high level of personal understanding that relies on discussion;
• to tailor the message to specific teams;
• to make sure context is appreciated;
• to hear feedback;
• to build emotional commitment that comes through debate.

Line management communication is less useful for:

• transmitting simple information;
• explaining issues of which the manager has limited understanding;
• when the organisation cannot be candid;
• debating practices over which the team has little control.

Figure 13.3 illustrates five simple questions that can help a communicator plan their line manager systems.

It is not always clear to supervisors that they are expected to communicate. Sometimes managers are uncertain whether they are meant to pass on specific information. IC managers address these issues by working with HR to ensure that communication appears as a core competency and that when communications are sent to supervisors there is no ambiguity about what is to be shared.

If a line manager doesn’t know anything more than the information that has been already announced they are unlikely to want to discuss the subject with their teams. As they have an important role in explaining context and background and finding

Figure 13.3 Planning a line manager communications process begins with five essential questions

Source: Reproduced from Internal Communication: a manual for practitioners by FitzPatrick et al. Used by permission of Kogan Page

ways to make it meaningful locally it is worth investing time to give them additional briefing. A senior leader who spends time with line managers is always appreciated and is a powerful model of the communicative behaviour that supervisors need to display themselves.

As Clampitt (2005: 6) points out, communication skills don’t come naturally to everyone and so it is worth considering some form of training. This can either be part of general management training or focused on a specific issue such as managing cost savings, introducing an environment policy or improving customer service. Some organisations supply managers with simple manuals that explain how to manage team meetings or to think through their personal communications.

Managers are often grateful if they are supplied with materials that they can use in meetings with their teams. These are unlikely to be copies of the presentations used for City analysts and may not necessarily be PowerPoint slides at all. Large drawings called rich pictures or transformation maps equip managers to discuss complex issues with their teams (Scarlett in Wright 2009: 349).

Finally, supervisors need to feel that someone is interested in the feedback that they are collecting. If month after month their comments and reports are met with silence, line managers will soon stop bothering sending it and may well give up holding meetings to gather it in the first place.

Evaluation

Measuring the effectiveness of IC is an enduring conversation among practitioners and comes up frequently as a topic on discussion boards and at conferences. Quirke (2003: 249) talks about the value of evaluation to assure the efficiency of processes, measure changing attitudes, gather feedback and to understand the impact that communications are making.

Communicators often rely on a similar structure to that developed by Kirkpatrick (1998: 21) to understand the effectiveness of training programmes. This model says that there are four levels on which a training programme can be judged:

• Reaction (did participants rate the experience well?)
• Learning (did participants change their attitudes?)
• Behaviours (did participants do things differently?)
• Results (did the organisation get the intended benefit from the training programme?)

In IC terms evaluations tends to look at:

• User perceptions – Do you feel well communicated with? Do you like the intranet? Are you reading the newsletter? IC managers may want to judge the effectiveness of a specific channel or the impact of individual events. They will review data such as user statistics for an intranet, comment sheets from an all-staff meeting or the results of a staff survey. This data can be the simplest to capture, but it will always need considerable interpretation and explanation for leaders who might lack a technical understanding of bounce rates.

• Learning – what did the audience take away from the communications?

  The main way of assessing effectiveness here is through either a staff survey or less formal means. Surveys can ask people how well they understand certain messages or whether they agree with particular statements as a way of gauging understanding.

• Behaviours – are people doing things differently? Have they stopped doing things?

  One of the main aims of IC is to change specific behaviours in the workplace. So evaluation might focus for a safety campaign on a reduction in the number of incidents or a marketing campaign might be linked to sales figures. The strength of this approach is that it moves the conversation about IC away from a discussion of channels or writing style and focuses it on what managers are seeking to achieve.

  The difficulty of evaluating communication according to specific behaviours is that IC is often not the only reason why people adopt certain behaviours. A campaign around safety at work might reach everyone in a way that resonates with them and motivates them to act more safely, but pressure from local managers or customers, poor tools or a badly-lit workplace might still encourage unsafe practices. Not every problem has a communication solution.

• Results – is our business performing better as a result of good IC?

  Linking IC to the overall performance of a business is a consistent theme on discussion fora (Sinickas 2009) where the potential link between bigger budgets and business results is explored.

Skills and Organisation

The preceding sections have highlighted a number of essential points. IC is largely concerned with driving behaviours in order to support business results. It is informed by data and the role of the IC team is about more than providing an efficient information and news service.

Helsby and Croton (2009: 1) observed that recent years have seen expectations raised of IC professionals. They comment that the days are gone when an IC manager was mainly seen as a magazine editor and suggest that such managers are generally accountable for some standard activities, which they listed as:

• developing and communicating the corporate story internally – making sure that communications about brands, plans, operations etc. make sense in a coherent single narrative;
• innovating and making use of a range of communications channels, which are increasingly online and make greater use of social media;
• running CEO and other leadership communication programmes – including coaching senior figures on personal style and content together with event management;
• working to improve management communication throughout the organisation;
• ensuring that campaigns and communications programmes are focused on real business outcomes;
• communicating news and business updates;
• supporting formal ‘employee engagement’ or ‘employer brand’ initiatives;
• planning and executing crisis communications strategies;
• conducting basic measurement of the impact of communication on employee satisfaction and similar metrics.

While Helsby and Croton highlight the interest taken in good IC by CEOs and other senior managers they also stress the importance of good tactical delivery as well as a strategic mindset.

This echoes Quirke’s observation (2003: 205) that IC professionals fulfil a number of roles in an organisation:

• distributors – circulating messages without an input into the content – perhaps posting notices on an intranet;
• craftsmen – preparing copy or media without particular regard to the underlying message or the strategic relevance of the work;
• technical advisor – helping managers decide what routes to use to deliver messages that have already been decided;
• planner – working with managers to shape messages and think through tactics and timings;
• facilitator/consultant – helping a leader understand why and what they need to communicate and how it will influence business success.

An effective IC team adds value in a number of different ways as illustrated by Figure 13.4.

Whether a team has one or 100 members, delivering excellent IC will depend on skills in all of these areas. Every organisation will have slightly different priorities and so may place different emphasis on the various components of the value chain.

Figure 13.4 The internal communication value chain

How an organisation decides which of these components are more or less relevant will depend on a wide range of issues that will include:

• the role that IC plays in helping the organisation achieve its mission;
• the challenges facing the organisation;
• the shape and structure of the organisation;
• the history of the organisation;
• the overall prosperity of the organisation.

Increasingly, IC teams are being organised to separate out the day-to-day delivery or production of materials and content from the advisory function. In many cases, larger IC teams are adopting a model that is similar to modern HR organisations where ‘Business Partners’ work closely with senior managers to help define how communication will support their business objectives and ‘Centres of Excellence’ deliver agreed programmes.

Work by Dewhurst and FitzPatrick (2012) suggested that there are a wide range of essential competencies that an internal communicator needs. Importantly, their research suggested that practitioners, while valuing craft skills such as writing, placed a high premium on other wider management abilities such as the ability to build relationships, understand strategic issues and actually get things done. The list of core competencies are set out in Table 13.4.

Twelve competencies are probably far more than any individual can hope to master. Dewhurst and FitzPatrick (ibid.) concluded that the mix and level of proficiency needed for any single practitioner depended on the challenges facing the organisations for which they worked. Somewhere with a large workforce with high staff turnover might want an IC manager with strong listening skills; an organisation facing a financial crisis and large-scale job losses might want someone who works closely with lawyers and HR.

A clear message from the study’s respondents is the importance of soft skills – the ability to get on with other people, to listen and gather intelligence and to develop or coach colleagues are as prominent as craft skills such as writing.

Conclusion

Modern internal communication practice is about achieving tangible business results. Organisations have grown to understand the value that comes from effective communication and appreciate that it is about more than enhancing external reputation.

An IC manager is therefore concerned with understanding business strategy and asking what behaviours are needed in order to support the success of that strategy. The role is about more than sharing information and so involves a range of tools that include the effective segmentation of audiences and the gathering of intelligence.