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Sententias Media Tips and Traps

Guest post by: Andrew McConville

Article Overview: In this quarter's infoletter from Sententia Group Public Relations we look at internal communication. As 2006 get's underway it is important that we remember our number one stakeholders - our people! In this edition we highlight some thinking and ideas to improvie your organisation's internal communication.

Sententias Media Tips and Traps

Welcome to Issue 2 of Sentiment

Welcome to the second issue of Sentiment, a quarterly Infoletter from Sententia Group Public Relations. Our aim is to deliver to you each quarter, information that you can use in your day-to-day business

Last quarter we looked at Crisis Management. The key takeout from this is that while crises may not necessarily be avoided, with some diligent planning prior and a diligent approach during the crisis, the negative reputation impacts associated with a crisis can be better managed.

As we embark on 2006, a familiar pattern may be emerging. Energy levels are high and there is a great deal of planning going on. A consistent theme will be “we must do more to get our people on board – to bring them on the journey. We have to communicate with them!”

But, as the year progresses and the cycle of budgets, planning and meeting targets takes over, a lot of organisations forget about how they communicate with their key stakeholders – the people actually responsible for delivering the results!

Effective internal communication is critical to every organisation’s performance. Without it, employees are likely to be less motivated, less committed and less productive. Organisations that communicate well tend to display similar characteristics:
• They use a range of communication channels
• Messages are consistent and aligned to corporate strategy
• Communication has an identifiable theme
• Messages are reinforced by the behaviour of senior management

There are loads of communication tools available and this in itself can present a problem – we tend to forget that the best and most effective internal communication tool is face-to-face discussion. Note here that I said discussion, because communication is a two way process.

This issue of Sentiment contains some useful tips and tools to help you ensure that your own internal communication is on track.

Best of luck for 2006 and keep thinking!


Good thinking …Remember the hygiene factors

• What is happening?

• When will it happen?

• What does it mean for me personally?

Useful Thinking – Conduct an Internal Communication Audit

Very few companies actually take the time to measure the effectiveness of their internal communication. This can be contrasted to the time and resources almost all large organisations commit to tracking and measuring media effectiveness for example.

A communications audit can be a useful way to determine the effectiveness of existing communication channels and to obtain feedback from employees on both the style and content of internal communication.

An effective communications audit will involve a combination of survey and focus group responses. Surveys may be conducted throughout the year to determine the impact of specific communication campaigns, or to assess the effectiveness of internal communication generally. The key challenge is to achieve a participation rate that makes the findings useful. This will be helped if the survey is well positioned, supported by senior management and not too time consuming. Online surveys are likely to be the most time and cost efficient, but recognise also that some staff may like to complete a paper based version. If staff seem overwhelmed with surveys, then think about including some internal communication questions in a more general survey of staff attitudes / employee engagement etc.

Focus groups or round tables are essential for establishing the qualitative aspects of your internal communication. Groups should be kept small and should review general and specific communication effectiveness. Using groups you can assess both what employees think about communication and what they understand (i.e. just how much do they actually recall and/or understand). Participants should be given direct feedback on how their comments have contributed to audit findings.

Finally, think about having the audit conducted by an external provider to lend the process credibility and remember that when conducting an audit, be prepared to communicate findings and the actions that will be taken in response to these findings.

Who’s Thinking – What tools are effective?

There is a range of tools available to communicate effectively with your people. It is important to match the message with the tool. For example where the information being communicated has a direct personal impact, face-to-face communication will be best. If it is general information such as annual results, then a corporate intranet might be suitable. Corporate newsletters are great for human interest stories, but lack the immediacy of an intranet or email message.

Some of the commonly used internal communication tools include:

• Corporate intranet - but make sure it is well managed and kept up to date
• Newsletters - consider employing a full time editor. It may be in print or electronic form, but don’t underestimate how much your people like the printed version!
• Webcasts - becoming more common but only useful where everyone has desktop access
• Broadcast emails - be wary of reducing their impact by over using them
• Telephone Messages – left by senior management in an employee’s voice mailbox – but keep it short and limit them to a tool for the CEO
• Corporate meetings – keep the information general and position any important messages with staff at a local level beforehand. Make sure staff have the opportunity to ask questions otherwise they will feel they are being talked at rather than communicated with
• Round Tables – effective for gauging the pulse of an organisation and for disseminating information through informal channels
• Soapbox or team meetings – at a local level to discuss, position, or reinforce important information. Great for allowing interaction.
• Walkabouts – by senior managers to allow staff to engage informally on any issue

It is useful to establish a hierarchy of communication tools. In general, corporate intranets and other multimedia channels (e.g webcasts or videos), as well as corporate newsletters are useful to supplement communication but are unlikely to be effective as a primary communication vehicle. This is because staff have to go to the tool in order to source information. For example, the intranet is a great tool for staff to source information once they have heard about it from senior management.

Broadcast emails from senior management are likely to have a high success rate in being read given they appear on the desktop (i.e. staff don’t have to go and find the information as they do with an intranet) but keep them short and be mindful of delivering too much complex detail. However, broadcast emails can quickly lose their impact if they are over-used or contain only general information. Also, senior management must support important broadcast emails. For example, if the CEO sends a broadcast email on Monday morning talking about an important event or issue, it will have greater impact if it is discussed at the next team meeting.

Remember that every organisation is different. In a company with a substantial blue-collar workforce, broadcast emails may not be effective because not everyone has access to a PC. In these situations, a notice in the lunchroom might be more appropriate, supported by a soapbox announcement from an immediate manager.

Start Thinking – Ten Tips for Internal Communication

1. Internal communication must be led from the top. It is essential that leaders deliver messages consistently, again and again, right across the organisation. Messages must be clear, concise and to the point.
2. Management behaviour must support internal communication. It is essential that internal communication is not only led from the top, but that the behaviour of senior management is at all times consistent with the messages being delivered.
3. Communicate the bad news as well as the good. Your people will distrust all communication if you only ever communicate the good news. Informal communications channels and networks will work far quicker than you ever could imagine and a wrong message through the rumour mill will do more damage than bad news communicated well. Think of ways of tapping into this informal network.
4. Your internal audience is an additional channel through which you can communicate externally. Pay as much attention to detail and plan your internal communication campaign just as you would an external media campaign. Don’t skimp on spending for communication to your internal audience and seek a strong commitment from your Board on the importance of internal communication.
5. For large-scale change, face-to-face communication is most effective. Equip immediate managers with the tools and information to communicate clearly and simply. If, on occasion time or logistics prevent people from hearing about change from their line manager, then follow up and provide the opportunity to ask questions.
6. Deliver your messages in context. Your people will be more interested than you think in how your message fits into the bigger picture of where the organisation is headed and why. Keep it simple but also recognize that your employees are intelligent and want to know how and what they do contributes to the success of the organization.
7. Be consistent with internal and external messages. People will gather information from different sources and it is imperative that internal and external information delivers the same message. Recognise that information delivered to different external stakeholders will also be received by your internal stakeholders and vice versa.
8. Be real. More than any other audience, your people will see through spin. Communicate with your people in real terms with real language. Test your communication – whether documents or messages, with a small group of your frontline employees. They will quickly tell you whether or not you are on the money.
9. Don’t forget the hygiene factors. Your people will receive and perceive messages in terms of “what’s in it for me?” What is happening, when will it happen, why will it happen and how does it affect me? By addressing the hygiene factors you will have more chance of engaging your people emotionally as well as intellectually and it is the emotion that will drive behaviour.
10. Finally, don’t dump information on your people: communicate with them! Communicating is a two way process and people will not feel as though they have been communicated with unless they have an opportunity to provide feedback and ask questions. Furthermore, you must be able to demonstrate that you have listened to the feedback. It doesn’t mean you have to agree, but you must listen and provide reasons why.

You’re Thinking - About Sententia Group Public Relations…

Sententia Group Public Relations represents a new way of thinking about public relations and communications strategy. We focus on what we do well, which is to make it our business to better integrate public relations strategy and communications practice with business strategy, planning and implementation, corporate profile and brand management, as well as business operations. Our combination of business management experience, practical public relations skills and new thinking, delivers a unique offering for Australian businesses. If you think we might be able to help your business to communicate more effectively then we’d be delighted to hear from you.

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