Internal Communication

A crisis can shake a company to its core and put revenue and reputation on the line. While many companies invest time and effort into preparing operational response and external crisis communication plans, few make a similar effort to get ready to communicate internally when things go wrong. Well-informed employees can be highly effective company ambassadors. Clear and frequent communication during and following a crisis will provide them with the information they need to support the response. Make…

Mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity is on the rise. According to Deloitte, 84 percent of corporate executives anticipate a sustained, if not accelerated, pace of M&A activity across several industries through mid-2015. Unfortunately, many of these mergers may fall short of their financial projections for one simple reason – failure to effectively integrate the two organizations. Mergers and acquisitions require extensive number-crunching and due diligence to get the deal done, but the day-to-day effort required to make it…

By 2015, the global mobile workforce will reach 1.3 billion or 37.2 percent of the total labor force, according to International Data Corp. In many ways, communicating with employees who rely on receiving information via a mobile device is no different than communicating with employees in an office. The same basic rules apply: communicate frequently, keep your messages clear and consistent, and be timely and relevant. But, employers aren’t communicating well with remote employees. According to Fortune Magazine,…

Change bombards us all day every day, or at least that’s how it feels, and in the workplace, the overall success of any given change initiative rides on the effectiveness of your communication with the employees touched by it. This makes when, how and what you communicate to your employees critically important in successfully implementing a change initiative. When Waiting too long and communicating too little are the most common change-related communication failures. This is especially true in…

Clients consistently tell us they’re not sure they have enough content to share company news or updates on a regular basis with their employees. Certainly, company news and updates are important. But, they make up only a small piece of employee communication content. If you know your communication goals and the behaviors you need to cause, there’s a rich array of content at your fingertips. In our August 11th post, we talked about planning and the importance of…

Anyone who has been a manager knows it’s a tough job. Managers are constantly stuck between the demands of upper management and the often conflicting needs of employees. With everyone pulling in different directions, effective communication isn’t the manager’s most pressing issue. Consistently, studies on employee engagement over the last 20 years report that employees prefer to receive work-related information from their immediate managers, whom they often trust more than senior management. Given that this middle layer of…

In a successful organization, communication is everyone’s job. From the C-suite to the production line, everyone acknowledges and accepts their roles to receive and comprehend information, and to provide and accept feedback. To establish this kind of healthy, two-way communication throughout a company is a challenging yet easy task, and it starts with one person — the CEO. Research and real-world experience have taught us that employees want to hear from the CEO on the company’s vision, direction…

Creating a comprehensive plan to address immediate communications priorities while remaining flexible enough to accommodate unforeseeable needs may sound like a tough order, but it is possible as long as you take the time to organize your tools and establish a communication rhythm first. As we covered in Ward to the Wise last week, for any internal communication program to be successful you must first discover your true employee communication needs. An Employee Communication Survey is an efficient…

You want to focus your team on a shared game worth winning. Check. You want to overcome performance issues that are undermining your team’s ability to win at its game. Check. You know you must tailor your communication to the unique needs of your internal stakeholders. Check. You’re ready to do the work to drive your desired culture. Check. Now What? It’s time to dig in and identify what your employees’ communication needs really are. No doubt, you…

Have you encountered a company that claims to have a culture built on safety but posts recordable injury after recordable injury? What about a company that says integrity is its foundation for doing business but has problems with accountability, honesty and fairness among its employees? Companies with these types of issues suffer a disconnect between the culture they desire and the actual culture manifesting on a day-to-day basis. Ultimately, the two should align, but all too often, gaps…