Our agency has been in the internal communication (IC) game for a longtime. Advising global companies for over 25 years gives us a unique vantage point to the changes taking place in this still-emerging discipline in the corporate communications industry, which we’ll discuss here.
Rising Value
Recently, we’ve seen more recognition of the value of IC, an observation supported by The CEO Communications Audit, which identified that CEOs are increasingly recognizing IC as critically important for business success.
At the same time, the effectiveness of IC teams within companies continues to be limited by legacy perceptions of them as tacticians and technicians.
Strategic Use Of IC
This year, we’ve seen IC play a significant role in enabling critical business, operational, technological and cultural transformations. We’ve observed more proactivity and sophistication in how leading companies approach role and process changes, create an employee experience (EX), and make holistic assessments of their IC environments. These are explored in greater detail below.
While we’ve seen the value of IC recognized in sectors like financial services and pharma for some time, we’re noticing others come to this determination, particularly packaged goods, telecom and professional services.
The Only Constant Is Change
Evolving customer experience expectations, emerging markets, new competitors, generational change and ongoing digitization of everything is placing constant pressure on organizations and their people. HR is growing as a strategic partner, especially in prioritizing cultural and operational integration when onboarding new acquisitions or entering new markets.
Being strategic in your approach of communicating with employees ensures successful change responses — from setting the narrative and context to enabling a dialogue with audiences, conveying progress toward objectives, and using channel analytics to ensure messages are getting through.
IT Infrastructure And Digital Workflow
Multiyear system implementations enable new tools and processes. These require communications to employees about role changes and new expectations, and storytelling about new ways the organization delivers on the brand promise.
Many organizations are deploying Office365 and introducing social channels like Yammer for private, organizationwide communications. Launched effectively, these are powerful ways of connecting employees and improving collaboration. Done poorly, the organization doesn’t get the benefit or it creates the perception that these tools don’t work and new ones are required.
To launch these tools effectively, organizations should:
• Clearly explain the benefits and potential of the tools to employees.
• Ensure adequate training on using the tools, keeping in mind individual and generational differences in technology adoption.
• Establish clear governance structures and workflows, particularly for situations where troubleshooting might be required.
• Set up community management.
• Ensure leader engagement in the new tools.
Employee Experience Is The New Customer Experience
Companies are focusing on employee experience (EX). Already identified as a competitive advantage for delivering on customer experience and attracting/retaining talent, we see more thought given to touch points with employees.
Internal communicators play an essential role in answering questions, from “Why do we do what we do?” to “How do we bring more consumer-level digital experiences inside?”
The latter might result in:
• Defining and launching purpose in an inclusive and inspiring manner.
• Better internal branding and messaging to employees.
• Improved mobile access/experience.
• Higher-quality employee community management and internal social content.
• Personalization and targeted curation of content.
• More engaging and relevant live and digital events.
Brand is an important asset that needs more deliberate application to EX. Employees are a different audience than customers — the brand needs to accomplish different things with them (the “employer brand”) than it does externally with a customer and community orientation. IC and HR should have greater ownership of the brand internally and how it influences EX decisions, from messaging and technology to the design of spaces and selection of furniture.
The Bigger Picture
EX requires consideration of the total communication environment. Often, IC professionals see their responsibilities ending at leadership messaging. Few have access to the full employee perspective: email, intranet, Slack/Teams/Skype posts and meetings, huddles, conference calls, and sales meetings — they are all (rightly!) seen as “internal communications.” When employees say, “We don’t communicate well,” they’re considering this experience.
Many of these are operational and fall outside the mandate of most internal communicators, but they must be a leading voice considering all channels and platforms for three reasons:
• They all deplete the same resource: employee attention.
• Internal communicators have the most experience thinking about audiences, their experience, and how they perceive communications.
• Internal communicators require visibility to communication volume so they can act or advise in an “air traffic control” capacity, minimizing competition for attention.
In forward-thinking organizations, internal communicators are part of these conversations or lead the charge with their partners in operations, strategy and HR. They assess the full communication environment to optimize the scarce resource of employee attention.
Role Of Internal Communicators
Despite all this, I believe internal communicators are still the most underutilized strategic partner — too frequently mired in the day-to-day tactics to make clear the direct impact they have on the business. When we consider the full costs of IC, we see it plays a greater role and has a significant impact on the bottom line.
Typically, costs for communicating with employees end with the basic assessment that “[insert tactic] is too expensive to produce.” The heaviest cost isn’t in producing a message; it’s in consumption. For every hour spent producing a given tactic, the real cost is the size of the audience multiplied by the time taken to consume and digest it.
When factoring in a workforce of thousands, the simplest email costs tens of thousands of dollars to consume, and this doesn’t even consider whether it was effective or not. Now account for all those channels and touch points, for every employee, every workday, all year. The costs quickly surge into the millions. When IC leaders optimize effectiveness and efficiency of messaging with consideration for consumption time, they can demonstrate how strategic communication drives business performance. This is an area that will grow in importance in the next decade.