a handbook for professional marketers -...
TRANSCRIPT
INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS
A HANDBOOK FOR PROFESSIONAL MARKETERS
CAMBRIDGE MARKETING PRESS
NICK WAKE
Cambridge Marketing
Handbook
Internal Communications
Nick Wake
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
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About the author
Nick Wake BA Joint Hons, MCIM, Chartered Marketer
Nick studied Economics and Social Studies with German language at the
University of East Anglia. When he tumbled out of university in the late 80s he
cut his teeth in the world of advertising sales with Haymarket publishing,
before moving into the discipline of sales promotion with an Omnicom
agency based in Thame, working with clients such as Comet, Mercury
Telecommunications and the Multiple Sclerosis Society. With two of the big 5
marketing communication disciplines behind him, he studied for his Diploma
in Marketing at evening school in High Wycombe before getting his ‘big
break’ with Whitbread. During an eight-year period Nick worked in
marketing roles with the retail brands Thresher, Marriott Hotels and David
Lloyd Leisure, before making his first and only foray in the public sector as
Head of Marketing for Sport England. During his time at Sport England, Nick
helped to establish a pathway for those wishing to achieve a CIM approved
sports based professional diploma in marketing.
After three years Nick felt his future lay back in the private sector and joined
performance improvement agency Grass Roots in his home town of Tring,
where he remained for eight years heading up the marketing and in house
creative teams. His role at Grass Roots also included responsibility for
internal communications and the project management of Grass Roots’
participation in the Best Companies process over a period of seven years,
during which Grass Roots achieved a highpoint ranking of 34 in the list of top
100 medium sized companies to work for in the UK.
In October 2013 Nick left Grass Roots to set up his own business, Awaken
Communications, which provides marketing and internal communications
services to a variety of clients, predominantly in the sport and leisure sector.
Within Awaken Communications Nick serves as a part time Marketing
Director to iFLY (formerly Airkix) Indoor Skydiving.
Nick teaches Integrated Communications and Marketing and Consumer
Behaviour for Cambridge Marketing College and is Director of the specialist
sports pathway for those wishing to achieve the Professional Diploma in
Marketing. He is married to Jules with whom he shares two teenage
children, Ellie and Matt.
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Contents
About the Author i
Chapter 1: Internal Communications v Internal
Marketing 1
1.1 The internal marketing mix 1
Chapter 2: The Purpose of Internal Communication 5
2.1 Awareness of vision, mission and values 6
2.2 Employee engagement 7
2.3 Disseminating knowledge 9
2.4 Employee retention 10
2.5 Supporting product and service development 10
2.6 Change management 12
2.7 Managing a crisis 17
2.8 Reward and recognition 20
2.9 Reducing inter-departmental friction 22
2.10 Fulfilment of legal obligations 23
Chapter 3: The role of the internal communications
practitioner 25
Chapter 4: Internal Communications Planning 29
4.1 Roles and responsibilities – The leader, HR and marketing triangle 32
4.2 Situation analysis or audit 34
4.3 The importance of context 36
4.4 Internal communication challenges within the multi-national 37
4.5 Surveys 38
4.6 Objectives 40
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
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4.7 Strategy setting 41
4.8 Tactics and implementation 46
4.9 Cascading information 47
4.10 Communication champions 48
4.11 In house v agency support 50
4.12 Budgeting 52
Chapter 5: Communication Tools and Media 55
5.1 Passive channels 55
5.2 Interactive channels 55
5.3 The power of face to face 57
5.4 Body language 58
5.5 The rise of video 60
5.6 The rise of the Infographic 62
5.7 The impact of social media and the emergence of the Enterprise
Social Netwok (ESN) 64
5.8 Yammer 67
5.9 Slack 68
Case study from Slack website 69
5.10 Workplace by Facebook 70
5.11 Other social media 71
5.12 Internal communication applications 72
Chapter 6: Evaluation 73
6.1 Surveys 73
6.2 Start with activity classification 76
6.3 Measuring message impact 76
6.4 Simply sensing the mood 78
6.5 Case studies in evaluation 80
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Chapter 7: Employee Behaviour 87
7.1 Motivation 87
7.2 Attitudes and beliefs 88
7.3 Personality 90
7.4 Thinking and behaviour 92
7.5 Groups 94
Chapter 8: Organisational Culture 101
8.1 What is organisational culture? 101
8.2 Characteristics of organisational culture 103
8.3 Culture, clutter and the rise of telecommuting 105
8.4 Buzzwords 107
8.5 The quality of conversation 109
8.6 Leaders and leadership style 110
Chapter 9: Reward and Recognition 115
9.1 Voluntary benefits 116
9.2 Employee lifecycle communications 116
9.3 A culture of recognition 118
Chapter 10: The Characteristics of a Great
Communicator 121
References 125
Index 131
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
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Chapter 1: Internal Communications v Internal
Marketing
I have a long held view that Marketing at its simplest is about two things:
acquiring new customers and keeping existing customers loyal. If we accept
this then a definition of internal marketing is pretty straightforward: the
process of acquiring suitable, talented employees, engaging and retaining
them.
The target audience for internal marketing may be widened to include
other stakeholders such as owners and shareholders, who have a direct
stake in the performance of the organisation, and connected stakeholders
such as suppliers and distributers. In this latter area however, it could be
argued that channel marketing is a more appropriate label than internal
marketing.
We should also acknowledge that internal marketing is often substituted for
concepts, with strong and often overlapping links, such as culture
development and employee engagement. And when internal marketing is
being discussed, are we really talking about the true meaning of marketing
or in fact, is the focus largely on the communication part of marketing? This
is not dissimilar to the widely held view of those outside the profession, that
those who work in marketing have a job that starts and ends with Promotion.
That may well be the case for many of those with the word ‘marketing’ in
their job title, but the more enlightened of us know that the true practice of
marketing involves at least another 6 words beginning with P.
We also know that marketing is more about a philosophy and a set of skills,
than a department. The same is true of internal marketing. No single
department controls the process of internal marketing. Marketing and HR
tend to lead, but just like external marketing, everyone in the organisation
will be contributing to internal marketing; even if they do not consciously
realise it.
1.1 The Internal Marketing Mix
So does internal marketing therefore also involve a mix that involves more
than just Promotion? The answer to this must be yes and can be illustrated as
follows:
Chapter 1: Internal Communication
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Figure 1.1 External and Internal Marketing Mix
Role is about the parameters of our job; what our responsibilities are, where
we fit into the organisational structure and how we are assessed. Roles are
subject to a variety of influences such as the sector we operate in, the
business strategy, the organisational culture and how ambitious we are as
individuals.
Reward is about our salary, bonuses, commissions and other benefits, some
of which may be voluntary. These might include holiday, healthcare, car
and phone allowances, long service awards and schemes such as bikes for
work.
Location is about where we work and all the associated features of a
particular location. Dimensions might include rural v urban, north v south,
served by public transport and proximity to where we live.
People is about the range of skills within the organisation and how these are
deployed in the interests of serving customers. Again these will be
dependent on sector, business strategy and culture.
Process is strongly linked to culture and policy and can be influenced by the
nature and types of channels of communication that are available, and
who has the access and authority to use them.
Marketing
Product
Price
Place
Promotion
People
Process
Physical Evidence
Internal Marketing
Role
Reward
Location
Communication
People
Process
Physical Evidence
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Physical evidence can relate to everything from the fabric of the
workplace, the style, the layout, the colours and the dress code.
In the service dominated markets of the western world, these later three Ps
represent legitimate territory for today’s marketing professional; areas we
would wish to influence in the interests of serving customers and were we
find ourselves needing to work in close collaboration with our HR and
Operational colleagues.
However, as Stella Low, Head of Brand and Communications at EMC says:
“Most executives, when they use the phrase internal marketing are not
referring to activities relating to role, reward, location, people, process and
physical evidence. They are referring to internal communications” (Low,
Interview 08.01.16).
Hence the choice of Internal Communications as a title for this Handbook
which, whilst produced primarily as a support resource for students working
towards their professional marketing qualifications, will also (hopefully) be of
interest and practical use for those already working and developing their
careers in internal communications.
Chapter 1: Internal Communication
4
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
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Chapter 2: The Purpose of Internal
Communication
Welch and Jackson defined internal communication as the “strategic
management of interactions and relationships between stakeholders at all
levels within organisations across a number of interrelated dimensions,
including internal line management communication, internal team peer
communication, internal project peer communication and internal
corporate communication” (Welch & Jackson, 2007).
Another way to look at internal communication is as the glue that holds an
organisation together. Without it, a company is just a collection of
disconnected individuals, working in isolation and in pursuit of their own
agendas.
Research for this handbook suggests that the primary purpose of internal
communication is to engage employees with the company vision, mission
and values, so that there is a strong connection running from the top to the
bottom of the organisation and employees generally feel positive about
being in the workplace. For Stella Low, Communications Director with global
IT company EMC, it is about ensuring everyone is “informed, motivated and
inspired to achieve the purpose of the company”. This in turn drives high
levels of employee retention and greater productivity.
For internal communications consultant and author Tim Wooten, it is about
“joining the dots” for employees so that they get the big picture and can
see their part in it (Wooten, Interview 22.01.16). It’s also about two-way
dialogue, an ongoing conversation among employees at all levels.
Bill Quirke argues that the job of internal communications in today’s modern,
global corporate is to strike a balance between four elements (Quirke,
2000):
• Purpose and Direction – what level of understanding of corporate
direction is needed at different levels in the organisation?
• Information – who needs what information and how can the best
receive it, how often, in what style and via which media?
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• Identification – what is the right balance of identification between
corporate and the individual business units, and how can corporate
best support that; to what extent should people feel part of the
wider company and how communication should best act as a
‘corporate glue’?
• Collaboration – how communication should encourage the
exchange of best practice and foster sharing, learning and
networking.
The rest of this chapter explores ten possible aims for internal
communications, several of which overlap with each other: raising
awareness of organisations’ vision, mission and values, supporting employee
engagement, defining the employer brand, supporting product and service
development, oiling the wheels of organisational change, managing a crisis,
promoting reward and recognition, reducing inter-departmental conflict,
and finally, the fulfilment of legal obligations.
2.1 Awareness of Vision, Mission and Values
The concepts of Vision, Mission and Values are not new. Most organisations
employing 50 or more people will have these concepts in place, though
increasingly it seems that a Mission statement is favoured over a Vision
statement. Let’s explore the difference.
Vision: this is about what the organisation wants to achieve at some point in
the future. Some organisations will have a set time frame for this, others will
leave it open. Amazon articulates its vision as follows: “Our vision is to be
earth's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can
come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online”.
Mission: this is the fundamental purpose of the organisation. It should answer
this question for each employee of that business: Why do I get out of bed in
the morning? For example, the Mission of Innocent Drinks it is to “make
natural, delicious and healthy drinks that help people live well and die old”.
At Nike it is to ‘bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world’.
For Google it is “to organize the world's information and make it universally
accessible and useful”.
Values drive the behaviours that organisations believe characterise their
business and drive the behaviours that lie behind that businesses success.
For example, Passion is a key driver (no pun intended) for BMW:
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“The passion for forging new paths, thinking ahead and breaking new
ground, is our common drive in the BMW Group. That is why we look for
employees who want to do and experience something extraordinary.
People who bring team spirit and initiative with them - and the will to
continuously learn. For with joy and dedication a job becomes a personal
passion. Something to be proud of, each and every day.”
While Barclays Bank, which has had its fair share of scandals recently,
somewhat ironically suggests that its core values are: respect, integrity,
service, excellence and stewardship.
This latter example highlights one of the challenges facing internal
communicators and that is to generate credibility in the concepts of Vision,
Mission and Values. It is all too easy to put up a few posters in reception or
the office canteen and think the job is done. Not surprisingly, the ‘this is how
it is and this is what we want you to do’ approach will only serve to breed
cynicism – the complete opposite of what these concepts are designed to
foster.
At their best however, Vision, Mission and Values do provide a useful
reference point for employees and help create a sense of organisational
togetherness and team spirit. At a practical level, the HR department will
use the Values to help screen candidates who are seeking to join the
business and to reward, recognise and promote internally.
2.2 Employee Engagement
Countless studies over the years have articulated the business case for
employee engagement – a topic on which vast tomes have been written,
particularly since the turn of the century. Some of the studies have gone to
great lengths to uncover empirical evidence that proves what the rest of us
just regards as common sense: if employees are happy in their work, they
will be more productive, work harder, provide better service and this in turn,
will lead to happier customers who keep coming back. Everything else
being equal, profits rise faster than they do in companies where there is an
absence of engagement.
The global PR and marketing services agency, Edelman, identified some
forty drivers of employee engagement which they grouped into six areas,
one of which was communication and information flow. In their model,
internal communications supported employee engagement when:
Chapter 2: The Purpose of Internal Communication
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• Employees get the information they need to do their job
• Employees hear news from the company first, before hearing it
externally
• Employees understand what drive customer satisfaction
• Customer facing employees are providing a consistent customer
experience
• Messaging is consistent and appeals to logic and emotion
• Communication channels are established, expedient and reliable
• Communication portfolio contains a proper mix of written, face-to-
face and experiential methods
• Communication effectiveness is measured at least yearly
Engage for Success, the voluntary movement that grew out of the
government task force set up in 2011 to assess the value of employee
engagement, describes the four drivers of employee engagement as
follows:
• Strategic Narrative – visible, empowering leadership providing a
strong strategic narrative about the organisation, where it’s come
from and where it’s going
• Engaging Managers – engaging managers who focus their people
and give them scope, treat their people as individuals and coach
and stretch their people
• Employee Voice – employee voice throughout the organisations, for
reinforcing and challenging views, between functions and externally.
Employees are seen not as the problem, rather as central to the
solution, to be involved, listened to, and invited to contribute their
experience, expertise and ideas
• Integrity – organisational integrity – the values on the wall are
reflected in day to day behaviours. There is no ‘say –do’ gap.
Promises made and promises kept, or an explanation given as to
why not
More recently, Jacob Morgan (The Employee Experience Advantage, 2017)
has discussed the importance of focussing on Experience rather than
Engagement. He argues that organisations around the world have been
investing in employee engagement for decades, yet nothing much appears
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
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to have changed. Employee engagement is defined by Morgan as
investing in short term perks without changing the core business practices of
the organisation. In other words, it has been largely a case of trying to
distract employees from the sad realities of their work lives, rather than
making a meaningful and lasting change for the better. In contrast,
employee experience is all about changing the actual system, the core
workplace practices of the organisation, and redesigning work around the
people who work there. You cannot create employee engagement without
designing employee experiences first, he argues.
Morgan’s model consists of three environments: culture (the side effects of
working for your organisation), technology (the tools employees use to get
their jobs done), and physical space (the actual spaces in which employees
work). Based on the results of his in-depth study, carried out over the past
couple of years, he has created an Experience Index where those that are
getting it right are classified as ‘Experienced’ and those that are not are
labelled ‘Inexperienced’.
Whether we talk about Engagement or Experience, one thing does not
seem to change: whilst it might be argued that internal communications is a
discipline rather than a driver, it most certainly is the thread that joins all the
driving forces together. In other words, it underpins the employee
experience.
2.3 Disseminating Knowledge
Lew Platt, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard once observed: “If Hewlett
Packard knew what it knows, we’d be three times more productive”. In
other words, if only knowledge sharing was so powerful that everyone in the
company understood the company’s full capabilities, then the company
wold be truly unstoppable.
In the western world we very much live in a knowledge based economy,
where there are more people employed in service provision than in
manufacturing and where we talk increasingly about the provision of
solutions rather than products. In this climate, those involved with business
development need to have a complete understanding of its company’s
capabilities so that these can be brought to be bear to solve client issues.
The role of internal communications is to provide the channels to
disseminate that experience from top to bottom and to accelerate the
pace at which the organisation’s capabilities are matched to the client’s
needs (Quirke, op. cit.).
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2.4 Employee Retention
There is a host of studies that suggest a powerful link between employee
engagement and employee retention. This is not rocket science. Why would
anyone want to leave a company if they are happy there?
As well as benefitting from the greater productivity of engaged employees,
corporations appreciate the cost involved in finding new talent. According
to David Macleod and Nita Clarke, UK talent acquisition costs stand at
£5,311 per hire (Macleod & Clarke, 2009). According to calculations from
SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, the average cost of
replacing an employee earning $8 per hour is roughly $3,500. For middle
level employees the cost can be as high as 150% of their annual salary and
high level employees upwards of 400% of annual salary.
Maren Hogan writing for the People Fluent blog argues that employees do
not leave companies, they leave their boss (Hogan, Blog 2014). And the
number 1 reason they do this is because of a lack of communication. The
cascade of information from the top of an organisation often gets stuck in
middle management layers, leaving the majority of workers in the dark. As
Hogan points out: “Work without context or reason is not only frustrating, but
it also lacks an end goal and is bad for cohesion”. But it need not be like
this. She goes on to cite research that suggests that 43% of highly engaged
employees receive feedback on a weekly basis.
2.5 Supporting Product and Service Development
In order to remain competitive, most commercial organisations will have a
continuous process of product and service development. When it comes to
encouraging a culture of innovation, internal communication has a key part
to play. In 2011 Anne Linke and Ansgar Zerfass published their change
management framework for implementing an innovation culture by means
of internal communication, based on the results of a study of a global
pharmaceutical company based in Europe (Linke & Zerfass, 2011).
Their main hypothesis stated that an innovative culture can be established
when the corresponding internal communication adapts to each of the
change phases: awareness, understanding, acceptance, and action.
Intellectual support found in an innovation culture fosters and consequently
leads to further innovation. This is encouraged through communication
activities. They concluded, that in order to create an innovation culture,
internal communication should aim to lead employees through different
phases of identification. Identification was defined as the extent to which
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
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they generated ideas themselves along with their willingness to participate
with ideas generated by others, as represented in Figure 2.1. They argued
that targeting different employees specifically based on their identification
level makes internal communication more effective.
Figure 2.1 Identification with Innovation, Linke and Zerfass 2011
Whilst the benefits of cross functional teams for solution development has
long been recognised, the modern corporation uses technology to foster
greater collaboration across departmental, managerial and geographical
boundaries, in an ever more informal and agile way. A quick skype call or
Google chat is fast becoming the popular replacement for the lengthy face
to face meeting.
As well as encouraging idea generation, once a product or service has
been developed, internal communication is vital for launch preparation.
Before new or adapted products and services can be presented to
customers, they first need to be explained to employees. The most
successful developments will invariably use a period of internal consultation
to iron out any glitches in the proposition so that when it is finally brought to
Chapter 2: The Purpose of Internal Communication
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the external marketplace, the period of consumer testing is both minimised
in length and maximised in terms of success.
As well as being versed in the technical features of a new development,
employees need to understand why it is important to the company and
what their individual role is in making it successful. In the automotive industry,
for example, car manufacturers will invest heavily in the internal
communication of a new model before it is launched to the public. It is vital
that the entire dealer network shares the excitement of the manufacturer
and that they are fully conversant with the unique selling points of the car
over its competition.
2.6 Change Management
Intensity of the internal communications effort is never stronger than at times
of significant change.
“When are we not changing?” is a popular question among employees in
large corporations today. Bill Quirke quotes a report from the Institute of
Management which suggests that many employees in larger companies
feel trapped in a relentless cycle of change, with a majority feeling that the
primary outcome of this is insecurity, lower morale and less loyalty. Internal
communications, depending on one’s perspective, can be a contributor to
these feelings, or a process that aims to reverse them.
In 1996 Kotter introduced his model on how management teams should go
about managing change (Kotter, 1996):
Figure 2.2 Kotter's Steps for Managing Change
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His key point was that for successful change, management teams needed
to win the hearts and minds of their employees.
Other commentators have argued that successful change is not rigorously
controlled and managed, but is more a bottom up process that happens in
an informal, viral way, through social networks rather than formal structures.
The skill of leadership is to know how and when to give this more informal
approach, room to breathe and flourish.
Adrian Cropley argues in his LinkedIn post that today's communication
professional simply needs to be skilled in change management. The
background to this he explains thus (Cropley, Blog 2016):
“Over the past 25 years, business has evolved from a top down, hierarchical
structure when the business changed because the boss said so to a more
empowered workforce. Times are different. Employees take ownership for
their work, are proud of their accomplishments and have a stake in
successful business outcomes. In short, instead of saying “Yes, sir,”
employees ask “Why are we doing that?””
In this post, Cropley goes on to explain the business imperative behind
change management communication by quoting from a 2003-04 Towers
Perrin benchmarking report:
“Communication is no longer a ‘soft’ function. It drives business
performance and organisational success. Companies with the highest levels
of effective communication experience a 26% total return to shareholders
from 1998 – 2002, compared to a -15% return experienced by firms that
communicate least effectively. A significant improvement in
communication effectiveness is associated with a 29.5% increase in market
value.”
Bill Quirke devotes a whole chapter to restructuring and rewiring, where he
explains how internal communications can help smooth the restructuring
process and ease the pain of transition (Quirke, op. cit.). He shows how
internal confusion over brands can be reduced and how competition for
share of internal voice can be mitigated through agreeing rules of
engagement and mutual responsibilities.
Quirke goes on to advocate 8 principles of communicating change
effectively:
1. Use face to face – other tools have their value but when it comes to
talking about how colleagues go about their work, face-to-face is
mandatory
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2. Focus on facts – employees need hard facts regarding what the
change means for them as individuals and will not respond well to
cajoling or exhortation. Briefing packs must be guided by honesty
3. Create advocates by adding context – people are influenced by
those that they trust and respect. Get the influencers on board by
sharing with them valuable context, arguments and
counterarguments
4. Prepare those leading the briefings – let managers get completely
comfortable with their message by giving them room to discuss the
issues with their immediate subordinates first, so that the can lead
discussion with the front line confidently and at the right level
5. Listen and retune – do not assume that messages will always be
heard as you intended. Be prepared to take on board feedback
and adjust for the next round
6. Provide communicators with more information than is needed – the
better informed, the more confident the presenter will be and the
more credibility they will carry through their knowledge and
understanding of all the issues
7. Encourage healthy, straightforward conversation – encourage
people to speak up in a safe environment. Get the issues out on the
table, not nervously tucked away for fear of retribution. Give straight
answers which can include “I promise to come back to you on that
when I have more detail”
8. Focus on the benefits for the employee not the company – if the
internal team’s slides to senior management have focused on the
benefits of the change for the company, don’t make the mistake of
using these same slides with the employees! It is vital that the
messages are mindful of the audience
Quirke also makes a very simple, yet important point: employees are only
able to cope with a limited number of initiatives at any one time. He quotes
the Jensen Group’s 1998 research into complexity in the workplace which
found that an 85% increase in work complexity was driven by an average of
over 35 separate change initiatives. Ouch!
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Where communications is concerned, complexity can be reduced by
working to a simple framework. This was the strategy at the end of the 1990s
when car giants Daimler Benz and the Chrysler corporation merged. Terri
Houtman, the then director of internal communications at Chrysler believed
that a successful merger depended on internal communications moving
employees through a pyramid of engagement:
• Awareness of the new messages, goals, values and targets
• Understanding of the strategy to achieve those targets and the role
that each employee needed to play in making the new business
successful
• Belief in the new business
• Commitment to giving of one’s best to help the new business be
successful
At the first two levels, awareness and understanding, the internal
communication team, according to Houtman were focused on direct
interventions and activities. For the upper two levels the role was much more
one of facilitation and counselling, helping leaders and managers to drive
the behaviours necessary to support an effective change programme.
Figure 2.3 The Chrysler Group Engagement Pyramid
I am COMMITTED
to act
I BELIEVE
I UNDERSTAND the message
I am AWARE of the message
Converting understanding into
commitment requires active
communications by managers
Chapter 2: The Purpose of Internal Communication
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More recently, global IT giants EMC and Dell also seem to have done a
pretty good job of managing a union after announcing in October 2015,
that they were to merge. Stella Low explains how the two companies
immediately formed an integration team with internal communications at
the top of the agenda (Low, op. cit.). One of the first tasks was the
production of a Frequently Asked Questions document, which was tailored
for each organisation. This was the most pragmatic way of dealing in detail,
with the burning questions that each company’s employees had, post the
merger announcement. However, whilst the printed word was important,
nothing was more effective in reassuring and engaging all employees,
according to Low, than the commitment made by the respective CEOs, to
being as visible as the could be, in the immediate aftermath of the
announcement. At times of change, employees need to be able to look
into their leaders’ eyes and to pick up on the physiological and tonal
messages to add real meaning to the words that they might read in an
email or an intranet post. The power of face to face communication is
further explored in chapter 5.
Mark Webb, Social Media Manager at Dixons Carphone has experienced
two significant periods of change in the business; the first as Dixon’s sought
to reposition itself in the digital world in 2008 and the second, more recently,
following the merger with leading UK telecommunications company,
Carphone Warehouse. He echoes the importance of leader visibility during
these periods and consistency of language. For example, “a merger of
equals” was a phrase that both sets of employees were encouraged to
cling to as the joining of the two companies unfolded. The idea that neither
company nor staff was more important than the other was central to
maintaining employee confidence and commitment.
Mergers and acquisitions inevitably feature upheaval and often
redundancies. The merger with Carphone included the closure of the old
Dixons office in Hemel Hempstead and the movement of some one
thousand employees to new offices in Acton. According to Webb,
transparency and support were the dominant features of the
communications programme at the time, enabling employees to come to
terms with the change, however it affected them on a personal level.
At the Retail Week awards in 2016 it could be argued that the success of the
overall merger and the contribution in this played by internal
communications, was suitably recognised when the newly formed Dixons
Carphone was named Retailer of the Year.
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
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Figure 2.4 Dixons Carphone Warehouse CEO, Sebastian James
2.7 Managing a Crisis
When the corporate ship hits choppy waters, internal communications can
be the difference between steering a safe passage to calmer seas, or all
round panic as the ship starts to sink!
A ‘crisis’ can take a number of forms across a wide spectrum from mildly
embarrassing to acts of negligence and criminality. Examples include: a
product or service failure, a natural disaster, a public scandal involving a
senior executive, revelations of corporate impropriety, a collapse in the
supply chain, an injury or fatality at a company event and failure to comply
with data.
The CIM listed a number of examples of recent, well publicised crises in The
Catalyst:
• Volkswagen’s dishonesty over automotive emissions
• BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill
• The LIBOR rigging scandal which is estimated to have wiped 60% of
profits from Britain’s five biggest banks since 2011
• The horsemeat scandal of 2013 which has had disastrous
consequences for brands such as Findus
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• Corporate tax avoidance from the likes of Amazon and Starbucks
• Data privacy breaches for over 150,000 Talk Talk customers
• News of the World phone hacking
• Energy companies engaging in collaborative price fixing
• Numerous political scandals, such as parliamentary expenses
involving MPs of all parties
Volkswagen – A Collective Management Failure? Extract from the Guardian Newspaper December 10 2015
Volkswagen has admitted that the diesel emissions scandal was the result of
a collection of failures within the company, rather than just the actions of
rogue engineers.
Hans Dieter Pötsch, the VW chairman, said there had been a “whole chain”
of errors at the German carmaker and there was a mindset within the
company that tolerated rule-breaking.
Pötsch said engineers had installed defeat devices in engines after realising
they could not hit emissions targets for diesel cars in the US by “permissible
means”. Nine managers have been suspended over possible involvement in
the scandal.
Although Pötsch said no senior executives were believed to have been
actively involved in cheating emissions tests, he warned: “This is not only
about direct but overall responsibility.”
The VW chairman said the scandal was the result of a combination of
individual misconduct and mistakes in one part of the business but also flaws
in company processes and a tolerance of rule-breaking. Work began on the
defeat device as early as 2005 when VW decided to promote its diesel
engines in the US.
As well as requiring expert external communications management, it is
arguably more important to keep employees in the picture at a time when
they are not only grappling with uncertainty, but will feel personally involved
by virtue of their employment with the organisation that is hitting the
headlines.
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Gill Corkindale writing in the Harvard Business Review claimed that the oil
spill crisis faced by BP in 2010 exposed a dysfunctional organisational culture
that resulted in a failure to respond quickly enough and with appropriate
intensity to the events as they unfolded (Corkindale, 2010).
Georgina Bromwich writing in the Training Journal noted that “two very long
days passed between the news breaking of the emissions scandal and
Volkswagen’s first press release on the subject. It took them another two
days to write their first tweet on the topic. That silence is a powerful message
all on its own” (Bromwich, 2016).
As well as speed and intensity, other factors highlighted as critical for both
internal and external communicators by the BP oil spill crisis include:
• Leadership visibility – Tony Hayward the CEO at the time, did a good
job by arriving reasonably promptly on the scene and assuming the
role of spokesperson. Sadly, some of his verbal communication did
not serve him quite so well. He was particularly criticised, as the crisis
unfolded, for saying he was looking forward to returning to normal
life and in doing so, implying that he was more concerned about his
personal welfare than that of the many people whose lives had
been turned upside down by the disaster
• Truthfulness – customers do not like being spun to and employees will
not tolerate it. If the news is bad, do not try to dress it up
• Collaboration – communicators must keep the focus on information
rather than departmental blame
• Consideration for ALL the relevant stakeholders – in this instance BP
needed to manage the fears of a local community and a host of
environmental and political stakeholders, as well as customers and
employees
• Actions speak louder than words – it is very important that if you tell
employees something is going to happen….it happens
Rachel Miller argues that the best way to handle crisis communications is to
be adequately prepared (Miller, Blog 2014). She suggests a business ask itself
the following questions: Can your comms team access their email, shared
drives and send messages remotely to the whole organisation when not
physically in the office? Do they have all the mobile numbers they need pre-
programmed into their phones and the relevant chargers, etc. at home?
Does everyone know how to update information lines remotely? Can you
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prepare anything in advance e.g. set up a conference call number for a
cross-functional business continuity team or write holding statements as a
starting point which you can tailor as required.
She suggests that most businesses should have a crisis management
document with information that will give them a head start in a crisis
situation. This might include, press contact numbers, maps, phone numbers,
details of emergency services and email addresses for employees. Content
should be reviewed a couple of times a year to ensure it remains current
and incorporates any learnings from incidents that have occurred during
the course of the year.
2.8 Reward and Recognition
One of the most important purposes of internal communications is to reward
and recognise employees. There is plenty of research to suggest that those
organisations that do this well enjoy greater success over time than those
that do not. Saying ‘thank you’ is immensely powerful. The Great Place to
Work Institute, which maintains the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For
list, highlights ‘Thanking’ as one of 9 key Practice Areas in their culture
framework. According to the Institute, Best Companies thank employees
personally and in unexpected ways; they thank people frequently and
cultivate a ‘climate of appreciation’.
Structured reward and recognition schemes are commonplace in today’s
corporation. Typically, these programmes, such as the Champion’s Awards
introduced in 2015 by US indoor skydiving company iFLY, will enable
colleagues to nominate each other for demonstrating behaviours consistent
with the company’s values. In the case of iFLY, the winner of the monthly
award at each of the company’s locations, receives a gift card to the value
of $50. In the company’s annual employee survey in January 2016, the
introduction of Champions Awards was cited by many employees as a
major step forward for the business and a key factor behind the
improvement in overall engagement scores.
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Figure 2.5 iFLY Indoor Skydiving has a Champions Programme for
recognising behaviours consistent with the company values
Studies also show that it is the recognition rather than the material reward,
that is the real kicker for prolonged engagement. There is a world of
difference between leaving a gift card on someone’s desk for example,
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versus presenting it to the recipient, in front of their peers and thanking them
personally and specifically for what they have done to earn their reward.
Public endorsement is where it counts.
2.9 Reducing Inter-departmental Friction
According to Helen Huhman, writing in the Entrepeneur, whenever people
are required to work together, conflict is likely to arise (Huhman, Blog 2014).
Regardless of how compatible members of a team might be, each
individual brings along distinct priorities and a unique personality.
She refers to a report, “The State of Enterprise Work” produced by an
organisation called AtTask, released in October 2013 which discovered 81
percent of more than 2,000 American adults surveyed experienced
workplace conflict with other departments, groups, teams, or co-workers. As
a result, 4 out of 10 respondents reported a loss in productivity. Interestingly,
poor communication appears to be the root cause of much of this conflict.
Twenty-nine percent of the respondents from the AtTask study said they
believed conflicting priorities are the # 1 source of workplace conflict.
Additionally, 64 percent of the respondents also cited an abundance of
confusion about who was supposed to be doing which specific tasks or
duties. Rather like the players on a sports team, employees need to know
what position they are playing in, what is expected of them and how this fits
with the other players on the team. Internal communication should certainly
be able to address these issues.
In an August 2013 study by Workplace Options, 84 percent of 427 working
Americans polled said they talk with their co-workers about job-related
problems. Workplace Options also discovered personality clashes and poor
communication are top causes of workplace conflict. Thirty-five percent of
the poll respondents said their employer does not have a formal complaint
process. One-third of the respondents said they go to their supervisor if a
conflict arises and another third immediately directly address the person
causing the friction.
Forty-seven percent of the 740 respondents surveyed for FairWay
Resolution’s "Conflict in New Zealand Workplaces Study" released in August
2013 said they went to their managers to resolve a conflict. Only half of
those respondents, however, were satisfied with their manager’s reaction.
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Based on my own personal experience of working in a variety of
organisations, large and small, inter-departmental conflict is inextricably
linked to organisational culture. Those who advocate the creation of
conflict resolution procedures – another manual that sits on the shelf (or the
PDF that never gets downloaded) – are missing the point. If the culture was
right in the organisation; if all those companies who list ‘teamwork’ or
‘collaboration’ as one of their values, truly practised these values, then there
would be little need for formal documents on conflict resolution.
2.10 Fulfilment of Legal Obligations
There are a number of circumstances under which employers are obliged
by law to communicate with their employees. These include:
• Outlining in writing the main terms and conditions of employment
and subsequently any changes that might be made as a result of
changes in role
• Dismissal (usually on request).
• A change of business ownership
• To provide recognised trade unions the information they require for
collective bargaining.
Employers are also required by law to:
• Provide employees with an itemised pay slip
• Consult employees or their representatives when considering
collective redundancies, business transfer or changes to pensions
• Inform and consult on issues affecting them and the business they
work for (where a company employs 50 or more people). These
include:
o Take health and safety issues seriously
o Consult over changes to the contract of employment
o Consult over redundancies
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o Consult over undertakings or transfers, i.e. the business is to
be sold or part of it is to be contracted out, or the contractor
is to be replaced by another
o Consult over changes to pension schemes
o Provide training policies, progress and plans
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Chapter 3: The Role of the Internal
Communications Practitioner
As well as being a discipline or a process, in larger organisations, both
private, public and third sector e.g. charities, an individual and a team may
have job roles that are specifically focused on internal communications.
According to PR Week, the day to day tasks of an internal communications
manager are likely to involve some or all of the following:
• Establish an internal communications strategy in conjunction with
senior managers
• Ensure organisational initiatives and projects are successfully
communicated to employees and stakeholders
• Plan, edit and write content for a variety of internal communications
media, such as a staff intranet, monthly magazine or regular email
bulletin. You may also be required to work on the layout of content
• Keep clients abreast of progress and answer their questions
• Storyboard or translate ideas to the creative team of art directors
and designers
• Use social media to communicate with staff internally
• Manage an internal communications officer or whole team
• Deliver presentations at organisational events, such as your
company’s AGM
• Draft messages or scripts from senior executives for presentation to
employees in written or spoken form
• Ensure internal communications messages are consistent across all
media and for different departments of the organisation
• Ensure internal communication messages are consistent with
external communication messages
• Respond to feedback from staff and adjust communications content
accordingly
• Handle the internal communication response to crisis situations which
affect organisational perception and reputation
• Advise senior executives of developments throughout the
organisation, either face to face or through regular written
communication
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And the skills required to do these tasks are as follows:
• Writing skills – you need excellent writing, editing and proofreading
skills as well as the journalistic ability to source stories from employees
• Speaking skills – you also need strong speaking skills as you are likely
to be called on to give presentations to staff. Internal
communications managers need sensitivity to an organisation’s
goals and values and the ability to relay them to employees
• Interpersonal skills – you need good interpersonal and relationship-
building skills in order to work with communications and HR
departments. You also need to possess the confidence to deal with
senior executives and explain communication techniques to them
• Creative skills – you need the creative ability to devise
communication strategies Digital skills: Familiarity with information
technology, especially digital and video means of communication, is
essential
More recently the Institute of Internal Communications has published its
framework for internal communicators’ professional development, consisting
of 6 core skill areas and 9 behaviours:
Figure 3.1 IOIC Professional Development Roadmap
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At the heart of the framework is what the IOIC deems the core purpose of
the internal comms practitioner: to create an informed, engaged &
connected workforce to drive organisational performance.
Having ‘internal communications’ within your job title does not, of course,
mean that you are responsible for all internal communications that go on
within an organisation. It does however require you to be both a facilitator
of best practice and a traffic manager, helping an organisation to avoid
communication overload and keeping messages appropriate focused in
content, delivered via appropriate channels with a frequency and
language that employees can absorb and where necessary, act upon.
Bill Quirke talks about the modern day internal communications professional
needing to learn the lessons of effective supply chain management (Quirke,
op. cit.). It is not enough to assume that just because a message has been
sent, it has been received. He points out the potential disconnects between
links in the communication chain where “messages are mistaken for
communication and success is defined as the media’s ability to deliver
messages with no regard for the final outcome. Competing communicators
jealously guard the part of the communication chain they own and
managers are accused of filtering and blocking information, and
disagreeing with its value”.
The answer is that the internal communicator must always be aligned with
the corporate priorities (not their own agendas) and must be able to add
the vital ingredients of meaning and relevance to every communication
they touch.
Internal communication specialists need to understand they have two
primary audiences. Upstream senior managers who often want the specialist
to get out of the way and just give them access to the channels; and
downstream the general workforce that is usually desperate for less volume
and more clarity. Achieving value for both broad audiences, according to
Quirke can be accomplished by sticking to these principles:
• Focus on processes, not products – for example, why create another
channel e.g. a newsletter when the message could be conveyed
just as easily via existing channels?
• Quality manage communication – use language that is accessible to
the audience
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• Reduce the number of messages and make them more memorable
– less is more. One painting on the wall is always more impactful than
several
• Design information with the recipient in mind – always think about
what it is you want the recipient to do with the information you are
sending them
• Budget time not paper – time is our most precious commodity. Make
sure topics take up no more communication bandwidth than they
merit
• Measure the outcome – without this, how can we know if the
investment in internal comms is worthwhile (see Chapter 6).
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Chapter 4: Internal Communications Planning
In the same way that an organisation creates a marketing communications
plan that will facilitate the sale of products and services to customers, an
internal communications plan will give an organisation a much better
chance of engaging, motivating, generating buy-in, aiding understanding
and retaining its employees. Internal comms planning can take place at
both a strategic level (usually in large multinational organisations) and a
tactical level (more common) around specific initiatives such as the launch
of a new product or service, a restructure or the outcomes of an employee
survey.
Rachel Miller says that writing an internal communications strategy should
answer the following questions (Miller, op. cit.):
• Where you are now?
• Where are you heading/want to be (objectives)?
• How you are going to get there?
• How long will it take and why?
• What is involved along the way?
• Why this approach is the best one?
• How will you know when you have got there (measurement)?
Where new initiatives are concerned Teresa Carnt, a communications
specialist at BP, explains the six stage, templated process that her team
insists upon to maximise the potential for success (Carnt, Interview 03.02.16):
1. Clarity around ‘The story’ – a project leader will often fall into the trap
of seeing the story from only his or her perspective and this first step
helps to unearth any potential misalignment. It is not uncommon for
the story to evolve and so this document is one that is constantly
referred back to and updated
2. Stakeholder analysis – this step may be very detailed or quite light,
dependent on the size and scale of the project. This step will ideally
be led by the Project team owning the initiative
3. Key messages
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4. Activity identification – who, what, when, set out in a timeline. This is
the step that the project leaders tend to want to dive straight into,
but according to Tersea Carnt, it is the previous three steps that
determine the robustness of Step 4
5. Measurement and Control – this is the part that is easily missed
6. Review
The following 12 point checklist which can be applied to both internal and
external communications planning:
• Measurable goals and strategies – which follow the familiar SMART
acronym
• Target audiences – both internal and external audiences, consider
what the key messages are for each audience, and what you want
each audience to do as a result of hearing those messages.
Audiences might be considered in two groups: those who will
support your effort, and those who will be against it. It is helpful to
have strategies that address those who will be barriers to success, for
example, to see if you can turn some of them into supporters, or
‘frame the debate’ to prevent their negative messages from
dominating
• Identification of the overarching core message – what do we want
our audiences to hear and how might this differ from what they are
currently hearing
• Supporting messages and persuasive strategies – each audience will
need different key messages and will have varying degrees of
readiness to hear and act upon these messages. Additionally, there
are different types of persuasion, and the plan should address how
each persuasive strategy will be used to gain support. For example,
rational persuasion uses technical data and logical arguments, while
emotional persuasion uses values and emotion, such as photographs
of happy children, to convey messages
• Opportunities and barriers – the plan should identify different
strategies for and opportunities to reach key audiences with your
messages. It should also identify barriers and how those barriers can
be overcome
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• Communications activities – for each goal and strategy, there will be
a series of communications activities, or tactics, identified. Each
activity/tactic should have a clear timeline, communications
vehicles, people assigned to them, and a budget
• Media channels – within each goal, strategy and tactic there will be
different communications vehicles to use to carry your message to
your audience
• Crisis contingency – the communications plan should include how to
manage and communicate about any crises that might arise
• Implementation plan – this should be a very clear road map that lays
out specific timelines, deadlines, activities and who is responsible
• Monitoring and evaluation – you will want to track and measure
success so you can also make adjustments if certain strategies and
tactics aren’t working
• Staffing – who is leading on the implementation? Who else is
involved? Will they need any external help?
• Budget – this should take into account staffing costs, both internal
and external, and any expenditure on supporting materials such as
subscriptions, creative, production and event costs.
Bill Quirke talks about organisational communications being “a team sport,
in which coordinating the players is the only way to score a goal”(Quirke,
op. cit.). He repeatedly observes that one of the big challenges facing
many large organisations is communication overload or information overkill
that consumes precious time with clutter and mixed messages. Planning is
the key to solving many of these issues.
However, before planning for internal communications begins, organisations
need to answer a fairly fundamental question: who is responsible for
coordinating the players?
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4.1 Roles and Responsibilities – The Leader, HR and
Marketing Triangle
Even in large organisations where the role of Internal Communications
Manager might exist, the process of internal communications will be at its
most effective where there is a strong partnership between the business
leader(s), marketing and HR. The business leader typically owns the Vision
and Mission of the organisation and needs to inspire the employees to sign
up to these concepts. HR typically owns many of the crucial touchpoints
around employee communication such as recruitment (and termination),
employee benefits, terms, reward and recognition; while marketing has the
creative, technical and messaging skills to help cascade communication
effectively and efficiently through the organisation.
According the Centre for Management and Organisation Effectiveness,
leaders spend 80% of their time communicating and most of this is with
employees of the company.
In the Handbook of Business Strategy, Deborah J Barrett describes the
‘spiral’ of leadership communication where leaders in any organisation must
master the skills at the core (strategy, writing, and speaking), but they also
need to expand their skills to include those needed to lead and manage
groups (emotional intelligence, cultural literacy, listening), managing teams
and meetings, and coaching and mentoring (Barrett, 2006). Eventually,
particularly when they move into the higher-levels of organisational
leadership, they will need to develop the capabilities in the outer circle, the
corporate communication skills – employee relations, change
communication, media relations, crisis communication, and image and
reputation management.
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Figure 4.1 The Spiral of Leadership Communication
Bill Quirke argues that the rules of the internal communications game have
to be set by the leaders and they need to follow 6 steps for success:
1. Plan communication with senior management
2. Agree a communications policy with the board
3. Involve senior management with forward planning
4. Ensure that change initiatives have communication plans
5. Create greater coordination between internal communicators
6. Practice ‘air traffic control’ i.e. help to avoid communicators fighting
each other for bandwidth
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For internal communications consultant Rich Baker the departmental
location of internal communication specialists, or those who have the
primary responsibility in any business, is not what is important (Baker,
Interview 22.01.16). What matters is that the leader of that department
understands the critical importance of the role and empowers those
involved to do what needs to be done.
In contrast, Emma Thompson, Change Communications leader at Her
Majesty Courts and Tribunal Service, expresses a strong preference for
internal communications having a direct line to the CEO outside of any
traditional departmental boundaries (Thompson, Interview 20.01.16). In her
view, internal comms needs to be functionally agnostic in order to make the
strongest contribution to business performance. Annette Gann, a
communications consultant with National Grid, feels similarly (Interview
15.02.16) and observes that in times of crisis management, when decision
making and action need to happen swiftly, a direct line to the CEO is
essential.
4.2 Situation Analysis or Audit
In the same way that a marketing or marketing plan might start with a
situational analysis, so too might an internal communications plan. Such an
audit might include:
• Organisational structure
• Geographical scope
• Cultural issues
• Technical infrastructure
• Stakeholder analysis
• Feedback mechanisms
• Communication media
• Existing impact measures
The audit process may attempt to establish stakeholders’ perspectives on
certain issues. How might they react to news of plant closures, relocations,
competitor acquisitions and the introduction of new technologies? These
perspectives will vary according to their role.
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Strategy Marketing
Management
Shop Floor Suppliers
Close plant and make
product overseas
Acquire competitor ☺
Invest in new
production technology ☺ ☺
Table 4.1 Understanding Perspectives on Different Issues
The audit stage might also involve classifying or segmenting stakeholders
according to their perceived attitudes on a specific issue. These labels
might include:
• Partners – share your goals and objectives
• Allies – can be relied to work alongside you to achieve your aims
• Passive supporters – support your goals and objectives but will not
take actions to help you achieve them
• Fence sitters – not prepared to commit either way
• Loose cannon – unpredictable. Need to be kept under control or
could derail you
• Opponents – actively working against you
• Voiceless – will receive your communications but there are no
channels for them to provide feedback
Familiar frameworks such as SWOT and priority ranking tables can be used to
summarise the findings of an internal communications audit.
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4.3 The importance of Context
The need for, nature and scope of internal communications will vary
enormously according to context. Influential factors will include:
• The size of the organisation and its geographical distribution – is the
organisation national, single site v multi-national, multi-office? The
more multi-national the organisation, the more it must deal with the
challenges of different culture, religion, infrastructure, language and
the practical aspect of different time zones (see next section)
• The sector – there will be nuances between the public and private
sectors, between highly regulated industries and deregulated
environments and between new style tech led businesses to old style
manufacturing businesses. Consider the difference between the
communications within a company like Apple or Google where rules
are regarded as limiting and empowerment is encouraged v tightly
regulated industries such as rail, water or nuclear. Bill Quirk observes:
“empowering employees to devise new approaches (in these
industries) could be catastrophic”. Tim Wooten, who has spent a
number of years working for Shell notes that all communication in the
oil industry takes place in the context of a permanent emphasis on
health and safety (Wooten, Interview 22.01.16)
• Rate of growth – the frequency and intensity of communication will
be greater in sectors that are growing fast, with lots of competition v
static sectors with few players
• Day to day v special situation – as we have noted elsewhere, the
advent of a major change programme, product launch or a
business disaster will intensify the need for a specific internal
communications campaign beyond the normal day to day
communications.
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4.4 Internal Communication Challenges within the
Multi-national
If internal communication is challenging in a domestic context, the issue
multiplies at multinational firms that also face having to overcome
differences in time zones, languages and cultures. Time zone differences
create limited windows of opportunity for real time conversation as well as
practical challenges for face to face time with the senior team within any
organisation.
Differing cultures can make the application of values based internal comms
challenging, with a risk that everything gets watered down and the flair and
power within a piece of communication either get lost in this process or
simply lost in translation.
The challenges of communicating in a multi-national environment are
neatly summed up in the prelude to a paper produced by two students of
the Halmstead School of Engineering Rufei He & Jianchao Liu (He & Liu,
2010). It is 9:00 a.m. on Monday in Sweden. The Technical Product Manager
of company X sent an email about the new design of the product to its
subsidiary company in China. He would like to have a production ready
model of the new design by Friday when he flies to China. An email came
on Thursday saying that there was a 1mm error in the product they made
and asked the manager what they should do. The product manager finds
himself confused: “Do they need to ask such a question? They could simply
adjust the error and give me the model on Friday, why are they waiting for
orders instead of taking initiatives?”
It is 15:01 Monday in Shanghai. The Chinese R&D Manager in Shanghai
received an email from the parent company in Sweden. The parent
company asked for a production ready model of the latest design in five
days. He called the Production Manager immediately. Three days later he
got the new model but with a 1mm error. He knew it would be better to
provide a standard model. However, he decided to notify this problem to
the Swedish manager first and let him to decide what to do. It is the Chinese
way of showing their respects to superiors by asking their opinions on
everything.
He and Liu go on to observe that many researchers have found that in Asian
countries people tend to express themselves inexplicitly, while in the Western
world people are more direct when communicating (Ybema & Byun, 2009;
Newman & Nollen, 1996; Jolly, 2008; Welth & Welth, 2008). A further point
they make is that the variances in typical societal pressure across different
countries will also impact on how messages are received. In low pressure
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countries, employees are at greater to liberty to explore self-worth and
personal fulfilment. While in high pressure countries people have no room for
such luxuries and believe that following a superior’s instructions is the best
way to keep their job.
Time zones, national cultural nuances and language differences will always
exist in the world. They simply need to be accepted, considered and
managed.
According to Anders Lundblad, Chief of Internal Communications at IKEA, a
company with 135,000 employees across 349 stores in more than 40
countries, part of the solution key to meeting these challenges head on is to
focus on the company culture, rather than the national culture, and take full
advantage of new technologies and channels (Lundblad, Blog, 2014). The
firm uses Microsoft Sharepoint to share documents and has introduced
Yammer. Lundblad points out that Yammer is accessible from any device;
whether it is an employee’s private phone or their IKEA one and can be
accessed from desktops at home or from work.
Interestingly however, he also notes that in Germany the operating
company has so far declined to participate in Yammer, citing concerns
over privacy.
4.5 Surveys
One of the most useful reference points for internal communications
planning is the annual employee survey. With the explosion of free to use
online tools such as Survey Monkey, Typeform, Google Forms, Zoho, Survey
Gizmo, Zoomerang and Survey Planet, collecting employee feedback on
‘life at the workplace’ has never been so easy.
The past decade as also seen the rise of a number of national surveys that
rate and rank participating organisations for their levels of employee
engagement based on their employees’ confidential answers to questions
that remain consistent over time. One of the best known of these is the UK’s
Best Companies’ survey where questions are grouped under 8 areas:
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Figure 4.2 Questions in the Best Companies’ Survey are grouped into
8 areas
The great advantages that these surveys have over the ‘in-house’
approach are:
a) the credibility of the methodology and approach, developed by
experts and grounded over time;
b) the benchmarking which enables organisations to see how they
compare to others across each of the drivers of employee
engagement; and
c) the detail of the reporting that enables business leaders to pinpoint
exactly where the weaknesses in their engagement processes might
lie and subsequently target improvement.
The real challenge however, that organisations face when implementing a
survey is acting on the results. If employees are asked for feedback, they
expect to see some change as a result of that feedback. The best internal
communicators will not only drive the survey process, but they will break
down results in a way that makes it as easy as possible for line managers to
see where they can make improvements.
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Furthermore, they will act as the conscience of the business and challenge
business leaders and managers to follow through on action plans that are
formulated in the aftermath of the employee survey. As one of my
interviewees said: “It’s about lifting the words off the powerpoint and
actually putting them into play that counts”.
4.6 Objectives
Like all marketing objectives, good internal communications objectives
should be SMART:
• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Time Bound
Objectives are set in context. Some examples are:
• Participation and engagement with internal digital media such as
the internet and Yammer. Likes, Shares, Downloads and Comments
are all measureable engagement activities
• Participation rates in the annual employee survey
• Objectives for specific questions in the annual employee survey e.g.
moving the % of people who strongly agree that company Z is great
to work for, from X to Y
• Attendance rates at conferences, town hall meetings, ‘all hands’
type gatherings and live leadership team webinars or video
broadcasts
• Feedback scores for simple questions posed after events outlined
above e.g. “To what extent to you agree with the following
statement: I have a clear understanding of the organisation’s
priorities for the coming year?”
• Attendance rates at more social style events such as summer or
Christmas parties
• Sign up rates for employee benefits
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• Participation rates in peer to peer recognition schemes
• Utilisation rates of campaign toolkits
• Consistency of external messaging across the business following
internal briefings
• Timely completion of annual employee reviews
These objectives ultimately feed back into the broader aim of aligning
employees with the business goals and encouraging the notion that this
organisation is good to work for.
When setting objectives, it is also important to remember that internal
communication is a means to an end, not an end in itself. For employees to
be fully engaged in their work and the organisation, business leaders need
to show the link between business problems and internal communication as
a possible solution.
4.7 Strategy Setting
Setting strategy is concerned with broadly how objectives are to be
achieved. Bill Quirke talks about organisations doing the right thing and
connecting their internal communications to achieving their business
strategy; and of doing things right by having efficient and effective
processes (Quirke, op. cit.).
Rather like an external plan, strategy setting should involve segmentation,
targeting and positioning.
4.7.1 Audience segmentation
Audience segmentation or stakeholder mapping is about who
communications are to be aimed at. This involves segmenting internal
audiences by criteria such as location, job role, seniority and attitude.
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Segmentation approach Examples
Demographics Age, gender, income, skill
Psychographics Personality, attitude, behaviour, values
Staff Groups Board, senior management, middle
management, shop floor
Contract Full time, part time, seasonal, temp
Location Head office, regional office, customer
facing unit, overseas
Table 4.2 Internal Audience Segmentation Approaches courtesy of
Alan Anstead
Mendelow suggests that classifying stakeholders according to their interest
in a particular issue and their power to influence it, is helpful in terms of
mapping out a communications strategy (Mendelow, 1991). Those with high
interest and high power are referred to as Key Players. They are the focus of
much of the energy and effort, should be consulted regularly and involved
in key decisions. Those in the opposite quadrant, with little interest or power,
simply need to be kept informed. Those who may not be that interested in a
particular issue, but who wield a lot of power, need to be engaged with a
view to growing their interest. Those whose interest is high, but who have
little power to influence should be treated like goodwill ambassadors and
involved in lower risk and less important areas of the campaign or process.
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Figure 4.3 Mendelow’s Power Interest Matrix
However, the same rules remain – the more directly you can tailor the
content and appeal to each group, the better chance of success you have
in achieving what you’re setting out to do.
Quirke’s model of employee clarity and willingness is another useful model
which the internal communicator can deploy for segmenting an audience:
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Figure 4.4 Willingness to Help and Clarity of Direction (Quirke, 2000)
• Unguided – willing but not clear on how they fit and what they can
do to help
• Hot Shots – very engaged, totally get it
• Slow Burners – not knowing, not caring, unmotivated
• Refuseniks – get it, but are very resistant to change. Actively
disagree to proposed change
The key point for the internal communicator is that recognition of where
individual or groups of individuals might sit in the above matrix, will heavily
influence the method, style and content of the messaging.
The strategy setting stage might also involve the creation of a campaign
brand or theme that has the flexibility for component initiatives to be sub
branded as members of the same family. This helps consistency and
continuity as new elements are introduced and badged as belonging to a
single overarching programme. When Thomas Cook relaunched with its new
‘Sunny Heart’ brand in 2013, the internal comms programme wall pulled
together under the theme of ‘Our Heart’.
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4.7.2 Messaging
Regardless of whether they are for the whole organisation or just a part of
the company, key messages should be short, memorable and consistent.
Signing up to these messages and sticking to them is a key part of the
strategy development process.
Message development can be viewed in terms of a hierarchy. The
company brand statement captures the essence of the brand, project or
campaign. The next step might be some principles aligned with global
messages, followed by messages targeted for specific audiences.
Figure 4.5 Diagnosing and solving content problems – Theresa
Putkey, 2014, Slideshare
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Burton Biscuits HR Director, Jim Beatty, and the company’s Head of Brand,
Mandy Bobrowski, point to the need for consistency of message and a
constant update on context as a key part of the employee engagement
strategy going forward (Beatty & Bobrowski, Interview 21.01.16). In the event
of any ‘gap’ employees will fill it for themselves, often in a pessimistic
fashion.
4.8 Tactics and Implementation
Action planning is about creating a schedule of activity and allocating
responsibilities: when and who.
Regular, ongoing communications could be planned out using as simple
framework such as:
• Media
• Purpose
• Responsibility
• Frequency
Specific campaign or project based communications might be broken
down into:
• Activity
• Responsibility
• Deadline
• Progress
• Resources needed
• Success measure
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Implementation should also be mindful of the principles of good internal
communication, which include making sure that communications are:
• Timely
• Relevant
• Contextualised
o For the situation
o For the audience
• Consistent
• Honest
• Two-way
• As much about the why as the what. If employees do not
understand the problem that an organisation is attempting to solve,
they will not feel any ownership of the solution the organisation is
proposing, and as a result will not be proactive in the solution,
undermining attempts at progress.
• Face to face and from the line manager wherever possible.
Generally speaking, employees will have much more trust in a
message if it comes directly from their line manager.
• Mindful of ‘What’s In It For Me’ (WIFFM). If employees can see how
they will personally gain from an initiative or programme, then they
are much more likely to actively support it.
4.9 Cascading Information
There are two schools of thought on the value of cascading messages
through an organisation:
1. The process of cascading is vital as messages carry the greatest
credibility when they come from an immediate line manager.
…or in complete contrast:
2. Cascading is a waste of time. Employees need to hear the message
from the top of the organisation, where there is less risk of message
dilution.
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The problem with the second approach however, is that as well as the
credibility issue, there is the absence of a manager’s ability to contextualise
the message for the audience, and often for purely practical reasons, the
absence of an immediate opportunity to engage in conversation and seek
clarification.
Patrick Lencioni describes the art and science of cascading messages, in a
number of his books, as an important tool that enhances internal
communications (Lencioni, 2006). He suggests three practical ways in which
senior leaders might improve the cascade process:
1. Before a meeting is over, allocate the last 15 minutes to determine,
as a group, what messages need to be conveyed and to whom.
2. Write the key message on the white board or virtual meeting screen
for everyone in the room to sign up against. This deals immediately
with the issue of people leaving a room after a long meeting and
taking different messages back to their respective departments.
3. Insist that managers cascade the message in person or on the
phone. The value in cascading messages is in the ensuing dialogue
where employees have a chance to raise questions and managers
can respond.
4.10 Communication Champions
In larger organisations a useful tactic is to identify communication leaders or
champions who can be relied upon to facilitate the cascade of key
messages from the senior team in a way that makes sense for their
respective parts of the business. In addition to being competent
communicators, these individuals are ideally also capable of asking the right
questions of senior management, so that they can contextualise messages
for their audiences, and suitably engaged with the business aims such that
they carry out this role speedily and with enthusiasm.
At iFLY Indoor Skydiving on the eve of a major expansion, the company
recruited Values Champions at each of its tunnels. These individuals were
selected as role models of the behaviours that were consistent with the
company’s values, and to champion these behaviours not only in their own
tunnels, but at the new tunnels that might be going up in their region. A
secondary role was to support their General Managers on the
communications side, particularly with respect to the Champions Award
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programme. Specific activities included keeping the programme high on
the tunnel agenda, helping to drive monthly nominations and then feeding
the names of winners back to HQ so that they could be celebrated in
monthly bulletins put out by the VP of Operations.
The process of selecting and deploying communication champions is not
without risk:
• Under pressure to deliver they can lapse into running their
programme as a standalone effort rather than joining it up with the
wider initiative
• Their natural passion may make them lose sight of the audience that
they are addressing and focus too much on the what rather than the
why
• They see the role of a champion as their chance to grab the
spotlight and further their own career. One consequence of this is
that go into communication overload, competing rather than
cooperating with their colleagues, and ending up cluttering their
audiences. Another is that they attempt to create their own logos
and identities for their element of the programme, which only results
in further confusion whilst simultaneously incurring the wrath of the
marketing department.
A large part of the answer to the above is to create rules of engagement so
that that communication leaders understand their place in the cascade
and their primary role, which is to create meaning in the message for their
audience. In times of change their job is not necessarily to sell the change
to the employees but to equip the respective business unit leaders with the
information and tools they need, in order for them to use their greater
credibility to get buy in from their teams. Smart collaboration for success
rather than foolhardy glory seeking for confusion.
Bill Quirk makes a useful distinction between Content Providers and Channel
Owners (Quirke, op. cit.). Content providers are those with information they
want to communicate. They act primarily as authors, creating messages
and information and passing them on to the channel owners for distribution.
Channel owners are responsible for providing robust communication
channels and that reach employees and are accountable to content
providers for ensuring they get the airtime for their initiative and project
messages.
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4.11 In House v Agency Support
There are a number of reasons why organisations might want to engage
external resource to support the internal communications process. These
include:
• The support required is around a project with a limited time frame,
rather than an ongoing support
• Specialist skills e.g. design, audio visual and event management
• Specialist technology e.g. reward and recognition or employee
benefits portals
• Relevant experience e.g. in change management, corporate
responsibility, employee surveys
• Creative thinking
• A fresh pair of eyes
On this latter point, experienced communications expert Mike Klein talks
about how internal communicators, like any employee can get a little stale
and fall into the trap of following the culturally acceptable communication
routines and channels, rather than really addressing the needs of the
employees (Klein, Interview 29.01.16). He describes this as the danger of
“drinking your own bathwater”. After a while it is important to get some fresh
water in i.e. seek an external perspective.
Klein also observes that the level and nature of external support depends on
internal capability and where the gaps are. The key questions to ask are:
What can external support do better for you and what will be the impact?
Andy Bounds, who himself spends much of his time going into organisations
to help them improve communication skills, points out that someone from
the outside can get away with saying what might feel a bit daft, brave or
out of place, coming from someone on the inside (Bounds, Interview
28.01.16). Unencumbered by political pressures, the external consultant can
challenge the patterns or practices that might be getting in the way of
effective communication.
Charlotte West, communications manager with Lenovo concurs with this
point, observing that leaders are sometimes more inclined to listen to the
message when it is conveyed by an external consultant, rather than the
internal team (West, Interview 26.02.16). The external consultant has the
benefit of no history, baggage or agenda.
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The following Case Study from internal communications agency, Blue
Goose, was based on Barclays need for short term input from a team with
relevant experience in linking employee engagement to corporate
responsibility:
Case Study: This is Sustainability at Barclays
When Barclays’ corporate social responsibility programme changed gear to
become a Group-wide sustainability strategy, Blue Goose worked closely
with the Group internal communications team to develop an employee
engagement programme to help 130,000 employees worldwide understand
why and how sustainability should be the ‘invisible hand’ directing every
action of the business.
Engaging stakeholders
The sustainability strategy was driven by senior owners of the five
sustainability themes – diversity, financial inclusion, global citizenship,
customer focus and environmental impact – each with competing as well
as complementary interests to promote. We brought them together to co-
create a sustainability vision, messages and engagement plan based
around different interests with a shared purpose. What resulted was unified
thinking on how components of the sustainability strategy could be joined
together for employees.
Reducing complexity, not dumbing-down
Given that employee understanding of ‘CSR ‘had gained traction in recent
years the move to the broader, deeper and more complex platform of
‘sustainability’ presented a significant challenge. Our approach was to
develop a simple and direct platform – This is sustainability – and a striking
‘message in context’ execution. We picked out messages around the key
themes and amplified them in creative executions that showed how, as a
sustainable bank, Barclays must marry its own interests with the needs of its
customers.
An integrated campaign approach
Multi-channel communication activities and collateral were developed
including a ‘sustainability’ microsite, 4,000 high impact poster slots, large
scale poster installations, animated intranet banners and a sustainability
‘gallery’ installation.
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Making believe happen
Over 560 employees were surveyed after the first tranche campaign with
almost 90% believing Barclays to be ‘committed’ or ‘very committed’ to
sustainability. In qualitative feedback, employees cited issues relevant to all
five themes of the sustainability strategy. They also understood this required
long-term commitment.
One of the indirect benefits of the approach was the emergence of a
sustainability ‘community’ with shared purpose, helping create the right
culture and climate for a ‘joined-up’ approach.
4.12 Budgeting
Because internal communications activities can be championed from
different parts of the business, it is not uncommon for the budget to be
spread around a number of departments. For example:
• HR – annual survey, reward and recognition, employee on boarding,
manager toolkits
• Marketing – internal newsletter, intranet, internal communications
videos
• Sales – annual conference
• CEO – change programme
Approaches to budgeting for internal communications include:
• Arbitrary – pluck a figure from the air!
• Historical basis – what did we do last year?
• Percentage of sales
• Competitive parity – similar to the amount competitors spend on
internal communications. In practice this will be hard to determine
• Experiment and testing – pilot and review before roll out
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• Objective and task – what do we believe we need to invest in order
to achieve our objective?
• Share of voice vs share of market – adjusting our internal investment
according to our external share of voice and share of market, as
illustrated in Figure 4.6:
Figure 4.6 Budget Setting in Relation to Share of Voice and Share of
Market
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Chapter 5: Communication Tools and Media
Ruth Weal suggests that internal media channels can be categorised as
passive or interactive (Weal, Blog 2014). Examples are:
5.1 Passive Channels
These include:
• Intranet news
• TV
• Wiki
• Notice boards
• Posters
• Print including newsletters, briefing packs and toolkits, desk drops
• Digital including some of the above plus infographics
5.2 Interactive Channels
These include:
Face to Face
• Director road shows
• Company conference
• Business unit briefing
• New starter lunches
• Monthly director of communications day
• First line breakfast brief
• Site team brief
• Director back to the shop floor
• Director hosted employee birthday lunches
• Director Q&A Drop in
• Hot topics panel Q&A sessions
• Lunch time learning/panel Q&A sessions
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• Annual appraisals
• Ad hoc discussions/face to face meetings
Digital
• Blogs
• Company collaboration tools e.g. Facebook for Business and
Yammer
• Discussion forums
• Instant messaging
• Webinars
• Conference calls
As always, context will drive media choice where each channel can be
assessed for effectiveness in conveying the message, the potential to
facilitate dialogue and suitability for the communications task.
Communications Task Examples of Communication Media
Push out messages Staff magazines, e-newsletters,
emails, video broadcasts,
conferences
Enable employees to pull information Intranet, handbooks, guides
Collect feedback Surveys, workshops, focus groups,
team meetings, 1:1 meetings,
conferences
Build community Team meetings, employee
recognition programmes, team
building days, Yammer, Facebook
for business
Campaign Posters, desk drops, branded
merchandise, training courses, town
hall meetings, videos, blogs
Table 5.1 Matching task to channel courtesy of Alan Anstead
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5.3 The Power of Face to Face
Despite a multitude of technical innovations, the power and impact of face
to face conversation between people in the same room, remains
unassailable. Physical proximity facilitates two of the key drivers of impactful
communication: physiology and bi-directional flow.
In 1967 a study by Dr. Albert Mehrabian, a Professor of Psychology at UCLA,
was interpreted by many as suggesting that the power of communication
could be apportioned thus:
58% - physiology
35% - tone
7% - words
Other commentators have taken issue with this and point out the following
flaws in the theory. If it were true, shouldn’t you be able to:
• Understand 93% of a foreign language just by seeing the person
talk?
• Understand 55% of a speech on television with the sound turned off?
In other words, words must account for more than just 7% of impact.
Nevertheless, Mehrabian’s study has done a good job in making us think
about body language and tone, topics that have been picked up and
explored by others, notably Amy Cuddy, an American social psychologist,
author and lecturer known for her research on stereotyping and
discrimination, emotions, power and nonverbal behaviour. Her Ted Talk on
body language in 2012 has garnered over 30 million views.
During the interviews I carried out as part of the planning process for this
Handbook, I asked the following question: “What single thing would you do
to improve the quality of communication in your organisation?” The most
common answer was not about the introduction of new channels or the
formulation of new messages, but concerned improving the skills of
managers and team leaders. Rachel Retford put it this way (Retford,
Interview 18.01.16):
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“Research shows that teams respond best to information provided directly
by their direct line manager. We would improve the cascade process by
improving the capability of team leaders – making managers great internal
communicators”.
Jim Beatty, HR Director at Burton’s Biscuits feels similarly (Beatty, Interview
21.01.16). He notes among the most valuable communication exercises
undertaken by CEO, Ben Clarke, are his twice yearly visits to the factories in
Blackpool and Edinburgh where he can literally ‘walk the floor’ and engage
with staff at all levels. When asked what was the single thing he would do to
improve communication at Burton’s, Beatty was unequivocal in this
response: to invest in the communication skills and behaviours of middle
management.
5.4 Body Language
Dr Travis Bradbury - LinkedIn Blog March 2016
When it comes to success, it’s easy to think that people blessed with brains
are inevitably going to leave the rest of us in the dust, but social
psychologist Amy Cuddy knows first-hand how attitude can outweigh IQ.
Cuddy suffered a car accident at the age of 19 which resulted in brain
damage that took 30 points from her IQ. Before the crash Cuddy had an IQ
near genius levels; her post-crash IQ was just average.
As someone who had always built her identity around her intelligence, the
significant dip in Cuddy’s IQ left her feeling powerless and unconfident.
Despite her brain damage, she slowly made her way through college and
even got accepted into the graduate program at Princeton.
Once at Princeton, Cuddy struggled until she discovered that it was her lack
of confidence that was holding her back, not her lack of brainpower. This
was especially true during difficult conversations, presentations, and other
high-pressure, highly important moments.
This discovery led Cuddy, now a Harvard psychologist, to devote her studies
to the impact body language has on your confidence, influence, and,
ultimately, success. Her biggest findings center on the powerful effects of
positive body language.
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Positive body language includes things like appropriate eye contact, active
engagement/listening, and targeted gestures that accentuate the
message you’re trying to convey. Studies show that people who use positive
body language are more likable, competent, persuasive, and emotionally
intelligent.
Here’s how it works:
Positive body language changes your attitude. Cuddy found that
consciously adjusting your body language to make it more positive improves
your attitude because it has a powerful impact on your hormones.
It increases testosterone. When you think of testosterone, it’s easy to focus
on sports and competition, but testosterone’s importance covers much
more than athletics. Whether you are a man or a woman, testosterone
improves your confidence and causes other people to see you as more
trustworthy and positive. Research shows that positive body language
increases your testosterone levels by 20%.
It decreases cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone that impedes performance
and creates negative health effects over the long term. Decreasing cortisol
levels minimizes stress and enables you to think more clearly, particularly in
difficult and challenging situations. Research shows that positive body
language decreases cortisol levels by 25%.
It creates a powerful combination. While a decrease in cortisol or an
increase in testosterone is great on its own, the two together are a powerful
combination that is typically seen among people in positions of power. This
combination creates the confidence and clarity of mind that are ideal for
dealing with tight deadlines, tough decisions, and massive volumes of work.
People who are naturally high in testosterone and low in cortisol are known
to thrive under pressure. Of course, you can use positive body language to
make yourself this way even if it doesn’t happen naturally.
It makes you more likeable. In a Tufts University study, subjects watched
soundless clips of physicians interacting with their patients. Just by observing
the physicians’ body language, subjects were able to guess which
physicians ended up getting sued by their patients. Body language is a
huge factor in how you’re perceived and can be more important than your
tone of voice or even what you say. Learning to use positive body language
will make people like you and trust you more.
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It conveys competence. In a study conducted at Princeton, researchers
found that a one-second clip of candidates for senator or governor was
enough for people to accurately predict which candidate was elected.
While this may not increase your faith in the voting process, it does show that
perception of competence has a strong foundation in body language.
It’s a powerful tool in negotiation (even virtually). There’s no question that
body language plays a huge role in your ability to persuade others to your
way of thinking. Researchers studying the phenomenon in virtual
communication found that body language in video conferencing played
an important role in the outcome of negotiations.
It improves your emotional intelligence. Your ability to effectively
communicate your emotions and ideas is central to your emotional
intelligence. People whose body language is negative have a destructive,
contagious effect on those around them. Working to improve your body
language has a profound effect on your emotional intelligence.
Bringing It All Together
We often think of body language as the result of our attitude or how we
feel. This is true, but psychologists have also shown that the reverse is true:
changing your body language changes your attitude.
5.5 The Rise of Video
Because it enables the power of tone and physiology, as well as words,
video is always going to be an essential tool in the armoury of the internal
communicator. It is also a tool, thanks to higher quality smartphone
technology and free, user friendly editing software, that has become much
more accessible and considerably lower in cost, than it once was.
Cisco (Visual Networking Index, June 2017) predicts that video traffic will be
82 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2021, up from 73 percent in
2016. That acceleration is likely to be matched by internal communicators’
use of the medium.
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Figure 5.1 Digital Channel Effectiveness, Gatehouse State of the
Sector Report 2017
The benefits of video include:
• Recipients of video internal communications are more likely to fully
absorb the intended message
• It saves time by communicating in minutes what might have taken
hours to write….and read
• It can eliminate the need for in-person meetings, handouts, e-mails
and documents
• Research has suggested that people react to video positively as it
feels more personal
• It can spread training messages without costly sessions and seminars
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• It is always available in the future for people to refer back to –
compared to email which is often deleted
• It is accessible in a variety of devices from desktop to mobile
• For many, it can convey more emotion than static words and
images
5.6 The Rise of the Infographic
Recent years have seen an explosion in the use of infographics. These tend
to lend themselves to digital media with the ability to scroll through lots of
detail, hence the absence of a visual reference below. Infographic
specialists, Neomam, have identified 13 reasons why infographics work, in
an infographic of course. You can view it here:
http://neomam.com/interactive/13reasons.
In a recent blog, the company claimed their investment in such a
thoroughly researched, high quality marketing tool had paid off over 25,000
interactions since it went live in 2012 and over 900 valuable linking root
domains (Neomam, 2016).
Here is just one of the reasons why they work:
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Figure 5.2 Visuals v Text, Neomam Studios
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5.7 The Impact of Social Media and the Emergence of
the Enterprise Social Network (ESN)
There is no doubt that the rise of social media, Facebook in particular, has
had an effect on the nature and style of internal communication. Mark
Webb, Social Media Manager at Dixons Carphone notes how organisations
were initially suspicious of social media – some even took the ostrich position
(head in the sand) and banned it. However, once it was clear that these
new channels were here to stay, they have sought to embrace and learn
from them initially, and then gradually harness them to their advantage.
(Webb, Interview 14.03.16). Like most big companies Dixons Carphone has
social media usage guidelines in place for employees, but Webb claims
that by and large employees get it and self-regulate anyway.
The impact of social media on the workplace has been felt in at least three
ways: First and foremost, it has meant that internal communicators need to
act faster. It is a pretty damning reflection on the quality of internal
communication when employees report that they first heard about, for
example, a new company initiative or a new key appointment, via social
media.
Secondly internal communicators need to accept that employees will be
both consumer and contribute to the message simultaneously. The message
will not necessarily be accepted at face value. Any attempt to ‘spin’ will be
quickly identified, exposed and replaced by the commentator’s view of the
real story. Bloggers will also explore the detail of the message and are very
willing to give an answer to their reader’s specific questions, or a
perspective to their concerns.
Thirdly employees are blogging in ever greater numbers and their
workplace experience provides them with a rich source of content. Steve
Hirschfeld, CEO of the Employment Law Alliance, claims millions of
employees in America regularly engage in blogging – as much as five
percent of the work force (Fletcher, 2007).
Communication and Engagement Consultancy i2a identify the impact of
social media on internal communications as:
• Increased visibility – staff conversations which may in the past have
taken place privately are now visible to the whole organisation
• Reduced control – messages from any source have the potential to
spread very quickly
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• Greater feedback – social media facilitates two-way dialogue.
Companies are able to have real-time, authentic conversations with
employees
• Lack of hierarchy – the platform is a democratic one, allowing all
participants the same opportunities to express their views.
Communication can flow from the top down, bottom up, and even
from side to side. Above all social media give employees a voice.
Andrew Shipilov writing in his blog for Insead Knowledge claims that
research that he had recently overseen suggested that internal social
media use had a dramatic positive impact on the vertical and horizontal
communication in organisations (Shipilov, Blog 2012). In other words,
different functional departments inside companies talk better to each other
as a result of using social media. He also found that CEOs in companies that
use social media appear to have an easier time communicating with lower
level employees (and vice versa) than in companies where social media is
absent.
Francesca Castagnetti talks of how internal communications used to be all
about writing content and pushing out communications (Castagnetti, 2014).
You would fire and call whatever you hit, ‘the target’. Today, it is a far more
democratic process. The target fires back.
Whilst some companies have witnessed this development with trepidation,
others are very relaxed about it and see the benefits. Wright & Hinson cite a
BusinessWeek article in 2004 that highlights these benefits as seen by
companies such as Microsoft, Dell and Sun (Wright & Hinson, 2008):
• “In a world of fragmented media, employees’ online diaries can be
a seductive way to lure customers into conversations.”
• “They’re sticky – readers check back several times a day. And posts
get linked to other sites amplifying their impact.”
• “They’re efficient. Employees can post questions about their work
and get instant, mass feedback.”
• “They’re free. Blogs can serve as a global focus group, letting
employees know exactly what customers want.”
• “Done well, they can humanize faceless behemoths. The Evil Empire
of Redmond can instead become the home of ‘The Scobleizer,’
Microsoft’s most famous blogger.”
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However, whilst organisations might be increasingly more relaxed about
their employees’ use of social media, most larger organisations will have a
policy and/or a set of guidelines on this usage. According to i2a, these
should include governance around group creation and hashtags, to aid the
location of information and expertise.
Wright and Hinson carried out a three-year study on employees’ use of
blogs and identified some interesting trends (Wright & Hinson, op. cit.):
• Approval continues to decrease each year when our subjects are
asked if it is ethical for employees to write and post on blogs
negative statements about the organisations they work for. While 49
percent said this was ethical in 2006, only 29 percent agreed in 2007
and only 25 percent agreed in 2008
• There is significantly more agreement in 2008 over 2007 on the
question of whether organisations should permit their employees to
communicate on blogs and other social media during regular
working hours. Agreement on this measure was 38 percent in 2007
and 44 percent in 2008.
• Survey respondents continue to disapprove more each year when
asked if it is ethical for organisations to conduct research about or
monitor information that their employees are communicating via
blogs and other social media. In 2006 89 percent of the respondents
agreed conducting such research was ethical. This approval figure
was 73 percent in 2007 and 63 percent in 2008.
• The number of companies actually conducting this kind of research
appears to be increasing. Only three percent of our respondents
said their organisations (or their client organisations) were
conducting this research in 2006. That figure increased to 11 percent
in 2007 and to 15 percent in 2008.
The rise in the influence of social media is changing the role of the internal
communicator. According to Richard Dennison, the new breed of
communicators are highly visible leaders, acting as spokespeople for the
organisation, driving change and coaching senior management in how to
use new tools and platforms (Dennison, 2012). He also suggests they are
becoming more accountable, pointing out that the online social world is
easily measurable, with plenty of analytical tools at the user’s disposal.
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5.8 Yammer
Yammer is a social network for business launched in 2008, whose potential
was recognised by Microsoft in June 2012 when they paid $1.2 billion to
acquire it. Only employees with a working email address linked to their
company’s domain are able to join their company’s Yammer network.
External networks can be created and linked to allow non-employees, such
as suppliers and customers, to communicate with your company.
Just like Facebook, new posts – complete with Likes, Replies and Shares –
appear in Yammer’s primary screen, which is known as the Newsfeed. Icons
indicating private messages and other notifications appear in the upper left-
hand corner. Groups can be created to enable conversations which are
relevant to specific teams only. If a group conversation takes a turn that
requires assistance from other employees, it can be shared with a specific
person via instant message or with another group entirely. Sharing a post
with specific groups is a breeze thanks to handy drop-down menus below
the Update box which bear an uncanny resemblance to Facebook’s Status
box.
1n 2014 Yammer was moved into Office365, meaning many companies
now have it as standard, rather than the old ‘freemium’ model they used to
operate. Simply having it there, means companies are now far more likely to
take a look at it than they might have done in the past.
iFLY Indoor Skydiving introduced Yammer in the summer of 2015 prior to
embarking on a period of major growth. President and COO Matt Ryan saw
it as a perfect vehicle for allowing it’s young and fast growing employee
base to share in the excitement of new tunnel builds and to allow them to
connect with their colleagues in different parts of the world in a non-
corporate style (Ryan, Interviews 2015).
He comments: “Yammer makes sense for us with a young, mobile enabled
workforce that are naturally adventurous. It’s early days, but there’s no
doubt that Yammer feels culturally right for iFLY and is enabling employees
to share in the excitement of our rapid expansion”.
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Figure 5.3 iFLY Indoor Skydiving uses Yammer to announce new
tunnel openings
As John Ptacek points out the two big advantages of Yammer over other
internal comms tools are timeliness – latest news is always at the top – and
the building of social capital (Ptacek, Blog 2014). As organisations grow,
they need a metaphorical water cooler to gather at. People work better
together when they share a little of their inner selves, and social tools like
Yammer can help with this process. He observes that you are much more
likely to give the benefit of the doubt to a peer when they have a bad day
if you know them personally, and social tools like Yammer help build that for
organisations, especially geographically disperse organisations where you
do not have day to day interactions. Digital tools will never be a substitute
for face to face contact in this regard, but they can help socialise a positive
working culture.
5.9 Slack
In recent years a host of other new applications aimed at enhancing
collaboration and communication among teams has emerged including
HipChat, Redbooth, Chatgrape, and Flowdock. But the one that seems to
be gaining the most traction is Slack. “More productive, more transparent
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and no more email….that’s Slack”, claims the introductory video. Others
describe Slack as a messaging app on steroids. Aimed at anyone working in
teams, Slack can be used across multiple devices and platforms, and is
equipped with robust features that allow you to not only chat one-on-one
with associates but also in groups. You are able to upload and share files, as
well as integrate with other apps and services, such as Skype for video calls,
and you can granularly control almost every setting. You even have the
ability to create custom emoji. Desktop and mobile applications are
available, as well as using Slack via a browser.
Slack integrates well with dozens of other popular applications such as
Dropbox. Doing so allows you to pull in information from other sources,
search documents stored in other services, send things like calendar events
and reminders to Slack, or add useful features to your team, including voice
and video calling. You can now access Skype, for instance, right from within
Slack. And when you are working in other applications, Slack can notify you
when you have a new message.
In common with other new wave business applications, Slack offers a free
version to draw the prospect in and then tempts you to upgrade to
enhanced features and storage capability.
Case Study from Slack Website
LUSH is the cosmetics company known for soaps and bath bombs made
from fresh ingredients. As a rapidly growing, global company operating
stores on six continents, Lush strives towards transparency.
While many of the groups at the UK headquarters were unified in terms of
objectives, some groups suffered a bit of disconnect, not being in the same
building and doing widely varying jobs. Bringing Slack into the mix, they
gleefully report, helped solve their internal communication and got
everyone talking, with projects from the major groups within the company
truly becoming transparent to one another.
Since adopting Slack, internal email use has reduced by 75%, with the
remaining messages left for big important announcements (which they’re
planning to move into Slack as well).
Post-email, people have gotten smarter about messaging and no longer
worry about who should or shouldn’t be CC’d on messages. Questions are
no longer lost in archived emails, and instead found in channels. Everything
just works better.
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"Because of how quickly we've grown and the type of company Lush is,
there's no org-chart, so it's tough to figure out what people do. But if you see
what a group is doing in Slack, you'll learn what each member is an expert
in. It has improved communication between groups greatly."
Maddie Saunders – Global Planner, Lush
5.10 Workplace by Facebook
In 2015 Facebook began testing Facebook at Work and a year later over
1,000 organisations were already using the renamed Workplaces by
Facebook. Rachel Miller outlines the essential differences for the user
between Facebook and its new sibling (Miller, Blog 2016):
How is my work account different from my personal Facebook account?
Your work account is a place for you to connect and collaborate with your
co-workers, join groups related to your team or projects, and get company
news and updates. Your personal account is for connecting with friends and
family, and sharing moments from your life.
Your work account is only visible to people at your company and is separate
from your personal account. What you share to your work account can only
be seen by people in your company, and what you share to your personal
account can only be seen based on your privacy settings.
When I post something from my work account, who can see it?
When you share something from your work account, you can share it to a
group or to your Timeline. When you share something to a group your post
may show up on your Timeline, depending on the privacy settings of the
group.
The people who manage Facebook at Work at your company can access
anything you share from your work account, just as they might access your
work emails and other work files.
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In an interview with Miller (Miller, Blog 2017), Daniel Chasemore, the
communications manager of New Zealand’s Countdown Supermarkets
explained how familiarity with the tool and the need to connect with 18,000
employees, across 185 stores, 24/7, was what drove the company to
implement it. The fact that it had proved successful was largely down to a
clear understanding of where it sat alongside other internal channels:
Email bulletin: If you want to find out what you need to do today
Intranet: If you want to find out how to do something
Workplace: if you want to talk about what you’re doing, share what’s
working, ask questions and to celebrate success.
Interestingly Chasemore observes a lot of similarity between how users
behave on Facebook and how they do on Workplace: “Videos do better
than images, which do better than links which do better than straight text.
Teams appreciate personal, genuine copy, rather than corporate speak.”
He goes on to point out that a great benefit of the tool is that it can bring to
the fore issues that management teams did not know existed. On the other
hand, the feedback can be ‘raw and real’ and managers need to be
prepared for that.
Is Workplaces by Facebook on the way to achieving the dominance of its
bigger sister? With Walmart and Starbucks now on board, you would not bet
against it.
5.11 Other Social Media
Because of their ability to switch to private mode a number of other social
media lend themselves nicely to employee communication.
Employers can share short bursts of information with employee networks or a
wider audience. Big brands, like Google and Starbucks, use Twitter to
engage and inspire employees, and provide a glimpse of what it is like to
work at these companies.
With LinkedIn Groups, business owners can create their own company
intranet on the LinkedIn platform, allowing them to manage the group for
employees, where they can share internal event information and
announcements, as well as building employee pride and managing
employee issues.
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Company Blogs
Company blogs are becoming an increasingly popular way of getting a
view from the top of the organisation out to employees and many
organisations are happy to allow comments and questions to come back.
Live Streaming
Platforms like Periscope and Meerkat are changing the way companies can
train employees remotely in real time. With both platforms, employees can
watch video live as it is happening via a private link.
YouTube and Vimeo
While Periscope and Meerkat are great for live, interactive training, private
channels with YouTube and Vimeo are the perfect platforms for pre-
recorded and perhaps more polished material with the added benefit of
being able to pause and move on at your own pace and go back again if
you want more than one viewing.
Some companies are also using Facebook to communicate with
employees, though it is hard to see Facebook becoming a major channel
for corporate dialogue precisely because so many users see it as their
vehicle for sharing what goes on in their life away from the workplace.
Communication channel proliferation, largely driven by social media, has
presented one very real challenge for organisations, as noted by Emma
Thompson (Thompson, Interview 21.01.16). Many business leaders are simply
not familiar with the channels that their much younger employees are now
using. It is a gap that needs to be bridged.
5.12 Internal Communication Applications
In recent years, we have also seen the further development of dedicated
internal communications applications that offer superior functionality over
basic internal email systems. Prominent among these applications are
Poppulo (formerly known as Newsweaver) and Desk Alert. Typical features
include high levels of personalisation and segmentation, creative theming,
analysis of open and click through rates and integration with an
organisation’s prevailing social networks.
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Chapter 6: Evaluation
6.1 Surveys
Just like everyone else in the business who is competing for scarce
resources, internal communicators have to be able to demonstrate the
impact of their activity.
The most common starting point for an assessment of the overall employee
engagement levels, into which the internal communications efforts play, is
the annual employee survey. All those interviewed for this Handbook
worked in an environment where employees were asked to share their
opinions, at least once a year, on how life felt for them in the workplace.
What was also common was that, where there was a specific question in
the annual survey regarding the effectiveness of internal communications, it
was rarely one of the higher scoring areas! Some would argue that this is
only to be expected i.e. communication is always a soft option; an easy
target for those that are not feeling the love within an organisation.
Others would argue that the real measure of communications effectiveness
is to be found in other areas of the survey; those that probe culture,
leadership, purpose and development, for example. This links back to the
question identified earlier – is communication a driver of engagement, or
more of a thread that runs through the drivers?
When it comes to the design of employee engagement the trend in recent
years has been towards simplification. Gallup’s version consists of just twelve
questions, five of which relate to communication (Courtesy of Alan
Anstead):
• Knowing what is expected of me
• 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
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At Direct Line, internal communications and brand engagement director
Paul Diggins explains that his company uses an engagement index based
on 6 questions from their bespoke annual employee survey (Diggins,
Interview 26.01.16). The final ‘master indicator’ is based on positive responses
to 6 questions, which probe the following areas:
• Pride in the organisation
• A great place to work
• Motivated to go the extra mile
• Putting themselves in the customer’s shoes
• Positive to change
• Playing a part in the future of the organisation
The result, according to Diggins is much more robust than reliance on a
single killer question that asks, for example, if an employee would
recommend his or her company as a good one to work for.
At a tactical level, it is getting easier for communicators to measure the
levels of engagement with their activities. The digital e-bulletin, for example,
will reveal its readership, through open rate and click through reporting, in a
way that the printed newsletter never did, and as Tersea Cart, points out,
the results can be quite enlightening. No wonder the middle tier of
management is not contextualising the message, when so few of them are
picking it up in the first place!
Engagement rates tend to be heightened to comms that invite employees
to give their feedback immediately after an event such as a training video
or a CEO town hall briefing. Short, sharp online questionnaires – no more
than half a dozen questions – will be happily completed by most employees
and provide valuable feedback on the retention of key messages and how
they landed.
To complement this type of quantitative feedback, many organisations will
also provide fora for qualitative feedback, where employees are given the
opportunity to express their feelings on particular aspects of life in the
workplace. These can be particularly helpful during times of change.
The Institute of Internal Communication describes the pros and cons of
qualitative and quantitative research as follows:
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Qualitative research is likely to be on a smaller scale and therefore less
intrusive for the organisation. It will:
• Give faster feedback, provide understanding and insight
• Be able to probe, question and challenge
• Is adaptable for different functions/levels of employees
• Be well suited to more sensitive topics
But it will not:
• Give hard numbers
• Provide data for future tracking of trends
• Provide information by employee roles or functions
• Enable analysis to reveal key drivers of good communication
Quantitative research on the other hand will provide:
• Firm figures and reliable data
• A base for tracking any changes in the future
• Comparisons with normative data
• Detailed results by demographics, functions, locations and so on
But it may not answer all the questions in depth, or explain the reasons
behind employee views and opinions.
The two approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive – both are
needed for the full picture. Focus groups sometimes precede the
questionnaire design stage to help develop the questionnaire. They can
also be used effectively after the quantitative stage to explore the issues
raised and gain a fuller understanding of the research outcomes.
Qualitative research may be all that is required, for example, where the
topic is sensitive, new initiatives are being tested or input sought to develop
solutions.
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6.2 Start with Activity Classification
Evaluation of internal communication effectiveness is not only about how
employees feel. Internal communicators have a variety of other objectives
and Mike Klein argues that classifying activities against the most popular
desired outcomes is a good place to start (Klein, Blog 2016):
• Financial impact – does a particular communication activity target
financial performance, and to what extent does it succeed in
increasing the bottom line?
• Organisational alignment – does the activity help the organisation
focus on common objectives and desired outcomes, and increase
its speed in doing so?
• Visibility – does the activity measurably raise the profile of intended
beneficiaries? (Ideally, does that higher profile deliver tangible
benefits beyond the visibility itself?)
• Positivity – does it increase employee confidence in the organisation
and enthusiasm for participating in its direction of travel?
• Infrastructure development – does it increase the resilience, the utility
or the return on investment of communication infrastructure?
• Network effectiveness – does the activity make the informal
communication network stronger, faster, better informed or more
consistent?
6.3 Measuring Message Impact
Is it possible to carry out a quantitative assessment of message impact? A
case study from Shell (courtesy of Melcrum.com), suggests it is. Keeping
channels ‘fixed’, the organisation created a simple algorithm to capture
audience interactions with digital content and assess the relative power of
distinct messages. Focusing on digital channels only, Shell created a
Content Engagement Index.
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Figure 6.1 Shell's Content Engagement Algorithm
Shell’s formula allowed it to answer the following questions:
• Were people receiving messages?
• Were these messages emotionally engaging?
• Were messages driving desired outcomes?
Assigning ‘scores’ to messages to show which hit the mark, then indexing
these into quartiles helped the company identify what was more effective
when it came to tone, author, style and other components of content
development. The upshot? Clear direction for future success.
Melcrum suggests that is possible for any business to create its own Content
Engagement Index:
• Total the number of hits / visits to your content asset. (A content asset
is an individual piece of content used for the purpose of
communication – usually a story)
• Multiply the number of times your audience ‘likes’ this asset by 20
• Multiply the number of times your audience comments on this asset
by 50
• Add the totals of steps 1, 2 and 3 together
• Divide the grand total by your intended audience population
The result is your ‘index score’ for this content asset.
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Each content asset can then be ranked in order of final index score, from
highest to lowest. By grouping assets into quartiles – top 25 percent, bottom
25 percent and so on – companies can then compare the characteristics of
killer content in the top quartile with missing the mark messages in the
bottom one.
What is important is not the content ‘weightings’ chosen, but the
identification of those that capture what is required — audience
engagement with a content asset – and keeping them consistent. Whether
they are 20 and 50; 2 and 5 or something altogether different, these reflect
the power of a message when it inspires action so you want them to remain
comparable over time.
6.4 Simply Sensing the Mood
Whilst metrics are helpful, it is also fair to say that communicators will always
have a ‘sense’ of whether an activity, programme or campaign has been
well executed. Rich Baker argues that incessant measurement should never
replace common sense (Baker, Interview 22.01.16). Communicators
instinctively know when something has worked and when it hasn’t. Charlotte
West agrees, suggesting that rather than trying to put a number against how
people feel, internal communicators would be better off listening in to and
drawing conclusions from the watercooler conversation (West, Interview
26.02.16).
Rachel Retford has a similar view and illustrated the point by describing
what happened when BP divested its Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG)
business in 2012 (Retford, Interview 18.01.16).
This project was complex, involving 9 sales across 9 countries in 18 months,
with many hundreds of employees’ futures at stake. At the heart of the
internal communications programme was an authentic, active listening
process where all those affected had the opportunity to air their concerns,
have their questions answered and see what action was taken as a result.
A key element of this process was the proactive announcement of the
intention to sell the LPG business. From the outset employees were made to
feel that the leadership team were being open and honest with them. The
announcement was immediately followed by a leadership roadshow to
each of the impacted countries.
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To keep the channels of communication, open following this, volunteers
from each country were asked to join a ‘listening group’ that had a monthly
call with the head of the business and HR to raise any concerns and give
feedback on how people were feeling. Action was then taken by the
leadership team on this feedback and reviewed in the following month’s
call.
What was remarkable and gratifying for all involved in the project, and a
sure sign that it had been handled well, was the number of people within
the businesses being sold, who expressed their appreciation for the manner
in which they had been treated. The head of the business attended all the
announcements to confirm who the businesses were being sold to in person
and was often thanked by employees for having listened to them and
treated them with honesty and respect – not the response you might expect
from the divestment of a business!
Example Metrics
Micro
• Open rates
• Click through rates
• Likes, shares and comments
• Attendance rates
• Take up rates
• Survey feedback scores – specific events/interventions
Macro
• Turnover and/or retention rates
• Survey scores – annual satisfaction and advocacy
Perhaps the final word in this chapter should go to Bill Quirke: “The acid test
for the effectiveness of communication is how people rate, prioritize and
consume information”. Just think about it. We all filter out communications
based on who it comes from and what channel is used based on historical
experience and current usage. Each individual has ever evolving antennae
for what is good and what is not so good communication and once the
door is closed it is not easy to get it open again.
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6.5 Case Studies in Evaluation
Nationwide and the Creation of a Strategic Measurement Framework
In 2009 at the start of the credit crisis, Nationwide Building Society
recognised that internal communication would be a key enabler in
supporting employees through this period of significant change.
Implementing a business partnering structure and internal communication
(IC) strategy closely aligned to the strategy of the business were key to
success, but Fiona MacAllan, head of internal and change communication,
knew that this had to be underpinned by a systematic approach to
measurement.
As a Building Society, Nationwide’s CEO and many senior leaders have
accountancy backgrounds, so it was important that the way in which
evidence of IC achievements was presented resonated with and had
meaning for them, and that meant providing hard metrics. Fiona
commented: “This data has a very important role to play in building and
maintaining professional relationships with our internal clients, as well as
highlighting areas that need attention and additional resourcing.”
The system that was developed to measure the effectiveness of
communication activities was based around four key performance
indicators (KPIs):
Is the watercooler the best place
to evaluate the impact of internal
communications?
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• Leadership communication effectiveness (KPI 1)
• Project communication effectiveness (KPI 2)
• Client satisfaction (KPI 3)
• Employee satisfaction (KPI 4)
All KPIs have a target of 75%.
Leadership communication: This KPI relates to major annual events such as
half year results, full year results, corporate plan cascade and annual
awards which are led by the CEO or other members of the Executive
Committee. In other words, the major drumbeat activity (or annual set
pieces) of communication activity that can be measured year on year.
The starting point is with a project brief or ‘contract’ that is drawn up with
the internal client, incorporating aspects of the activity to be delivered such
as key objectives and messages, timelines, issues and risks, approval process
and budget. This ‘contract’ should also allow for amendments to be
incorporated as the brief changes.
The following two elements contribute to the total score against the 75%
target: peer review and project/client review. Once the project has been
completed, a peer review takes place within the IC team. The
communication lead for the activity works with a colleague (‘the IC
assessor’) to review its success in terms of the original ‘contract’, client
feedback and the challenges encountered. A score is agreed out of 100%.
Involving a colleague in this way enhances the objectivity of the exercise,
ensures the sharing of best practice across the IC team and builds a spirit of
collaboration. The IC assessor then undertakes a project review with the
client, which includes establishing how strongly they agree or disagree with
a series of statements (for example: The internal communication
contact/team understood what was required; The internal communication
contact proposed strong ideas).
This occasion also provides an opportunity to discuss changes to the
‘contract’ while the project was under way and the impact that these had.
The systems in place mean that such occurrences and their precise effect
are not forgotten. Fiona commented: “This enables us to have more
meaningful discussions about why things did not go entirely to plan and
whether what was asked for was actually reasonable within the timescales
and budgets allowed.”
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Project communication: Project communication relates to specific one-off
projects identified as critical to the delivery of Nationwide’s corporate plan
for that financial year, for example a branch opening programme,
acquisition, new advertising campaign or re-structuring.
Around 20 such projects are selected for measurement each year, and this
is undertaken in the same way as the leadership KPI.
Client satisfaction: This KPI is set up to specifically evaluate the ‘quality’ of
the business partnering relationship. Fiona conducts around 20 senior client
review meetings every six months, when they are asked to rate the
relationship through a number of questions, for example: Does your business
partner understand your challenges; Do they understand your objectives?;
Can you trust them with confidences? Feedback from these meetings feeds
directly into the half year and full year performance reviews of senior
members of the IC team.
Employee satisfaction: This KPI is represented by three elements:
• Pulsecheck – this annual IC survey of 5% of employees measures
trust, belief and understanding of the IC messages and effectiveness
of Nationwide’s internal channels
• Annual All Employee Survey – this includes eight questions owned by
IC and these questions are benchmarked against other Financial
Services and High Performance organisations
• Communication Index – employee survey analysis enables the
determination of a communication index by division, helping identify
any hotspots so that effort can be focused where there is greatest
need
KPI reporting and outcomes: All the data from the KPIs is translated into
visual metrics to produce a report, which is updated on a monthly basis.
Commenting on the outcomes of this approach, Fiona said: “The system has
been challenging to introduce but, three years on, is now firmly embedded.
Senior leaders in the business are used to the feedback approach we have
implemented and we are seeing other departments that support a business
partnering model adopt our approach.
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“Certainly by being able to show how IC adds value across the business on
specific projects we have changed the quality of conversation we have
with senior leaders. And in turn this has given us the licence to be able to
push the agenda.”
Case study contributed by Fiona MacAllan MIIC
How the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Evaluates the
Effectiveness of its Internal Communications
Ensuring we achieve what we set out to and that our work contributes to
Department objectives makes evaluation of what we do and the
effectiveness of our work indispensable to us as the Internal
Communications team in BIS.
The main objectives of our Internal Communications strategy sit under four
communications themes: communicating the Department’s vision and
objectives; supporting engagement between leaders and their teams;
showcasing and celebrating achievements and encouraging employees to
exercise their voice.
We evaluate progress against achieving these communications goals and
objectives by tracking: the Inputs – channels used and messages
communicated; Outputs – take-up of the communications channels and
messages; Outtakes – how staff responded or changed their behaviours
based on our communications.
Inputs, outputs and outtakes
We produce a monthly internal communications dashboard which monitors
quantitative take-up of all our communications channels.
This includes quantitative data on the number of readers for intranet articles,
attendees at events, deliveries of monthly cascade sessions and openings
of all-staff emails, as well as information on most popular intranet search
terms.
We also analyse the messages communicated by theme to ensure we are
giving equal weight to the key messages we prioritise in our strategy. This
quantitative data is complemented by qualitative feedback from staff
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forums, such as our Critical Friends Network, feedback gathered from post-
event surveys and through the monthly staff cascade process.
Over the past 15 months, our dashboard data have been aggregated
against our four communication objectives so they build into a detailed
picture of what has been done to communicate each theme, what level of
take-up there has been and what people thought, felt and did as a result.
This evidence is complemented by the quantitative and qualitative data
obtained through our independently conducted, annual communications
audit, based this year on telephone interviews with a representative sample
of 400 staff (13% of the workforce).
Outcomes
Our main drivers are to impact the BIS People Survey scores around visible
leadership, leaders setting a clear vision and direction and communicating
change in the Department.
The People Survey report in October 2013 demonstrated that the Internal
Communications strategy was making a difference in BIS with increases of
7% around vision and direction, 4% around leaders being visible and 6%
where staff said they felt informed about changes that affect them.
Some of the additional outcomes we are trying to achieve include working
with BIS managers to ensure they feel supported in improving their face-to-
face team engagement through the use of quality communication tools
and clear messages. We are also focussed on ensuring our communications
activities give employees regular opportunities to have their say in changes
planned for the Department.
The most significant outcome we are trying to impact through our
communications strategy is to contribute to an uplift in staff motivation and
pride – and a consequent improvement in the overall BIS People Survey
engagement index.
Again, the trend from the People Survey report 2013, tracked against our
own evaluation and dashboard shows an upward trajectory with a 2%
increase in overall engagement and a 4% increase in staff saying they are
proud to tell others they are a part of BIS.
Our internal communications dashboard and evaluation ensure we
continue to focus on achieving these objectives and enable us to track our
progress month on month.
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They are a vital part of every internal communicator’s toolkit and we have
found great value in building use of them into our strategy from the outset so
we can demonstrate to the Department the contribution we make to
achieving the BIS objectives, and the progress we continue to make.
Contributed by Susie Hill, Internal Communications Production Planner,
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
Chapter Six – Evaluation
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Chapter 7: Employee Behaviour
Employees’ receptiveness to internal communications, the way they
interpret them and their willingness to act on them, can be linked to
concepts of motivation, attitudes and beliefs and personality. A deeper
understanding of these concepts within the workplace will help
communicators develop strategies and activities that have greater impact.
7.1 Motivation
Why is it that some employees bounce into work early on a Monday
morning, gung ho and ready to go, while some eventually turn up, several
minutes late and give the impression that they would rather be anywhere
else on earth, than this particular office right here, right now? The answer
has much to do with personal motivation.
The two great theorists of motivation theory are Abraham Maslow and
Frederick Herzberg. Maslow (1908 –1970) was an American psychologist,
best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of
psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority,
culminating in self-actualisation. Frederick Irving Herzberg (1923 – 2000) was
an American psychologist most famous for introducing job enrichment and
the Motivator-Hygiene theory based on satisfiers and dissatisfiers. Satisfiers,
he claimed, are motivators associated with job satisfaction while dissatisfiers
are motivators associated with hygiene or maintenance.
Satisfiers include achievement, responsibility, advancement, and
recognition. These are all intrinsic motivators that are directly related to
rewards attainable from work performance and even the nature of the work
itself. Dissatisfiers are extrinsic motivators based on the work environment,
and include a company’s policies and administration such as supervision,
peers, working conditions, and pay. Herzberg argued that getting hygiene
and maintenance in order could prevent dissatisfaction, but, on their own,
would not contribute to satisfaction.
Both Maslow and Herzberg accepted that motivation, whilst a personal
thing, was something that policy and process in the workplace could
impact upon. Job enrichment, structured reward and recognition
programmes, employee welfare policies, flexible working hours, training and
development….and more enlightened, transparent two-way
communication throughout the organisation, will have a bearing on
motivation.
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7.2 Attitudes and Beliefs
A belief is an internal feeling that something is true, even though that belief
may be unproven or irrational. For example, I believe that walking under a
ladder brings bad luck, or I believe that there is life after death. An attitude
is the way a person expresses or applies their beliefs and values, and is
expressed through words and behaviour. For example: Management
doesn’t care about the welfare of employees. They are only interested in
profit. Should such an attitude exist in a workforce, then it is highly unlikely
that they will bust a gut for their employer.
Attitude is one of the hidden, hard-to-measure factors that ends up being
crucial to the success of a company. As human beings, we all have our own
values, beliefs and attitudes that we have developed throughout the
course of our lives. Our family, friends, community and the experiences we
have had all contribute to our sense of who we are and how we view the
world.
Workplace.com (carried an article about a piece of research undertaken
by Shell that had classified people into 6 types based on attitude (Oechsle,
Blog 1998):
Fulfilment Seekers
Fulfilment Seekers want to make the world a better place. They seek work
that allows them to use their talents and to make a difference, ahead of
receiving a good income and benefits. Most say they have a career as
opposed to a job, and a substantial majority say they are team players
rather than leaders.
High Achievers
High achievers are aiming for the top. A large majority will say they have
followed a career plan since a young age. Most are leaders who take
initiative, and a majority hold managerial positions. They also tend to be
male. Lawyers, surgeons and architects are typical jobs dominated by high
achievers.
Clock Punchers
Clock Punchers are the least satisfied of any group surveyed, with nearly all
of them saying they have a job rather than a career. An overwhelming
majority say they ended up in their jobs largely by chance, and nearly
three-quarters say they would make different career choices if they could
do it all over again.
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Clock Punchers are predominately female, have the lowest household
income (35 percent below $30,000) and are the least educated – half have
a high school diploma or less, and fewer than 1 in 5 has earned a four-year
college degree.
Risk Takers
Risk Takers go where the money is. Members of this group are far more
willing than others to take risks for the opportunity of great financial success.
They are also the only group that likes to move from employer to employer
in search of the best job. This group is young (45 percent are under the age
of 35) and largely male. Risk Takers are fairly well-educated and have good
incomes (more than 4 in 10 have household incomes above $50,000).
Ladder Climbers
Perhaps a dying breed, these are ‘company people’ who prefer the stability
of staying with one employer for a long time. A substantial majority prefer a
stable income over the chance of great financial success and consider
themselves to be leaders rather than team players. Company loyalty
matters – 4 in 9 say they would change cities to stay with their current
employer. They are the opposite of Fulfilment Seekers.
Pay Check Cashers
Most Pay Check Cashers prefer jobs that provide good income and benefits
over ones that allow them to use their talents and make a difference.
Members of the Pay Check Cashers group are young (46 percent are under
35), male and confused: Although a majority say they will take risks for a
chance at achieving great financial success, an even larger number want
the security of staying with one employer for a long time. Most work in blue-
collar or non-professional white-collar jobs, do not have a college degree,
and prefer working in a large company or agency. This group also has the
largest representation of minorities: 18 percent African-American, 10
percent Hispanic and 3 percent Asian.
Rich Baker believes that organisations are experiencing a general change in
attitude among their latest recruits (Baker, Interview 22.01.16). The
psychological contract is changing between these new arrivals and their
employer. Whereas it used to be a case of keeping your nose clean and
your head down and you had a job for life, this is now no longer the case.
There has been a general decline in trust in the workplace and colleagues
now tend to trust their peers more than their boss. Millennials also have a
very different view of the world than their parents. They are more
transactional and less inclined to be loyal. They fully expect their tenure with
any organisation to be temporary and therefore will go elsewhere when
their aspirations or requirements are no longer being met.
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7.3 Personality
According to Wikipedia, personality type refers to the psychological
classification of different types of individuals and, as a concept, is closely
connected with the work of Karl Jung. Personality type classification such as
the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) are sometimes distinguished from
personality traits, with the latter embodying a smaller grouping of
behavioural tendencies. Types are sometimes said to involve qualitative
differences between people, whereas traits deal with quantitative
differences. According to type theories, for example, introverts and
extraverts are two fundamentally different categories of people. According
to trait theories, introversion and extraversion are part of a continuous
dimension, with many people in the middle.
Many organisations still deploy personality tests as part of their recruitment
process. However, critics point out that because personality test scores
usually fall on a bell curve rather than in distinct categories, they are
fundamentally flawed. Most researchers now believe that it is impossible to
explain the diversity of human personality with a small number of discrete
types. They recommend trait models instead, such as the five-factor model
(FFM).
The five factors have been defined as openness to experience,
conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (OCEAN)
and have been developed independently for decades by a number of
different researchers. Tupes and Cristal were first, followed by Goldberg at
the Oregon Research Institute, Cattell at the University of Illinois and Costa
and McCrae at the National Institutes of Health. These four sets of
researchers used somewhat different methods in finding the five traits, and
thus each set of five factors has somewhat different names and definitions.
However, all have been found to be highly inter-correlated and analytically
aligned.
The FFM has received many plaudits for its accuracy in determining the co-
relations between personality and marriage, relationships, job performance,
education, business, leadership skills and even health, helping validate its
position as the leading framework on personality. However, although the
model is a useful tool for predicting behaviour and explaining why certain
individuals act the way they do, it is quite another challenge for
communicators to apply this understanding in the workplace.
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Boundless.com offers some clues to the application of the model
(Boundless.com, 2016):
• Those who score high in openness to experience prefer novelty,
while those who score low prefer routine.
• Individuals high in conscientiousness prefer planned rather than
spontaneous behavior and are often organised, hardworking, and
dependable. Individuals who score low in conscientiousness take a
more relaxed approach, are spontaneous, and may be
disorganised.
• Those who score low on extraversion prefer solitude and/or smaller
groups, enjoy quiet, prefer activities alone, and avoid large social
situations. Not surprisingly, people who score high on both
extroversion and openness are more likely to participate in
adventure and risky sports due to their curious and excitement-
seeking nature.
• Agreeableness measures one's tendency to be compassionate and
cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.
It is also a measure of a person's trusting and helpful nature and
whether that person is generally well-tempered or not. People who
score low on agreeableness tend to be described as rude and
uncooperative.
• People high in neuroticism tend to experience emotional instability
and are characterised as angry, impulsive, and hostile. Watson and
Clark found that people reporting high levels of neuroticism also
tend to report feeling anxious and unhappy (Watson & Clark, 1984).
In contrast, people who score low in neuroticism tend to be calm
and even-tempered.
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Figure 7.1 The Big Five Personality Traits (Boundless.com, 2016)
7.4 Thinking and Behaviour
The latest profiling tool that seeks to explain individuals’ thinking and
behavioural patterns is Emergenetics. According to the website, “The
Emergenetics Profile reveals your brilliance – the way you prefer to think and
behave. We help people and organizations thrive by giving them a simpler,
easier way to understand themselves and others, and build interpersonal
strategies that drive performance.”
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The Emergenetics framework consists of seven factors that apply to work,
communication, and interpersonal relationships.
Figure 7.2 The Emergenetics Framework
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While the authors concede that no psychometric tool can truly capture the
complexity and richness of the human mind-brain-body, the Emergenetics
model provides a practical and effective tool for successful individual and
team communication, providing of course, that each team member
completes the profile and commits to using the results intelligently.
7.5 Groups
Groups consist of Two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent,
who have come together to achieve particular objectives. Their ability to
achieve these objectives is linked to the group’s structure, leadership,
hierarchy, role definition, processes and cohesiveness. These elements
evolve as groups interact either cooperatively or in competition with other
groups.
Patterns of cohesiveness and performance norms will impact on a group’s
productivity as illustrated below:
Figure 7.3 Relationship between Cohesiveness Performance Norms
and Productivity
Improving the group’s effectiveness can be achieved by assigning
appropriate tasks to individual members, providing organisational support so
that the group is able to carry out its tasks with the full cooperation of the
business, and building group cohesion.
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There are a number of reasons why employees might be formed or form
themselves into groups:
• Security – by joining a group, individuals can reduce the insecurity of
‘standing alone’. People feel stronger, have fewer self-doubts, and
are more resistant to threats when they are part of a group
• Status – inclusion in a group that is viewed as important by others
provides recognition and status for its members
• Self-Esteem – groups can provide people with feelings of self-worth.
That is, in addition to conveying status to those outside the group,
membership can also give increased feelings of worth to the group
members themselves
• Power – what cannot be achieved individually often becomes
possible through group action. There is power in numbers
• Goal Achievement – there are times when it takes more than one
person to accomplish a particular task; there is a need to pool
talents, knowledge, or power in order to complete a job.
Bruce Tuckman identified five stages of group or team development
(Tuckman, 1965):
1. Forming – the first stage in group development, characterised by
much uncertainty
2. Storming – the second stage in group development, characterised
by intragroup conflict
3. Norming – the third stage in group development, characterised by
close relationships and cohesiveness
4. Performing – the fourth stage in group development, when the
group is fully functional
5. Adjourning – the final stage in group development for temporary
groups, characterised by concern with wrapping up activities rather
than task performance
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Figure 7.4 Tuckman's 5 stages of Team Development
As mentioned above, a key element in group effectiveness is role definition.
A role is a set of expected behaviour patterns attributed to someone
occupying a given position in a social unit. Roles can be analysed in terms
of identity, perception, expectations and conflict:
• Role Identity – certain attitudes and behaviours consistent with a role
• Role Perception – an individual’s view of how he or she is supposed
to act in a given situation
• Role Expectations – how others believe a person should act in a
given situation
• Role Conflict – a situation in which an individual is confronted by
divergent role expectations
In groups, roles can be divided into:
• Task-oriented roles – roles performed by group members to ensure
that the tasks of the group are accomplished
• Maintenance roles – roles performed by group members to maintain
good relations within the group
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Learning preferences
An intelligent communicator will shape his or her strategy according to the
audience. Each employee will have a preferred style for how they absorb
new information. Honey and Mumford identified four key learning styles
based on the work of Kolb (Honey and Mumford, 1982). These styles, their
attributes and associated activities are summarised in table 7.1:
Learning Style Attributes Activities
Activist Activists are those people
who learn by doing. Activists
need to get their hands dirty,
to dive in with both feet first.
They have an open-minded
approach to learning,
involving themselves fully and
without bias in new
experiences.
• Brainstorming
• Problem solving
• Group discussion
• Puzzles
• Competitions
• Role-play
Pragmatist These people need to be
able to see how to put the
learning into practice in the
real world. Abstract concepts
and games are of limited use
unless they can see a way to
put the ideas into action in
their lives. They are
experimenters, trying out new
ideas, theories and
techniques to see if they
work.
• Time to think about
how to apply
learning in reality
• Case studies
• Problem solving
• Discussion
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Reflector These people learn by
observing and thinking about
what happened. They may
avoid leaping in and prefer
to watch from the side-
lines. They prefer to stand
back and view experiences
from a number of different
perspectives, collecting data
and taking the time to work
towards an appropriate
conclusion.
• Paired discussions
• Self-analysis
questionnaires
• Personality
questionnaires
• Time out
• Observing activities
• Feedback from
others
• Coaching
• Interviews
Theorist These learners like to
understand the theory
behind the actions. They
need models, concepts and
facts in order to engage in
the learning process. They
prefer to analyse and
synthesise, drawing new
information into a systematic
and logical 'theory'.
• Models
• Statistics
• Stories
• Quotes
• Background
information
• Applying theories
Table 7.1 Honey and Mumford Learning Styles adapted by Dr Richard
Mobbs, Leicester University
An internal communicator with an understanding of these learning
preferences in the context of, for example, a change management
programme, might adapt their approach as follows:
• Activist – learns best from active involvement in a task. Give them
scope to shape how the change will impact on their area
• Pragmatist – learns best when there is a link between information and
real life. Keep them informed and they will simply deal with the
change as it comes
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• Reflector – learns best by reviewing past experiences. Do not rush
them. Give them examples of how these change programmes have
panned out in other parts of the business, or in separate
organisations
• Theorist – learns well when information can be linked to theoretical
contexts. Provide them with lots of information. The more detail the
better
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Chapter 8: Organisational Culture
8.1 What is Organisational Culture?
A huge amount has been written about organisational culture over the past
century or so, but perhaps the simplest and most common-sensical
definition was coined in 1982 by Deal and Kennedy: “The way we do things
around here” (Deal & Kennedy, 1982).
In slightly more elongated fashion, organisational culture is a system of
shared assumptions, values, and beliefs, which govern how people behave
in organisations. These shared values have a strong influence on the people
in the organisation and influence how they dress, act, and perform their
jobs. Every organisation develops and maintains a unique culture, which
provides guidelines and boundaries for the behaviour of the members of the
organisation, including the way in which they communicate internally.
Michael Watkins writing for the Harvard Business Review went deeper into
the different aspects of culture – meaning, control, protection – as
articulated by members of a LinkedIn discussion group he
facilitated(Watkins, 2013):
“Organizational culture is the sum of values and rituals which
serve as ‘glue’ to integrate the members of the organization.”
Richard Perrin
Culture is a carrier of meaning. Cultures provide not only a shared view of
‘what is’ but also of ‘why is’. In this view, culture is about ‘the story’ in which
people in the organisation are embedded, and the values and rituals that
reinforce that narrative. It also focuses attention on the importance of
symbols and the need to understand them – including the idiosyncratic
languages used in organisations – in order to understand culture.
“Organizational culture is civilization in the workplace.”
Alan Adler
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Culture is a social control system. Here the focus is the role of culture in
promoting and reinforcing ‘right’ thinking and behaving, and sanctioning
‘wrong’ thinking and behaving. Key in this definition of culture is the idea of
behavioral ‘norms’ that must be upheld, and associated social sanctions
that are imposed on those who do not ‘stay within the lines’. This view also
focuses attention on how the evolution of the organisation shaped the
culture. That is, how have the existing norms promoted the survival of the
organisation in the past? Note: implicit in this evolutionary view is the idea
that established cultures can become impediments to survival when there
are substantial environmental changes.
“Culture is the organization’s immune system.”
Michael Watkins
Culture is a form of protection that has evolved from situational pressures. It
prevents ‘wrong thinking’ and ‘wrong people’ from entering the
organisation in the first place. Watkins says that organisational culture
functions much like the human immune system in preventing viruses and
bacteria from taking hold and damaging the body. The problem, of course,
is that organisational immune systems also can attack agents of needed
change, and this has important implications for on-boarding and integrating
people into organisations.
In the discussion, there were also some important observations pushing
against the view of culture as something that it is unitary and static, and
toward a view that cultures are multiple, overlapping, and dynamic.
“It over simplifies the situation in large organizations to assume
there is only one culture… and it’s risky for new leaders to
ignore the sub-cultures.”
Rolf Winkler
The cultures of organisations are never monolithic. There are many factors
that drive internal variations in the culture of business functions (e.g. finance
vs. marketing) and units (e.g. a fast-moving consumer products division vs. a
pharmaceuticals division of a diversified firm).
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A company’s history of acquisition also figures importantly in defining its
culture and sub-cultures. Depending on how acquisition and integration are
managed, the legacy cultures of acquired units can persist for surprisingly
long periods of time.
8.2 Characteristics of Organisational Culture
According to Study.com, the seven characteristics of organisational culture
are (Study.com, 2016):
• Innovation (Risk Orientation) – companies with cultures that place a
high value on innovation encourage their employees to take risks
and innovate in the performance of their jobs. Companies with
cultures that place a low value on innovation expect their
employees to do their jobs the same way that they have been
trained to do them, without looking for ways to improve their
performance.
Example: Tech companies such as Google and Facebook
• Attention to Detail (Precision Orientation) – this characteristic of
organisational culture dictates the degree to which employees are
expected to be accurate in their work. A culture that places a high
value on attention to detail expects their employees to perform their
work with precision. A culture that places a low value on this
characteristic does not.
Example: Accountants
• Emphasis on Outcome (Achievement Orientation) – companies that
focus on results, but not on how the results are achieved, place a
high emphasis on this value of organisational culture. A company
that instructs its sales force to do whatever it takes to get sales orders
has a culture that places a high value on the emphasis on outcome
characteristic.
Example: Commission only advertising sales
• Emphasis on People (Fairness Orientation) – companies that place a
high value on this characteristic of organisational culture place a
great deal of importance on how their decisions will affect the
people in their organisations. For these companies, it is important to
treat their employees with respect and dignity.
Example: Charitable Trusts
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• Teamwork (Collaboration Orientation) – companies that organise
work activities around teams instead of individuals place a high
value on this characteristic of organisational culture. People who
work for these types of companies tend to have a positive
relationship with their co-workers and managers.
Example: Hotels
• Aggressiveness (Competitive Orientation) – this characteristic
dictates whether group members are expected to be assertive or
easy-going when dealing with companies they compete with in the
marketplace. Companies with an aggressive culture place a high
value on competitiveness and outperforming the competition at all
costs.
Example: Stockbrokers
• Stability (Rule Orientation) – a company whose culture places a high
value on stability are rule orientated, predictable and bureaucratic
in nature. These types of companies typically provide consistent and
predictable levels of output and operate best in non-changing
market conditions.
Example: Civil Service, Local Councils
How does culture change? John Kotter writing for Forbes suggests it starts
with a powerful person at the top, or a large enough group from anywhere
in the organisation, deciding that the old ways are not working, who figures
out a change vision, starts acting differently, and enlists others to act
differently (Kotter, Blog 2012).
If the new actions produce better results, if the results are communicated
and celebrated, and if they are not killed off by the old culture fighting its
rear-guard action, new norms will form and new shared values will grow.
What does NOT work in changing a culture? Some group decides what the
new culture should be. It turns a list of values over to the communications or
HR departments with the order that they tell people what the new culture is.
They cascade the message down the hierarchy, and little to nothing
changes.
The key point about Kotter’s explanation is that internal communications
help share and celebrate new behaviours that are led from the top. If these
new behaviours are not manifestly evident, no amount of communicating
what they are will compensate for the gap in reality. In fact, perpetuating a
myth will only make things worse, with cynics running riot.
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8.3 Culture, Clutter and the Rise of Telecommuting
One of the modern day ills of corporate life is email overload, something
that many have come to recognise and some have tried to do something
about (Grossman, 2012):
• French technology giant Atos banned email on Fridays in a bid to
get employees talking
• Volkswagen has stopped routing emails to employees’ smartphones
when they go off shift
• The Brazilian government decreed that answering emails out of hours
counts as overtime
Perhaps organisations are waking up to the idea that if a piece of
communication is really important….you need to pick up the phone.
One way of dealing with clutter and boosting productivity is to encourage
more remote working or telecommuting as it is described in the States. Long
gone are the days of decreeing that employees must be sat at their desks
where management teams can keep a watchful eye.
A host of infographics exist to sum up the trend towards greater remote
working and the associated benefits, which according to US tech firm
Logitech can be counted in terms of productivity, time saving, energy
usage, morale and even human life.
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Figure 8.1 Benefits of Remote Working, Logitech 2011
Remote working, it should be pointed out, is not for everyone. This is usually
for purely practical reasons, but also sometimes out of personal choice.
Some workers find it difficult to cope with the lack of routine, or the social
buzz of the office environment. Other finds themselves easily distracted
when working at home or simply prefer the way the physical separation of
office and home enables them to switch off when they come through their
front door in the evening.
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How should internal communications respond to the growth in remote
working? Here are some guidelines:
• Don’t get too reliant on email – one of the benefits of Skype for
example is that you can see when colleagues are available and a
quick ‘are you free for a call?’ message, followed by a quick call,
can be much more productive than an email.
• Where you do need to resort to email, pay careful attention to tone
and do all you can to avoid the risk of misinterpretation.
• Use apps for team collaboration – there seem to be an ever growing
number of these e.g. Trello, Campfire, Basecamp, Evernote and
Onehub, as well as the more familiar Google Docs and Google
Hangouts. Find out what works for you and stick with it.
• Be available – remote working does not mean being offline. Quite
the opposite. Ironically, it should be easier for colleagues to talk with
exactly who they want in a remote environment, where both parties
are free from other distractions, including unnecessary and overlong
meetings.
• Give feedback – remote workers do not want to feel remote so
make sure you respond to their communications and the requests for
input and feedback. Do not leave them to do the chasing.
• Plan the face to face time…and make it more than once a year.
8.4 Buzzwords
Another aspect of culture affecting the art of internal communication is the
use of jargon. Making fun of corporate jargon has become a popular game
in its own right, known as ‘buzzword bingo’. According to Wikipedia,
Buzzword bingo, also known as bullshit bingo, is a bingo-style game where
participants prepare bingo cards with buzzwords and tick them off when
they are uttered during an event, such as a meeting or speech. The goal of
the game is to tick off a predetermined number of words in a row and then
yell "Bingo!" (or "Bullshit!").
Here are just a few of the best (or more probably the worst) examples, as
compiled by Forbes, which most internal communicators have probably
fallen foul of:
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• Buy-in – agreement on a course of action, if the most disingenuous
kind. David Logan, Professor of Management and Organisation at
the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business
notes: “Asking for someone’s ‘buy-in’ says, ‘I have an idea. I didn’t
involve you because I didn’t value you enough to discuss it with you.
I want you to embrace it as if you were in on it from the beginning,
because that would make me feel really good.”
• Empower – what someone above your pay grade does when,
apparently, they would like you to do a job of some importance.
Also called “the most condescending transitive verb ever.” It
suggests that “You can do a little bit of this, but I’m still in charge
here. I am empowering you”, says Dr. Jennifer Chatman, Professor of
Management at the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School
of Business.
• Drinking the Kool-Aid – a tasteless reference to the Jonestown
Massacre of 1978, this expression means to blindly accept
something, such as a company’s mission statement. Robotic
allegiance is bad enough; coming up with tactless expressions for it is
horrendous.
• Move the Needle – this beauty, which has nothing to do with heroin,
is a favorite of venture capitalists. If something does not move the
needle, meaning that it does not generate a reaction (like, positive
cash flow), they do not like it much. So when pitching VCs, make
clear that you intend to move the needle. Or you could just say,
specifically, how your plan and product are superior to your
competitors.
• Open the Kimono – “Some people use this instead of ‘revealing
information.’ It’s kind of creepy,” says Bruce Barry, Professor of
Management at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Business.
Just keep your kimono snuggly fastened.
• Burning Platform – jargon for an impending crisis. Better: “We’re in big
trouble.”
So students beware. Do not be tempted to reach out, shift a paradigm,
leverage a best practice or join a tiger team, by all means do it. Just don’t
say you are doing it, because all that meaningless business jargon makes
you sound like a complete idiot.
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Instead, add power to your communications elbow by familiarising yourself
with the helpful glossary of useful internal communication terms that has
been put together by Rachel Miller: http://www.allthingsic.com/icglossary-
2/.
8.5 The Quality of Conversation
One of Lynda Gratton’s recurring themes is that organisations change for
the better where quality conversation thrives (Gratton, 2012). We all know
instinctively when a workplace conversation has been poor – we feel
drained and demotivated. In contrast a high quality conversation leaves us
feeling inspired and energised. In her book, Glow, she identifies four ways in
which conversations take place:
Analytical
Rationality
Low
Disciplined
Debate
Appreciative
Rigorous
Creative Dialogue
Energised
Sense Making
High
Dehydrated Talk
Ritualistic
Constrained
Intimate Exchange
Trust Building
Empathetic
Low High
Emotional Authenticity
Figure 8.2 Types of Conversation, Lynda Gratton
Dehydrated conversations she argues are like well-rehearsed set pieces with
pre-determined scripts and outcomes. Generally uninspiring. Disciplined
debate on the other hand, is based on fact rather than lazy thinking or
prejudice. It provides the space where employees feel they can ask the big
questions. In intimate exchanges, each party is prepared to share
something about themselves. This sharing relates directly to the emotional
empathy that drives conversation characterised by rapport, rather than
Chapter Eight: Organisational Culture
110
conflict. As Gratton says “It is during these times of authenticity that trust
flourishes and cooperation is built”. All too often, she says, these emotionally
charged conversations are frowned upon in the workplace and perceived
as being negative or unhelpful, when in fact they are just what is needed to
get underlying concerns out on the table.
Creative dialogue is where rationality and emotion are combined to great
effect: one rooted in the categories of structure, the other in images of
meaning. If you can achieve this, then you move from fragmentation to
unity, where spectacular results are possible. To put yourself in more
situations where you can have creative dialogue, Gratton advises her
audience to seek out people who are interesting and exciting with whom
they can converse on broad and wide topics. At the same time, she warns
of the dangers of the cynics – the ‘spell breakers’ who destroy the quality of
conversation. These people need first to be identified and then avoided. In
the event that you have a boss who is a spell breaker, then the advice is as
follows:
• Make an extra effort to be upbeat and positive. Keep conversation
to a minimum
• Display your emotional intelligence with questions such as ‘how can
we work more effectively together?’
• Decide if your boss is symptomatic of ‘the smell of the place’. If they
are not, then you probably need to work on finding a new boss. If
they are, you probably need to work on finding a new company
8.6 Leaders and Leadership Style
When it comes to analysing organisational culture, there can be little doubt
the leader and his or her leadership style, is a significant factor. As Andy
Bounds pointed out, not all animals are equal and people tend to copy
their boss (Bounds, Interview 28.01.16). According to Bounds, leaders have
three communication roles:
1. To be a role model – just telling your team to go and do magic things
is not very motivational. Indeed, it is probably hypocritical. Leaders
need to show what the magic looks like
2. To lead others – most people are happy being led. Leaders need to
tell their teams what they expect
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
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3. To respond impressively – leaders need to act on what they see, feel
and hear with dynamism. In a progressive, well led business, there is
no room for boring, pointless meetings that have no actions arising.
Neil Baines-Thomas of Close Brothers also articulates the need for leaders to
constantly coach the senior management team to be great
communicators and to role model the desired behaviours (Baines-Thomas,
Interview 04.03.16). He cites the recent example of the FBI request that
Apple create a version of its operating system that would allow the FBI to
circumvent security controls, so that it could inspect the contents of an
iPhone used by one of the terrorists involved in the San Bernadino attack.
Apple claimed the order "would undermine the very freedoms and liberty
our government is meant to protect" and has appealed against the court
order. Rather than allow the staff to follow the story solely in the media, Tim
Cook the current Apple CEO, immediately wrote to his staff explaining why
Apple is appealing against the court order.
Lizz Pellet a Fellow in Organisational Transformation from Johns Hopkins
University in the US, argues that culture is created by four distinct methods in
an organisation (Pellet, 2010):
1. The actions and behaviors of leaders
2. What leaders pay attention to
3. What gets rewarded and what gets punished
4. The allocation and attention of resources
Chapter Eight: Organisational Culture
112
Figure 8.3 Leaders and Culture, Felix Global Corp, 2010
Edgar Schein is a former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management
and a recognised expert on organisational culture. He argues
(Organizational Culture and Leadership 2010), that culture springs from three
things (Schein, 2010):
1. The beliefs, values, and assumptions of founders
2. The learning experiences of group members
3. New beliefs, values, and assumptions brought by new members
Of the above, says Schein, it is the first that dominates.
Most commentators seem to agree that the basic leadership task is to
inspire others to achieve great results. In order to do this, they need to role
model the behaviours they would like to see throughout the business and
they need to be skilled in the art of communication. Rich Baker argues that
leadership and communication go hand in hand (Baker, Interview 22.01.16).
If you are not communicating you are not leading. Of course this comes
more naturally to some than to others. For those leaders who lack the
common touch – the ability to communicate at different levels – then they
at least need to be able to drive good communication practices through
the rest of the leadership down and outwards into the wider organisation.
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
113
“Making the connection between the company’s business agenda and the
employee’s agenda requires managers to translate general information into
specific individual relevance. They have to be the final link in the chain of
communication to their people” (Quirk, op. cit.).
For his book, The Language of Leaders, Kevin Murray interviewed over fifty
leaders, nearly all of whom identified communication as a top three skill of
leadership (Murray, 2012). Most identified the ability to think clearly and
strategically as the number one skill required to be a great leader, but all
recognised that the best strategy was redundant without an inspired
workforce to deliver it.
In her book, The Culture Builders, Jane Sparrow suggests that there are five
culture building roles to be played by managers and leaders (Sparrow,
2012):
1. The Prophet – identifies and uses purpose in self and others to create
alignment
2. The Storyteller – shares context, content, metaphors and examples to
engage others
3. The Strategist – identifies and builds plans for the engagement of
others
4. The Coach – gets the best of people and facilitates colleagues on a
journey to engagement
5. The Pilot – the role model, who keeps a hand on the tiller and ensures
that an environment exists where everyone is clear about their
purpose
Great leaders are able to switch between these roles according to context.
For example, during a period of change, different styles are required for the
different tasks identified by Kotter for creating the change: creating a sense
of urgency, building the guiding crew, motivating people to do new things
and making the change stick.
Chapter Eight: Organisational Culture
114
Figure 8.4 Adapted by Jane Sparrow from Kotter:
http://kotterinternational.com/kotterprinciples/changesteps
• Strategist
• Pilot
• Storyteller
• Coach
• Prophet
• Pilot
• Storyteller
• Strategist
• Coach
• PilotMake
change stick
Create a sense of urgency
Build the guiding
crew
Motivate people to do new things
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
115
Chapter 9: Reward and Recognition
Andrew Cody has this perspective: Internal communication should reward
employees (Cody, 2012). And that works on two levels. Firstly, you need to
enrich them with communication that explains their strategic fit with the
organisation. Secondly, you can thank them with social or, if you prefer,
tangible rewards when they provide value. It is a win-win situation. Happy
employees are productive employees.
Since the beginning of the nineties there has been a gradual rise in the
number of organisations offering strategic reward and recognition
programmes, where going the extra mile, typically linked to the
organisation’s stated values, results in some form of tangible reward. These
programmes are often peer to peer in nature, where anyone in the
organisation can nominate a colleague for an exceptional display of the
company’s values, facilitated by some kind of online recognition portal.
These portals are becoming increasing ‘social’ in style, where employees
can ‘like’, award nominations and write congratulatory notes on the
nominee’s ‘wall’.
Lenovo is typical of many technology businesses where structured reward
and recognition is totally embedded. Communications Manager, Charlotte
West, explained how reward programmes operate both centrally and
regionally, recognising sales performance and demonstrating the company
values (West, Interview 26.02.16). Each year the top sales performers from
around the world are celebrated via The Presidents Club and an all-
expenses paid trip to a glamourous holiday destination. Meanwhile the
Lenovo Way Awards celebrate those employees who regularly display the
five Lenovo values of plan, perform, prioritise, pledge and pioneer. West also
noted that reward programmes can be implemented informally and with a
sense of fun. By way of illustration, Lenovo issued a branded megaphone to
employees who were particularly active on social media on behalf of the
company.
The real power of a reward and recognition programme comes not from
the value of the rewards given away, but the way in which this is done.
Whether it is a round of applause in front of your departmental colleagues
or being called up to the main stage at the annual company conference, it
is the public display of celebration that really matters. Emma Thompson
describes the excitement and glamour of the annual employee awards
event held at the iconic Royal Courts of Justice in Temple, London
(Thompson, Interview 20.01.16).
Chapter Nine: Reward and Recognition
116
It is the social highlight of the year, where nominated employees from all of
the regional offices get the chance to don their best outfits and head to the
city for the HCMTS employee equivalent of the Oscars.
9.1 Voluntary Benefits
Another form of reward for employees that organisations have recognised
the importance of, is that of voluntary or flexible benefits.
These programmes enable employees to select and buy the benefits they
want at a lower cost than if they were to get them directly. Payments for the
services selected are often made through payroll and where a tax break is
available, such as with childcare, then via a mechanism known as ‘salary
sacrifice’ where the benefit is paid for out of gross salary. Essentially
employees have access to additional benefits at a cheaper rate. The
employer gets all the engagement, motivation and productivity that come
with having such a wide-ranging, interactive scheme.
Products that are typically included in a voluntary or flexible programme
include childcare vouchers, cycle to work schemes, personal accident,
critical illness, dental and private medical insurance, employee assistance
programmes and medical cash plans.
9.2 Employee Lifecycle Communications
In the same way that marketing departments try to manage the lifecycle of
their customers, with appropriate interventions at appropriate times, so too
are organisations beginning to appreciate the notion of an employee
lifecycle, where communications and messaging can be made more
personal from recruitment through to departure. Even in our modern world,
when employees are likely to move more frequently from organisation to
organisation than in the past, the importance of treating employees well
during their tenure is undiminished. Indeed, in a social world where every
employee has the power to enhance or undermine organisational
reputation, organisations need to get the communication right from the get
go.
The reality of trying to do this can mean the linking together of a variety of
HR systems that handle different aspects of the employee relationships and
that have evolved over time. Those have managed to do this describe an
‘employee hub’ which consolidates this information and sets templated
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
117
communication triggers for key milestones in the employee’s lifecycle with
that company e.g. joining, passing probation, moving department, gaining
promotion, 5-year and more anniversaries, birthdays, passing training
courses, completing appraisals, etc. As we have seen earlier, whilst the HR
function may own the concept, there is great value in the marketing or
internal communications professional getting involved with these processes
and the detail of the messaging.
Case Study from the Employee Engagement Division of Grass Roots:
Driving Employee Understanding at Santander and Linking ROI to
Total Reward
Grass Roots helped financial services company Santander to bring their
Employee Value Proposition (EVP) to life, making it accessible, relevant and
easy to understand.
Santander wanted their employees to have a clear picture of everything
that was being done for them, including rewards, benefits, support,
development, and strategic direction.
The first step was to integrate all the existing employee value proposition
(EVP) systems through one single platform and make everything easy to find,
searchable and intuitive to navigate. Comprehensive employee marketing
data was gathered and analysed to create ‘bite size’ EVP communications
around different key points (moments of truth) in a person's employee
lifecycle.
Grass Roots then benchmarked the effectiveness of the existing total reward
strategy, which showed there was an opportunity to add significant value
back into the business by putting a new total reward programme in place.
The site has been incredibly well received, and shows the importance of
providing the right message to employees at the right time; and the value of
creating a single point of access to relevant information that is easy to use
and navigate.
Results
At the end of year one:
• Over 6 million page views and 800,000 site visits
• 90% of employees registered
• Over £9 million in flexible benefits ordered (27,000 orders placed)
Chapter Nine: Reward and Recognition
118
• Employees have added the value of £1.5 million to their total reward
through tax and NI savings
• CIPD People Management Awards 2013 – Highly Commended in HR
Innovation Through Technology
• Employee Benefits Awards 2013 – shortlisted in three categories
9.3 A Culture of Recognition
No matter how well built and implemented the employee lifecycle
communication system is, many would concede that there is no substitute
for a culture of recognition, where saying ‘thank you’ comes naturally.
As Hannah Jones points out in her blogpost, we all want and need
recognition (Jones, Blog 2015). It starts in our childhood but continues
throughout our adult life which is modelled around constant social
feedback and acknowledgement. She says:
“So strong is our desire for positive affirmation, particularly during
developmental periods, that even a neutral reaction can be perceived as a
negative one. When we move to the workplace, this orientation is no
different. It is key that employers focus on how they can make authentic
and meaningful recognition part of their management philosophy in order
to retain top talent and encourage high performance.”
Jones refers to a recent survey carried out by US based recognition agency
O.C. Tanner which investigates the root cause of great employee
performance and how managers can tailor their workplaces to promote it.
The killer question posed is: "What is the most important thing that your
manager or company currently does that would cause you to produce
great work?" The results are summarised in Figure 9.1.
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
119
Figure 9.1 OC Tanner Survey Question: "What is the most important
thing that your manager or company currently does that would
cause you to produce great work?"
Overall, 37% of respondents stated that more personal recognition would
encourage them to produce better work more often – a clear illustration of
the importance of affirmation, feedback and reward for motivating
employees to do their best work.
Rich Baker suggested practical ways in which communication professionals
can help build a culture of recognition, formally and informally (Baker,
Interview 22.01.06). On the formal side, in larger organisations, it is about
advocating investment in a recognition portal and then supporting the
adoption process. In smaller companies, something as simple as ‘thank you’
cards can make managers feel more comfortable about giving recognition.
In his view, when it comes to powerful recognition, there is still nothing to
compare to the handwritten card from one’s manager. On the informal
side, it is about building the soft skills that enable managers to have grown
up conversations with their team members – the creative dialogue referred
to by Lynda Gratton and discussed in the previous chapter.
At Direct Line, one of the ways a culture of recognition has been
embedded into the business, according to Internal Communications and
Brand Engagement Manager, Paul Diggins, is via the Chief Executive
awards which are made annually on a regional basis (Diggins, Interview
26.01.16). Each region has a three-month window in which to make their
nominations, linked to the six company values:
Chapter Nine: Reward and Recognition
120
• Take ownership
• Work together
• Say it like it is
• Doing the right thing
• Aim higher
• Bring all of yourself to work
Each regional winner is presented with a trophy by the Chief Executive and
the rolling nature of the awards – they take place at different times – keeps
recognition firmly on the board agenda throughout the year.
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Chapter 10: The Characteristics of a Great
Communicator
Each interview carried out in support of this book, concluded with the
question: “Who do you admire as a great communicator and why?” Here
are some of the responses:
Neil Baines-Thomas – Organisational Capability & Development Manager,
Close Brothers Asset Management
“During the mid-90s I was at Bradford and Bingley when CEO Christopher
Rodrigues took the business from being a building society to being a bank.
He very quickly realised that the questions employees were asking were the
same as those that the customers were asking – effectively, why are we
doing this? He really upped the ante on internal comms with the simple
objective of ensuring employees understood what we were doing and why
we were doing it”.
Rich Baker – Internal Communications Consultant
“Two people spring to mind. The ex CEO of Carlsberg UK, James Lusada. An
extremely emotionally intelligent man with great self-awareness. He had a
keen sense of his strengths and limitations and he played to them. I was
particularly struck by how he empowered his team to do the job we were
hired to do.
I’d also like to mention Jeremy Higgins, the former Customer Service Director
at Cross Country Trains. He is a fantastic communicator who naturally
inspires people with his quirky personality and positive energy”.
Jim Beatty – HR Director, Burton’s Biscuits
“He is my boss, but I’d have to go for Ben Clarke, the CEO at Burton’s
Biscuits. Ben is a marketer at heart who understands the value of simplifying
the message and being really clear in his communication. He has the
human touch and natural empathy.”
Chapter Ten: Characteristics of a great communicator
122
Andy Bounds – Communications Consultant and bestselling author (The Jelly
Effect, The Snowball Effect, Top Dog)
“Walt Disney was a visionary, a brilliant sales person with a totally positive
mind-set. He would always say ‘yes, if’ rather than ‘no, because’. Like all
great leaders, he had great natural charisma. “
Paul Diggins – Head of Internal Communications and Brand and
Engagement, Direct Line Group
“Matt Barrett the former CEO of Barclays had the gift of the gab and could
communicate on a variety of levels. He spoke in a way that his audience
would understand. He had a knack for making the complex simple, was
very consistent and brilliantly clear. His authority was neither scary nor
hierarchical. People loved him. A superstar CEO.”
Teresa Carnt – Internal Communications, BP Fuels
At the risk of sounding sycophantic, I’d have to say my boss, Rachel Retford,
is the best communicator I have ever worked with. I admire the way she
combines clear strategic thinking, with a practical ability to gets things
done. Great at turning strategy into action. She really does walk the walk as
well as talking the talk. She is very down to earth, strong on prioritisation and
good at knowing when to say ‘no’”.
Annette Gann – Internal Communications Consultant with National Grid
“A senior colleague contractor at National Grid, Gabrielle Williamson, has
the typical attributes of a good communicator. She sees the big picture, is
an excellent team builder, empathetic, energetic and can work at pace.
She also manages upwards very well, which means she is successful at
getting senior level support when needed”.
Mike Klein – Internal Communications Consultant
“Jim Shaffer is a leadership coach, author and speaker who has a great
talent for being able to create a bottom line relationship between comms
and organisation change.” (Shaffer’s book The Leadership Solution is widely
regarded as one of the best business books on leadership, change
management, communication and creating high performance through
people).
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
123
I’m also a great admirer of Jeppe Hansgaard
(https://dk.linkedin.com/in/jeppehansgaard) a champion of organisational
network analysis and people analytics.
I’d also like to give a mention to Rachel Miller
(https://uk.linkedin.com/in/rachelmiller01) for accelerating the
development of a mutually supportive Internal Communications community.
Emma Thompson – Head of Change Communication, Her Majesty’s Court
and Tribunal Service
“A senior VP at my former company Cisco, was really good at making
people feel special. When he was engaged in conversation with you he
always gave you his full attention. Despite his status in the business he was
not afraid to show his vulnerability. This helped him appear normal and
therefore easier to converse with.
He also thought hard about what he was going to say before he said it.
Nothing was ever off the cuff. He avoided jargon, always using language
that was appropriate for his audience. And he was very good at choosing
the right words. He came to Cisco via an acquisition of another company
and I always remember him saying these words: “I didn’t want to be here,
but I chose to stay”.
Mark Webb – Social Media Manager, Dixons Carphone Warehouse
“Our CEO Sebastian James has the biggest Twitter following among FTSE 100
leaders. He was an early adopter of social media because he saw its value
in terms of communication. He uses his own language and says it how he
sees it. Sometimes he flies a bit close to the edge, but colleagues, journalists,
social media observers and analysts love that. They want to hear the truth,
straight from the horse’s mouth and that’s what they get.”
Charlotte West – Head of Corporate Communications, Lenovo
“My first choice is an obvious one: Richard Branson. He has that natural
passion which is very infectious. He’s charismatic and seems to do
everything with a touch of flair. I’ve also noticed that no one I’ve met who
has ever worked at Virgin, has anything negative to say about him. On the
contrary employees are proud that they have worked for a business for
which he is the leader.
Chapter Ten: Characteristics of a great communicator
124
My second choice would be Satya Nadella, the CEO at Microsoft.
Employees value openness and authenticity and Nadella is a very
transparent leader.”
Tim Wooten – Internal Communication Consultant and Author
“Andy Bounds. Learning to communicate with his blind mother has made
him the consummate communications expert”.
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
125
References
Books & Articles
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Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
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Blogposts
Bradbury T, (2016), How Body Language Trumps IQ, LinkedIn
Cropley A, (2016), Change Management as a Core Competency for
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Interviews
Baines-Thomas N, (04.03.16), Talent Development Manager, Close Brothers
Baker R (24.01.16), Internal Communications Consultant
Beatty J, (21.01.16), HR Director, Burtons' Biscuits
References
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Bobrowski M, (21.01.16), Brand Director, Burtons' Biscuits
Bounds A, (28.01.16), Communications Consultant and bestselling author
Carnt T, (03.02.16), Internal Communications Partner, BP Fuels
Diggins P, (26.01.16), Head of Internal Communications and Brand
Engagement, Direct Line
Gann A, (15.02.16), Internal Communications Consultant, National Grid
Klein M, (01.02.16), Internal Communications Consultant
Low S, (08.01.16), Global Communications Manager, EMC
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Ryan M, (2015), President Operations, iFLY, Various Conversations Autumn
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Case Studies
Barclays, Courtesy of Blue Goose
Business Innovation and Skills, Contributed by Susie Hill, First published by
Engage for success
Nationwide, Contributed by Fiona MacAllen, First published by the Institute
of Internal Communication
Santander, Courtesy of Grass Roots
Videos for Further Information
Cambridge Marketing College, Internal Communications by Alan Ansted,
https://vimeo.com/129439792
Career advice on becoming an internal communications manager by
Sophie McCourt, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvXjGx2tFNc
Think Engagement by David Coleman,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeHBeqJ3wzg
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
129
Websites for General Information
Emergenetics: https://www.emergenetics.com/uk
Engage for Success: engageforsuccess.org
Gartner: https://www.cebglobal.com/marketing-
communications/communications/internal-communications
Institute of Internal Communication: www.ioic.org.uk
References
130
Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Internal Communications
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Index
Activity classification, 76
Agency(ies), 7, 51, 89, 118
Attitudes, 35, 87, 88
Audience, 1, 41, 43, 46-48, 71, 76,
78, 97, 100, 122
Barclays, 7, 51, 122
Behaviour, 87-100
Beliefs, 87, 88, 101
Best Companies Survey, 38
Body language, 57-60
Brand(s), 6, 13, 44, 46, 71, 74
Budgeting, 52
Business Innovation and Skills, 83
Buzzwords, 107
Cascading Information, 47
Champions, 20, 48
Change Management, 10, 12-13,
98
Channels, 2, 9, 27, 38, 49-50, 55,
57, 64, 69, 71, 72, 76
Clutter, 31, 105
Context, 10, 36, 37, 40, 46, 98, 113
Conversation, 5, 37, 48, 57, 67, 109
Crisis, 6, 17, 19-20, 32, 34
Culture, 101-114, 118
Emergenetics Framework, 93
Employee lifecycle
communications, 116, 118
Engagement, 7, 64, 74
Engagement Pyramid, 15
Enterprise Social Network, 64
Evaluation, 73-86
Experience Index, 9
Face to face, 11, 16, 37, 55, 57, 68
Grass Roots, 117
Groups, 22, 32, 49, 67 ,69, 71, 94,
96
Honey and Mumford, 97
HR, 1, 3, 7, 32, 79, 104, 116
iFLY, 20, 48, 69
Implementation, 46
Infographic(s), 62, 105
Innovation, 6, 10, 83
Inter-departmental friction, 6, 22
Internal Communications
Practitioner, 25-27
Internal Communications
Applications, 72
Internal Marketing Mix, 1
IOIC Professional Development, 26
Kotter, 12, 104, 113
Leader(s), 32, 110
Leadership, 13, 32, 73, 78, 90, 94,
110
Leadership Style, 110
Learning, 97
Legal obligations, 6, 23
Index
132
Marketing, 1, 32
Media, 55-67
Mendelow, 42
Message (s), 19, 27, 45, 47, 51, 64,
69, 74, 76, 104
Message impact, 76
Messaging, 45
Metrics, 78
Mission, 5, 6-7, 32
Model of employee clarity and
willingness, 43
Mood, 78
Motivation, 87, 116
Multi-national(s), 37
Nationwide, 80
Objectives, 40
Personality, 90
Personality traits, 90, 92
Planning, 29-54, 57
Product and Service
Development, 6, 10
Purpose, 5-24, 73
Quirke, 5,9, 12, 13, 14, 27, 31, 33,
41, 43, 49, 79
Recognition, 6, 20, 32, 44, 87,
115-120
Retention, 10, 74
Reward, 2, 20, 32, 115-120
Santander, 117
Schein, 112
Segmentation, 41
Shell's Content Engagement
Algorithm, 77
Situation Analysis/Audit, 34
Slack, 68-70
Social Media, 16, 64-66, 71, 115
Strategy, 2, 15, 32, 41-46, 94, 113
Surveys, 38, 73
Tactics, 46
Telecommuting, 105
Thinking, 92, 102
Tuckman, 95
Values, 5-8, 20, 23, 37, 48, 88, 101,
104, 115
Video, 60, 69
Vision, 5, 6-7, 32
Voluntary benefits, 116
Workplace by Facebook, 70
Yammer, 38, 67-68
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