Are your internal communications one size fits all, or designed for success? When we’re talking about internal communications, we mean anything from explaining strategic direction, enabling ideas and success stories to be exchanged and encouraging regular two-way dialogue between managers and their teams.

And we’re not just talking about the structured and regular communications here like intranet content and monthly briefings.  This is about all of the communications people produce, whoever they are and whatever their role is. 

Who’s responsible for this?

We think internal communications is the responsibility of everyone within an organisation including clarity around:

• What needs to be communicated?
• When?
• Who the audience are and their level of understanding of the subject
• Using language the audience will understand
• Getting feedback on how successful the communication has been.

Regardless of the medium by which the messages are conveyed, there needs to be a basic set of principles that everyone agrees to and adheres to. This isn’t about overwhelming everyone with information. It’s about ensuring that the information that everyone needs to do their job is available, accessible, in context and communicated in an appropriate and timely manner. But how many people in organisations stop to think about this before their fingers hit the keyboard?

What needs communicating and when?

To create a “golden thread” between organisation strategy, corporate plans and targets through to team plans and individual’s Personal Performance Agreements, concise, relevant and timely messages should be delivered via a range of delivery channels.  

And written communications should be supported by regular two-way dialogue providing an opportunity for discussion and feedback, helping to build understanding and buy in. The message may be critical to some but only of interest to others. Local line managers play a critical part in delivery. How many of them are good at this?

Some stuff to think about

• Do you know who your target audiences are? Placing messages in an appropriate context for the audience helps them get it first time
• What about language? The use of complex terminology or jargon can create a barrier with the audience who are likely to be less familiar with the subject of the message than the author. Keep it simple
• Pictures communicate as much as words. And think about using images that reflect as far as possible the diverse groups the organisation is engaging with
• People take on information in a variety of ways and a variety of communication delivery channels need to be used to facilitate this. Do you know what works best for what types of issues?
• Employees need to be confident that they can access the information they want and need, quickly and simply. How easy is your intranet to navigate? Is it up to date?
• Do you have an effective engagement programme? Regular face to face briefings on specific subjects e.g. lunchtime talks, the senior management team getting out regularly into the organisation to talk to individual employees or teams on an informal basis etc.
• What inter team and inter department working happens? An informal information exchange can do a lot to build awareness and interest in the wider work that the organisation does
• Has feedback been requested? The success or otherwise of any communications activity can be easily determined by requesting feedback from the recipients
• Organisations with large and geographically dispersed teams have greater challenges when it comes to internal communications. These teams are likely to need more in the way of structured communications support than their smaller single site counterparts. Are they making use of phone, web and video conferencing?

And finally….

Not sure how well your organisations doing and how your communications measure up? Run a few communications workshops and ask people to draw what internal communications feels like. What works well and what doesn’t? A large wall area, lots of paper and coloured pens and you could be surprised at the image you’re presented with. And it’s a great benchmark for the future as communications are improved.