It’s a constant challenge for many organizations: finding ways to ensure that their employees have the information they need not only to do their jobs, but to boost their engagement and loyalty and to serve as effective brand ambassadors. I was asked recently for my “top tips” on how companies, large and small, can improve their employee communication efforts. These were my top three recommendations:

1. Think very carefully about the “staging”/order of communications. One of the common missteps I see in internal communication is sending out a broad message (e.g. to all employees) without first informing managers. Those managers are then frustrated because they don’t have answers to employee questions and then appear “inept.” So, make sure to list all audiences who need to hear the message, and then make sure to stage the message in the proper order, in terms of who needs to know what, when.
2. Provide consistent talking points in a “media kit” format, which could be delivered electronically to audiences (e.g. managers) who need to inform others about an issue and could include background information: FAQs, PPT slides or other collateral, supporting information, etc. This helps to ensure that a consistent message is being shared across multiple audiences and also helps to support often overburdened managers and other staff charged with communicating these types of messages.
3. Provide the means for two-way communication to take place and also a method whereby what is learned can be synthesized, shared and, as appropriate, acted upon. A lot of rich input and information is lost because a) it’s not sought in the first place, b) there are no means for those hearing or receiving the information to share it in some formal way, or c) the input is not acted upon. Putting actionable feedback loops in place can go a long way toward ensuring that employees’ issues, concerns, comments, etc. are effectively addressed.

These are the “big rocks” — there are, of course, many other considerations that go into ensuring that employee communications will help to support a company’s efforts. What would you add to the list?

Recommended Reading:

The Everything Guide to Customer Engagement

Tags: communicating with employees, Employee Communication, internal communication

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2015 at 10:31 am and is filed under Internal Communication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.