The Essential Role of Employee Communications in Shaping Culture and Driving Performance | Industry Insights | All MKC Content | ANA

The Essential Role of Employee Communications in Shaping Culture and Driving Performance

Share        

PARTNER CONTENT

Malte Mueller/Getty Images

In practically every category, organizations are facing a number of business challenges: increased competition, new and evolving technologies, a tight labor market, and mergers and acquisitions. The existence of these and other similar issues make employee communications more important than ever.

Once primarily focused on keeping personnel informed about company and staff news, employee communications today play a much more expanded role. Indeed, they are a strategic imperative for every employer because they help achieve a range of business and organizational objectives, from retaining and developing employees to fostering better cross-functional collaboration and delivering on an organization's mission and brand promise.

Effective employee communications create dialogues and inspire actions that, taken together, drive and fortify a corporate culture that leads to growth and success for everyone. Simply put, a strong corporate culture equals strong business performance — and strong employee communications are essential to achieving both.

According to Deloitte research, 69 percent of C-suite executives surveyed believe that company culture, especially transparency in internal communications, will help their organization achieve its mission and vision. Only 14 percent of the respondents, however, are satisfied with their organization's ability to communicate and collaborate effectively.

The employee side, similarly, shows a need for significant improvement: a 2017 Gallup study found that just 33 percent of U.S. workers are engaged at work. Internal communications could go a long way toward revitalizing a workforce that struggles with engagement.

To gain perspective and insight about this strategic communications discipline, Mower gathered input from 10 employee communications professionals. Almost every respondent said their organization is putting more — in some cases, much more — emphasis on employee communications now than they were a year ago.

Reasons cited for the increase in employee communications included:

  • Responding to employee demand. Employee surveys consistently show that employees want regular, relevant communications about many aspects of the business.
  • Bringing clarity around common goals. With the communications function matrixed in some companies, regions and business units pursuing their own objectives, and more employees working remotely, employee communications at the corporate level can unify employees around universal company goals.
  • Helping to manage change and drive a shift in culture. Organizational change in response to business conditions often requires a change in corporate culture. Employee communications should explain why change is necessary, how it's good for the organization, and what it takes from each employee to make it happen.
  • Telling the brand story. Employees are a brand's greatest ambassadors, and it's essential that they understand the brand story and how they can help bring it to life.

Feedback from the surveyed professionals revealed high expectations for the outcomes employee communications programs can help a company achieve. Frequently mentioned goals include:

  • Empowering employees to do their best work in a rewarding, collaborative, and effective manner.
  • Informing, engaging, motivating, and exciting employees to deliver the best possible experiences for customers. Put another way, effective employee-experience management leads to effective customer-experience management.
  • Engaging hearts and minds to fuel engagement, leadership confidence, and corporate culture.
  • Raising awareness about brand and corporate strategy so employees naturally serve as brand ambassadors.
  • Connecting the company's mission and vision with employee engagement so that each team member sees how everything he or she does helps the company move closer to fulfilling its mission.

As companies look to develop employee communications programs that deliver on their specific goals, there are a number of best practices that can help guide the process. Here are six to consider:

  • Ensure senior management visibility. Leadership, commitment, and transparency from senior management are essential requirements for successful employee communications. As part of that support, it's important that senior management visibly and actively engages with employees in multiple ways.
  • Collect and act on data. To achieve this, companies should conduct frequent pulse surveys, track performance of e-communications, distribute online surveys following employee meetings, and provide opportunities for employee-to-supervisor feedback. Asking for and acting on employee input, feedback, and data can continuously improve employee communications.
  • Make communications cross-functional. Employee communications can help break down silos by sharing employee stories, customer successes, and performance results, not just within the division where they happened but throughout the organization.
  • Adopt new technologies. Companies should continuously seek the most accessible and user-friendly technology solutions that work across virtually any system, device, or employee interface.
  • Emphasize peer-to-peer and employee-generated content. Employees should be provided with a vehicle to recognize a colleague who is doing a great job. In addition, encouraging employees to write articles about how their teams helped solve a problem makes for good content.
  • Reduce the amount and length of email. Senior management should recognize that employees have a love/hate relationship with email and therefore strive to find the mix of brevity, relevancy, and frequency of email communications that's best for the organization.

A strong employee communications program begins and ends with effective messaging. Even the best and most unique tactics, techniques, and technologies for delivering messages won't save messaging that just doesn't resonate. Using the "six Cs" formula, companies can create and communicate messages that will inform, engage, and motivate employees. The six Cs to pursue are:

  1. Credible: First and foremost, employees must believe in the message, so senior management should be wary of communication that is too aggressive. For example, if a company is a distant number five or six in its market, claiming that the company will be the market leader in 12 months will be hard for people to believe. Similarly, messages about what the company wants to deliver now should be balanced with past experiences where the company fell short in delivering on a similar message. It is better to prove it than spend much time saying it.
  2. Compelling: The right words and sentences will do more than just get the attention of employees. Messaging should lead to actions that deliver the outcomes the company wants to see. This is harder than it seems, so it is important to commit the time to really think through this aspect of the message.
  3. Concise: Great messages are brief, memorable, easily understood, and clearly state the points people need to remember.
  4. Creative: This applies to messaging but really speaks to the importance of finding creative ways to deliver messages. For example, instead of the traditional town hall meeting where the CEO stands on a stage and takes questions from employees, a TV talk show set where the CEO is interviewed by the host and engages with audience members can help increase interest among employees.
  5. Connect: Messaging must make a strong, meaningful connection with each employee and connect to the larger corporate and brand stories.
  6. Consistent: Once messaging is developed with the preceding Cs in mind, it is important to consistently deliver the message and story through the various components of the employee communications program.

Brad Rye is the SVP and managing director at Mower. You can reach him at brye@mower.com.

 

 

Share