Many companies focus much time, effort and resources on developing a strong external communications plan. Just as important, however, and often neglected is an effective and engaging internal communications strategy.
An ever growing body of research points to the impact of internal communications on a company’s bottom line. This presentation aggregates some key statistics. Internal communications is about more than crisis response, creating an intranet or sending frequent tweets to employees. At its core, internal communications is the basic building block of organizational culture. And, as such, a strong, strategic internal communications plan can result in positive ‘everyday talk’ that builds or transform an organization’s culture such that internal stakeholders become public relations ambassadors for external parties.
‘Everyday talk’ is just what it sounds like, daily verbal interactions that help shape people’s lives, both in and out of the workplace. The way we interact and the words we use shape our identities within relationships, so the ‘everyday talk’ we use to frame our workplace experience both reflects and creates the tenor of relationships within the organization and the organization’s culture.
One overarching goal of internal communications is to reinforce a culture in which employees not only feel positive about their role within and relationship to the company, but also have the framing and language to express that positive feeling. Internal communications should use language that is consistent with the authentic core values of your organization.
An example: Zappos always refers to its employees as ‘family members.’ This aligns strongly with the company’s core value of creating a ‘positive team where helping one another is the norm’ and where, as it says on the company website, ‘family members’ “watch out for each other, care for each other.” Words like ‘positive,’ ‘helping,’ ‘family,’ and ‘care’ are diffused throughout all internal communication, giving employees a positive language framework for their everyday talk.
As with any communication, professional or personal, authenticity is essential to an effective internal communications effort. Ironically, the stronger your communication effort, the higher the standards you set, the more stumbling blocks you may encounter. Returning to Zappos for a moment: if organizational behavior did not mirror the language used to describe the culture, employees would not buy in to and co-create the culture. Common stumbling blocks to positive everyday talk include organizational injustice (real or perceived), withholding information, organizational dishonesty in the name of short-term profits, and ‘invisible’ leadership that stays behind closed doors.
The stumbling blocks to positive everyday talk all have at their root a lack of deep understanding that employees are a company’s single most important asset. Team behavior and the language team members use to describe themselves, their work and the organization create the organization’s culture. Furthermore, as ambassadors of the company, they communicate that culture to external stakeholders and customers in their daily interactions.
Seeing employee interactions and behavior through the lens of everyday talk can be revealing. What type of everyday talk do you see at your organization? What can you do to create an environment where your team feels more connected, engaged and empowered? And how would their language, and yours, reflect that engagement?