Internal ambassadors offer competitive edge

Since its early beginnings, public relations focused on the outside, promoting the company or individual image for specific publics. In recent years, with greater competition in the markets and more need for differentiation, internal public relations or communications is taking up much more time and resources of communications practitioners. In many corporate communications functions, almost 50% or more of the communications programme is focused on employees. This column explores some the trends in internal communications and a few influences that may impact internal communications in the future.

Much of the focus on internal communications has unfortunately been one-way - spraying employees with information through internal memos, company newsletters and intranet sites. Today, this model is unworkable as many employees have as good information about the company as anyone else with access to the Internet and websites from newspapers, business publications, market analysts and industry associations. A company really has to create forums for dialogue with employees for two-way communications to develop, bottom up, top down and across the organisation. Face-to-face communication is always the best, while town hall meetings and cascade briefings will help. There are many ways to create dialogue but the main point is that there has to be leadership in the organisation. The chief executive officer or managing director needs to take the lead in open, transparent and two-way communications. Leadership is required to create a healthy internal communications climate. Communication professionals need to find ways to encourage managers to communicate more with employees, to be out at the various operations, branch offices and factories.

Yet, some managers have great empathy with employees, listen attentively to what they say, have informal and formal feedback systems, take quick actions to solve problems or issues and then communicate these new actions simply, openly and widely across the enterprise.

A concern with communications today is that the intellectual part of it has become easier. There are more lecturers, more textbooks on the subject, e-newsletters, publications (local and international), and a plethora of websites with experts on every conceivable aspect of communications and public relations. This increase in knowledge and information is all very well but what about the practical application of communications ideas? What about the emotional empathy that some of the best communicators seem to naturally have. No amount of intellectualising will get people motivated and have real buy-in into communications initiatives and messages.

Employees require passion to survive and thrive in companies. The competition is too great. If you don't like what you are doing, there's a queue of prospective employees outside waiting to take your place. This passion has become critical to companies - they need people who can help to make them different, more energetic, more full of ideas, more alive. That's why internal communication must link with human resources. Internal communications actually starts with employee selection: you can find many technically competent people but what is their source of real human capital value? Will they be able to support your company values? How well do they react to changing circumstances? This one is very important because companies will be changing focus more often in these volatile markets. Are employees quick learners? They need to be because a lot of what they learn today will be out of date within fewer years than in the past. Without passion the employee and the company just won't cut it in the marketplace.

Today all employees count as companies have fewer people who must increasingly work in teams for the company to be productive and competitive. There are very few solo acts left in today's corporation.

When we look at the rankings of best employers we see not that many making the rankings. Why don't the many other companies enter? It seems that the problem could be that employment conditions, despite the legal safeguards, are perhaps not always ideal to create internal environments that are world class. South African companies generally have a long way to go in improving not only communications but also general conditions in the workplace. We don't have to look too far to see how some international companies have embraced their employees - just see surveys in the Financial Times, Fortune and similar business publications of high standing. What's important is that there are many companies that are increasingly paying great attention to their employees, recognising the assets that they really are.

Excellent internal communications is a two-way street: both employers and employees have to come to the party. Effective internal communication really starts with a compact between management and employees that "things need to change around here". It is simply no use attacking management for withholding or filtering information. A more constructive approach is to perhaps find out what's preventing them from communicating - are they afraid of communicating, do they need training, what assistance do they need? It will cost money but surely it's worth it. Don't blame employees for lack of interest in the business when you haven't made them interested. Support employees. Find out what their communication needs are and then make things happen. Forget the baloney about being "careful of raising expectations". In today's competitive environment, that's exactly what you want.

Internal communications practitioners need to be wary of competition from other fields. Although it is difficult to make predictions, it looks as though many internal communications opportunities could go to management consultants, industrial psychologists, perhaps lawyers and accountants, or even economists (don't laugh ... one communications department was in recent years headed by an economist). Specialist agencies may take a bigger slice of the internal communications budget, as internal practitioners will most likely need to increasingly focus on developing the strategy rather than producing the next issue of the corporate magazine.
Employees can be your ambassadors and in so doing can help to also make your customers ambassadors for your company. It's what is called a virtuous circle. If we look at some of the scenarios developed to try forecast the role of communicators in 2025 (study obtained from the internet, of course) we see, among other trends, that there is likely to be a race for establishing, maintaining and strengthening relations, particularly with employees, as a strategic asset and the development of vital human capital. Whatever the eventual outcome, employees will become increasingly important as a competitive ingredient in the future of most companies.