Internal communication - international update from Talk2Us

The conference topic was that of the fastest-growing stakeholder engagement discipline today - internal communication. Subsets of this - including leadership communication, employee engagement, and research and measurement - were among the key focus areas.

Local summary

The open day featured five sessions, focusing on global trends and employee engagement case studies; infographics and the use of visual communication; leadership communication; technologies for effective employee communication and engagement; and research and measurement as key tools to assess the process, content, impact, and recall of communication. A Talk2Us discipline specialist, who implements these projects on a daily basis, facilitated each session.

Daniel Munslow, a director of the company indicated that internal communication has emerged as a strategic driver for the release of discretionary effort, improved productivity, employee engagement, staff retention and retaining of IP, among others.

Talk2Us director and founder, Linda Hamman highlighted that, to deliver these business returns and prove return, communicators are under pressure to strategically position their role and function, as well as establish the right policies and procedures, measurement strategies and demonstrate business alignment.

"Common to all high-performing organisations is the ability to communicate and interact effectively by creating and delivering a compelling brand promise to employees and ensuring that business leaders walk the talk."

Communication has changed

Munslow presented on global trends and highlighted that the communication landscape had changed rapidly over the past five years. Most recently, the change has leaned toward using leadership as a channel, a channel that has the capability to contextualise, interact and share information in a manner that fosters engagement.

His presentation also aligned delegates to the company's approach, which has been developed over the past 12 years and implements in hundreds of internal communication initiatives.

"Benchmarking against global trends is critical to ensure alignment within multinational organisations and companies seeking to implement tried and tested best practice internal communication initiatives," he said.

Addressing the use of visual language, Hamman said the graphical interface applied to communication is what attracts the target audience. It is the packaging that entices consumers to 'open' the message or not.

"Graphics need to be relevant and conform to the target audience's consumption requirements. Consumers of information have, out of necessity, been compelled to filter out communication that is either irrelevant to them or is not appealing because the format is too cumbersome.

Infographics favoured

"Infographics have become a favoured way of displaying complex information. They are graphically appealing, easy to understand and therefore easy to relay," she said

"The leadership in any organisation determines the culture of the organisation. Culture is fast becoming the number one differentiator between organisations. The culture either pulls clients closer or drives them away," stressed Gerhard Redelinghuys in his presentation.

"Leaders in your business are the custodians of your culture, the way in which they weave the cultural elements into their interactions with their subordinates and peers determines whether the culture will come alive within the organisation or whether it will be a poster on a wall."

Munslow added that technology plays a key role in communicating with stakeholders.

"With bandwidth no longer being a problem in most organisations, the use of 'message cut-through' tools such as pop ups, alerts, RSS feeds and ticker bars, have become a popular way of assisting consumers and communication practitioners to tailor what messaging to target audiences, thereby promoting relevant information using a 'push' philosophy.

"There are many such tools on the market but the company still believes that SnapComms, a New Zealand-based product, is by far the most effective - due to its longevity and its extensive international customer base that influences the direction its product takes."

Dipstick measurement useful

Concluded Andrew McIlwaine, "Internal communication research is vitally important to prove value add and efficacy. The trend globally is moving away from annual exhaustive research projects to a more focussed quick poll and dipstick style of measurement. This links to the technology available to perform these measurements regularly - again a SnapComms built-in feature.

"We believe that, in South Africa, an initial baseline is extremely relevant prior to undertaking dipstick style measurement.

"Our research covers three key aspects of internal communication - are the mechanisms, processes and procedures used for internal communication conducive to achieving recall amongst employees? Are your communication practitioners and leaders equipped to deliver on the communications aspects imperative to their roles? Have leaders the capability to engage in meaningful interactions with staff regard to relaying your information?"