Shorts is our new series of quick articles packed with fresh thinking.
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Delivering internal communications
Developing your internal comms strategy is tricky, certainly. But it's in delivering it that the challenge really starts.
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Make sure you integrate your internal and external communication – start by demolishing the barriers between HR, marketing and corporate comms
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Stay with it: you’ll lose more than you’ve gained if your early enthusiasm peters out
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Favour bottom up: give your frontline staff the space and time to talk to you on their terms
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Avoid mixed messages: make sure your senior team are all committed to the same corporate story
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Internal communication is not the job of the IC department; it’s everyone’s job and it’s IC’s job to help everyone do it well
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Continuous communication
One to the toughest challenges of internal communication is keeping in touch when there is not a lot to say – yet keep in touch you must:
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It’s during times of ‘business as usual’ that organisations become complacent about comms and employees become disengaged because things are a bit routine
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If you communicate all the time, bad news won’t come as a shock; it will come as part of the continuing story
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If you don’t tell the story, the rumour mill will fill the void and the story told may confuse or demotivate
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You have to nurture your relationships; communication gives employees a real emotional connection with their work
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Empowering the frontline
Faced with a particular business challenge, organisations typically adopt a bunker mentality, exemplified by lots of extra meetings for the top team. Why not take a bottom up approach and present the challenge to your frontline team:
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Engaging speaking
Trapped as a delegate at a conference, you are at the mercy of the speakers’ ability to engage as they inform. Those that achieve both do so for some very good, simple reasons:
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- They have rehearsed so much that they speak as though off the cuff. They barely look at their notes, they don’t rely on powerpoint as a prompt
- They involve and challenge the audience. They seek the audience’s views; they want to recruit the audience to their ‘cause’
- They put no barriers between themselves and the audience, no lectern, no top-table. Instead they stand (still) with the audience
- They do not tell the audience what they already know; they break new ground
- They tell stories that engage listeners at a personal level to build empathy
- They talk English, not jargon. They avoid cliché.
- They don’t overrun, stealing time they have not been allotted
- They leave the audience with a thought-provoking idea that sows the seed of change in belief or behaviour
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