Best practice in Internal Communications

1 best practice inInternalCommunicationsBest practice in Internal Communications 1 There was a time, not so long ago, when internalcommunications or employee engagement if you prefer was regarded as the poor relation of the communicationsdisciplines. Internal Communications essentially comprised theproduction of an employee newsletter in which the CEO of thetime addressed the staff like a sergeant-major with aparticularly dull group of new any longer. Forward-looking companies recognise that investmentin employee engagement is likely to offer substantial pay-back interms of commitment and motivation as well as offering seniormanagement an invaluable source of information on what the realstate of opinion is on the shop, factory or office-floor. That was theclear message from our research and from the subsequent round-tablethat was generously sponsored by BAE the recognition of the importance of Internal communicationsdoes not mean that it is easy to do well.

2 Indeed, dealing with anaudience which is by definition likely to be better-informed than anyother and pretty sceptical is a major challenge for there is one lesson which emerges from this report it is theimportance of listening and well as talking. Internal communicationspractitioners are in a great position to speak truth to power, resultingin management which can plan for the future with a really intimatefeel for the temperature of the one of our interviewees put it: good employee engagement is not an afterthought, a luxury or a way of making everyone feel is a business necessity .Martin Le JeuneDirector, Open RoadMethodologyOpen Road was commissioned by BAE Systems in September 2011 to carry out a research exercise into best practice in internalcommunications among large, multinational companies. The purpose of the research was to build a picture of whatconstitutes best practice among companies of this nature, and to allow BAE Systems to benchmark its Internal communicationspractices against those of its Road interviewed twelve Internal communicationspractitioners, drawn both from corporate functions and businessunit functions, about their company s practices .

3 The areas covered included: the content of Internal Communications ; the channels, Internal brand and evaluation used; Internal Communications structures. Interviews were carried out either face-to-face or by telephonebetween October and November 2011. These were supplementedby a round-table discussion for Internal communicationspractitioners held on 22 November 2011 at BAE Systems offices in central London. The companies that contributed to the research (interviewees in bold) were: AkzoNobel Airbus Babcock Bombardier General Electric Jaguar Land Rover Lockheed Martin Marks & Spencer National Grid Oracle Rolls Royce Tesco Thales Unilever William Hill We are grateful to all these companies for their time and help. Contents01 Introduction02 What is it all about: thesubstance of internalcommunications08 Channels: cutting through the noise16 Keeping the show on the road: how internalcommunications functionsorganise companies communicate with their employeesAny consideration of what organisations communicate to their employees can first benefit from a brief re-examination of why they communicate with their employees at , according to an exhaustive recent report on therationale for Internal Communications put together by DavidMacLeod and Nita Clarke for the UK Government in 20081 many believe the case for workplace engagement has been so clearly made that the task in hand is to just get on with it.

4 Reassuringly, MacLeod and Clarke, based on their study of academicresearch and extensive observation of private and public sectororganisations, found that practice does support theory, identifying a clear correlation between engagement and performance andmost importantly between improving engagement and improvingperformance . This leads them to conclude: if it is how the workforceperforms that determines to a large extent whether companies ororganisations succeed, then whether or not the workforce is positivelyencouraged to perform at its best should be a prime consideration for every leader and manager, and be placed at the heart of business strategy . The reason behind this can be attributed to the idea that, broadlyspeaking, effective Internal Communications improve employeeperformance by helping align employees with company goals. By providing employees with a wider, corporate picture, employeesbetter understand why they are doing what they are doing.

5 In turn,the better a company listens to its employees, the better it can thentailor its message to its audiences, including by playing their ownwords back to them. It is this recognition of Internal communicationsas a conversationrather than one-way traffic that has led some of the companies we observed to rename the practice as employeeengagement . And by acting as the glue that spans countries,functions and departments, and welds an organisation into a singlewhole2, the Internal Communications function also helps achieve aconsistency of voice that builds trust and credibility. All of this helpsfoster employee ownership of the company s goals: the more people feel informed and engaged, the better .Our research has enabled us to build a picture of how close actualinternal Communications practices are to this ideal. What companies choose to communicateAs mentioned above, the core purpose of Internal Communications is toestablish a connection between employees objectives and those of thecompany.

6 Between them, the companies we surveyed seek to do this bycommunicating with employees about two main themes what thecompany wants to achieve and what behaviours or ethos it wantsobserved in doing so. What distinguishes companies from one anotheris the amount of emphasis that they place on each of these the corporate vision and strategyOur interviews led us to two principal conclusions concerning howcompanies communicate what they want to achieve. The first is thatalmost all companies have a corporate vision or mission, or somethingclose to it, or at the very least are working to develop one. Indeed, insome cases, multiple visions and/or missions exist across the differentbusiness functions, which not unexpectedly creates challengesaround duplication and consistency . Where a company does nothave such a vision, it may be that its external brand is so strong a cab driver brand it is not considered necessary for the companyto have a separate, Internal identity: external messages getcommunicated internally.

7 The same rule applies to the existence of company strategies, which are equally practice in Internal Communications 3 What it is all about: thesubstance of internalcommunications From the round-table:Part of the business case for communicating thecompany values is that a correlation exists betweenemployee behaviour and customer behaviour. This is why the advent of social media has changed everything,with companies being forced into a dialogue withcustomers. In turn, the resulting challenge to ensureconsistency of voice through all of this noise meansrecruiting employees to act as advocates carries a greatdeal of importance. 1 Macleod D, Clarke N (2009) Engaging for Success: enhancing performance through employee engagement, Department for Business Innovation and Skills, , Pamela Mounter s chapter on Internal Communicationin Anne Gregory (ed),Public Relations in practice , the Institute of Public Relations (2004)4 What is it all about: the substance of Internal communicationsBest practice in Internal Communications 5 What gets communicatedThe second and more pertinent conclusion is that having a vision or company strategy does not necessarily mean that these are actively communicated to employees.

8 We identified three broadexplanations for this. First, where a particular vision has been in place for some time, the need to communicate this in a concerted way decreases because it is considered to be embedded, most employees would be able to quote or would at least have seen it ; the values have beenaccepted (see below for further information on the communicationof company values); employees know the values statement off byheart . This is not to say that, in such instances, the vision or valuesare no longer communicated indeed, they will continue to featureprominently in all corporate announcements, absorbed in as manycommunications as possible . It is just that the communication ofthem does not appear to be an end in itself any longer: the valuesare not promoted in isolation .Where a particular vision or set of values has more recently beenintroduced, meanwhile, a more active Communications effort one company, the vision and values received a major internallaunch, are referred to in all major Internal announcements, and havea dedicated section on the corporate intranet.

9 Another hasdeveloped and run a Communications plan, deploying all of the majorchannels and including employee recognition schemes, since 2009 to promote its own, new set of second cause of variation is that, among those companies thatpublish a corporate strategy, it is not always necessary to ensure thatthis reaches all employees. Emphasis is instead given to the concept of line of sight, ie: communicating to employees only those parts of a strategy or corporate document that are relevant to them, and in terms that will resonate with them. This approach invokes the 70:20:10 rule that several companies seek to observe in theircommunications with employees. According to this rule, anyannouncement must be 70% of relevance to the individual, 20% to their immediate team, and 10% to their company. At least three of the companies we spoke to take a line of sightapproach to the communication of corporate announcements. One,for instance, cascades its annual report internally, accompanied bysenior management commentary to put it into context.

10 Anotheradmits that some employees on the factory floor would not have a clue or at least piecemeal knowledge about the company vision, with a general rule being that familiarity depends on how close an employee is to the centre .The line of sight does not prevail everywhere, however. Everyemployee at one company we spoke to sees a global storyboard developed to explain the corporate strategy whilst another runs an All Employees Event as part of its Communications plans. At the otherextreme, one company takes no steps whatsoever to communicate itsannual report to employees and its operating framework is onlydistributed on a need to know basis . Another does not currently seek to communicate such documents internally at all. The third and final factor influencing the content of internalcommunications is senior management. Its role is described in furtherdetail below in What gets communicated: the influence of seniormanagement on page relevance to individual20% relevance to immediate team10% relevance to company Values are notpromoted in isolation Familiarity with the company annualreport depends on how close anemployee is to the centre Company objectivesCompany ethos/behaviourVision ormission statementCompany strategyor leadership forumValuesOperatingframeworkContent exists but is not communicatedFrom the round-table:There will always be a question mark over whether the values represent senior management aspiration orthe reality of the corporate culture.