Many organizations are waking up to the fact that internal communications is not only equally as important as external, but that it is as much a core competency of successful organizations as financial or inventory management.
Increasingly, to ensure consistent messaging inside and outside the organization, corporate communications has been put in charge of internal communications. But until recently the research and evaluation budgets for internal communications have not seen the same level of priority.
The good news is that there are companies out there now, like Polite Mail, that are compiling data into hugely useful benchmark reports based on the millions of emails their clients send out.
The other good news is that some very smart people are doing some excellent research into what works and doesn’t work in internal communications. Here are some tidbits from IPRRC 2020:
1. If you want employee support during times of change, be more transparent.
In an exhaustive study of 1034 employees of companies who had gone through company-wide change within the past two years, researchers found that transparency was key to getting employee buy-in to change and reducing the fear and uncertainty that change frequently engenders. The study, conducted by Linjuan Rita Men and Cen April Yue of the University of Florida, Marlene S. Neill of Baylor University, and Aniisu K. Verghese of Sabre Corporation, examined the impact of different types of communications and the effectiveness of different channels on employees’ feelings about organizational change. See “Enhancing Employee Commitment to Uncertainty Reduction: The Role of Channel Selection and Communication Transparency.”
Their findings show that the style of communication is far more important than the channels themselves. When organizations practiced “transparent communications” by providing relevant change-related information in a timely, accurate, objective, substantial, and complete manner, employees better understood the change process and were ultimately more committed to it. These transparent efforts included two-way communications in which employees’ opinions and feedback were solicited throughout the process: “When employees are not only informed but can see the downsides of change and how benefits may outweigh risk, it conveys management confidence and builds trust which leads to commitment to change.”
Not surprisingly, when companies used interpersonal channels, e.g., one-on-one meetings and town halls, uncertainty was reduced. But the authors found those channels were better suited for clarifying questions, explaining complex information, combating rumors, and soliciting feedback. And, in today’s world, that may not be an option. In a 2018 paper, Marlene S. Neill recommends video. She found video to be “very powerful because it can help convey tone and passion… in such a way where the leadership voice is very crisp and clear.”
The counter-intuitive finding was that when companies used mass media (e.g., company-wide email, video, and intranets) to reach a large employee population, it also helped build trust because of the transparency and consistency of the messages.
Ultimately, the authors concluded that communication quality matters more than the channel. They suggest using a variety of channels, but tailoring the types of communication to the appropriate channel.
2. If you want to keep your diverse talent base happy, be more transparent.
The importance of transparency in internal communications was also highlighted in a paper by Yeunjae Lee, Queenie Jo-YunLi, and Wan-Hsiu Sunny Tsai of the University of Miami that studied its impact on perceived discrimination in the workplace. See “Workplace Discrimination, Organizational Justice, and Employee-Organization Relationship: The Role of Internal Communication.” The authors measured the health of employee relationships among a sample of 453 racial minority employees in the US. They found that transparency was closely correlated with perceived organizational justice and negatively correlated with perceptions of the company as a dissimilatory workplace. As a result when an employee sees what he/she believes to be transparent communication they are more likely to express trust, satisfaction, and commitment to the organization.
3. The rules of social capital apply to corporations as much as to society.
Julie O’Neil of Texas Christian University and Michele Ewing of Kent State University used social capital theory to explore how internal communications professionals build and measure intangible contributions that strengthen relationships and create social capital. (Social capital is an organization’s ability to create, maintain, and use relationships to achieve desirable goals.) To that end they interviewed 27 experienced internal communications professionals and thought leaders to identify how they believed internal communications contributed to organizational strength. See “Listening, Measuring and Evaluating to Identify Intangible Contributions of Internal Communication.”
The most interesting aspect of the research was how they measured employee engagement. Not through clicks on the Intranet, but rather with increased confidence in the company’s direction, strategy, and leadership, and whether employees are growing, and feel enabled, empowered, and motivated to innovate. The goals which those metrics were used to measure were things like “contribution to company culture, building community, creating collaboration and connection, and encouraging employees to share their voice.”
Respondents reported that their strategies to get great results were a combination of fairly traditional human behaviors (like treating employees as people and listening to them), as well as strategies not normally found in corporate communications (such as “fostering communities of purpose, providing opportunities for employees to be involved, creating experiences around organizational values, and helping employees enjoy their jobs”). Bottom line, internal communications has the ability to build social capital for an organization that will result in better relationships all around. ∞
