Leapfrog Corporate Communications - Aligning internal communication to business needs

Aligning internal communication to business needs

Across the western world, employee communication too often resides at the end of the business process – telling the staff about major decisions, and focusing on internal PR – the corporate ‘good news’ syndrome.

As a consequence, what was until recently the rising star on the corporate agenda has lost its lustre. When a business is focused on ‘shareholder value’, it’s hard to value a function which has a questionable benefit, and often little credibility beyond corporate HQ.

So how can you demonstrate that internal communication does have value? Simple really – use it to cut cost and grow revenues.

When I worked on The Forte Hotel Group’s multi-award-winning ‘Commitment to Excellence’ Programme, we looked at the impact of effective communication on the business’ objectives. We drew up a simple flow where effective communication was a powerful tool for achieving employee satisfaction, which has a direct impact on the top and bottom line of the business. The flow stated:

Employee satisfaction leads to customer satisfaction which leads to shareholder satisfaction.

It all sounded very simple, but the trick was in demonstrating where internal communication fitted in and measuring the impact it had. Sure the ‘hygiene’ factors of location, pay and benefits played a huge role in employee satisfaction, but ‘knowing what the company wants of me, and what I can do to make it grow’ was judged by staff in 250 locations around the world as key to them remaining and developing with Forte.

Commitment to Excellence was all about involvement. It was a process worked throughout the organisation that embedded behaviours among staff that would drive customer satisfaction. One of the key behaviours was open and honest two-way communication. Consequently, communication became an integral part of the process and was established as a prime enabler for change at the outset of the programme.

If Forte’s staff knew what was expected of them in the context of the parent company, brand and hotel’s business goals AND they had the opportunity to shape the development of their goals, their satisfaction levels rocketed.

It changed the way the organisation communicated. Supported by a new and energetic CEO, communication became more personal and more focused. There was time for communication built in at all levels through the organisation. But most important, good ideas were acted on, shared and rewarded. Consequently, internal communication became a direct tool for business change.

Over the two-year course of the programme, customer satisfaction scores rose and equally importantly, staff retention was improved by 20 per cent – an enormous cost saving in an industry notorious for high staff turnover.

One of the key changes was fewer mechanisms for communication, more central coaching of line management but also far greater local communication ownership and brand and hotel level.

At mechanism level, three separate brand magazines were rolled into one corporate one – but local hotels were encouraged to set up appropriate channels for their own staff. A twice-yearly face to face cascade set the tone and content of the business agenda, and this was driven on a daily basis by the global intranet and e-mail communication updates.

Essentially, the emphasis moved from corporate PR to knowledge-sharing as the business as a whole sought to gain a competitive edge from a customer-centred approach.

For a while the process of communication worked well. Senior management were actively leading it and role-modelling the right behaviour. However I learned a lot when the economic climate changed.

Almost overnight Commitment to Excellence’s impetus was lost as the Granada (parent company) Board – one step removed from the programme – decided that Forte wasn’t contributing sufficient revenue and that all focus should be on sales. Quality and putting the customer first went out the window as the company embarked on a price war. Costs were slashed to the bone and effective communication went out the window.

A year later, the group was broken up and sold off. It was a huge opportunity lost.

However, I took two lessons from the experience. First, ensure your communication goals tally with the business goals of the organisation; that they share the same success criteria and that you have tangible measures to demonstrate their effect. Second, focus your communication on the business needs of those in your business. Forte lost that when it focused on sales and saw employee communication only as a cost to be avoided.

I’m currently putting the lessons learned into practice working with a client to refine its internal communications output. Feedback from a recent audit suggested that the audiences were satisfied with the overall amount of internal communication, its style and tone and felt the current tools made them feel part of one ‘team’ – despite being functionally and geographically diverse.

However, they asked for specifics – more explanation of corporate strategy as it related to them; more competitor information and more best practice to apply in their own markets. Equally, the audit showed they had enough – or more than enough – success stories, information about the business in the external media and the ‘parish pump’ people stories. There was a call for greater interactivity - but only if it was directly related to driving revenues.

The feedback reflects the changing need for information within organisations today. With leaner organisations and growing workloads, people have less time than ever in their working lives to receive, process and act on information generated from outside their immediate business sphere. They’re happy to be involved in a well-worked-out process – but only if it is seen to boost the top and bottom line.

Thus the role of the internal communicator is changing too. It’s about discovering what knowledge employees need to do their jobs better and providing the context around that so employees can make sense of a swiftly changing business world.

Allied to that is work with line management to embed the right culture throughout the business, enabling employees at all levels to feel confident about being involved and making their voice heard in driving the organisation forward.

There’s no room for passengers in business today and the last people who can afford to be passengers are the internal communicators.