| When we think of employee communication
most organizations focus on information tools. These include intranet sites, staff
magazines, CEO blog, Town Hall meetings and so on. Whilst all these employee communication
methods are to be applauded, they inform employees about what is going on. To truly engage
employees in the process of change, for instance, a merger or acquisition, a
re-organization, financial results or corporate social responsibility, employee
communication methods need to be designed to actively engage employees.
Employee engagement should always result in some positive
change of behavior which will then lead to the achievement of organizational goals.. Just
distributing information by any of the above methods will not achieve the change in
employee behavior and organizational outcomes you are looking for.
Here are 5 tips that will ensure that your employee
communication methods do achieve those outcomes.
1. The first tip is to establish whether the tools and
methods you are currently using to communicate with employees are engagement strategies or
information tools. So gather all the tools used and identify all the methods used, their
frequency, intended audience, whether they are one way or two way communication vehicles
and review the key messages.
2. The second tip is important because your ultimate aim in
employee communication has to be to create the "Aha Moment". The "Aha
Moment" is based on information that challenges the employee's belief about an aspect
of the business. The information that suddenly helps employees say, "Now it makes
sense", "Now I understand", "Now I can do something about it".
Once you know what the "Aha Moment" is this will form your key message and the
basis of your design of your employee communication strategy.
3. This third tip explains the best type of research to
find out what the "Aha Moment" is, and the best type for this purpose is focus
group research. Focus group research allows you to ask employees about your business and
their thoughts on competitors, to identify the largest gap between what customers think
and what staff think customers think, and to identify what would create a paradigm shift
in employee's thinking. It also helps you identify how you will measure the impact of the
change in employees thinking and to determine how significant it is to achieving the
business objectives.
Focus groups are a good format as they allow you to explore
issues further and sometimes you will discover issues or ideas you hadn't considered prior
to the session. Focus groups generally are held for one and a half hours duration and in
groups of 8 – 10 participants. As the facilitator, your role is to lead the
discussion but leave the actual dialogue to the participants, bringing them back to the
main issue if they have gone off on a tangent or to ensure that all the topics that you
wanted to cover within the allocated timeframe are covered. A well facilitated focus group
will identify the key messages for your employee communication strategies as they relate
to a particular business issue.
4. The fourth tip is that once you have your focus group
outcomes, you can then begin designing employee communication strategies that engage
employees. You should have a clear understanding about what employees know and what the
facts are, and the gap between the business facts and staff perceptions. This forms your
key message to create the "Aha Moment".
5. The fifth tip is that you take the key information from
the focus groups, identify a business issue that you feel sure your employee communication
strategies can impact on. By using that information and work together with that area of
the business you then implement an employee communication strategy that can be measured by
business outcomes.
Once you have gathered all this information you then need
to design employee communication strategies that engage employees around the one central
message. Many of these employee communication strategies will actively involve employees
in some aspect of change by designing communication methods that will require employees to
participate. These engagement strategies are then supplemented by employee communication
information tools. |
