Keep your customers close... and your employees closer
07 Jan 10 - Marketing
While organisations focus on communicating and building relationships with their customers, communication with employees often goes overlooked.
Internal communications is rarely given the presence it deserves within business activities and internal communication specialist iC Director Lisa Evans advises ignoring this opportunity at your peril: "Staff are one, if not the most important asset an organisation possesses and keeping them informed, motivated and engaged should be a key priority. It’s crucial that you create a community and not just a workforce, where employees actively become part of the culture and embody the brand."
The building of a “community” culture can bring significant rewards. It will provide a better working environment which is conducive to building high morale levels and loyalty, thus achieving high employee retention. Furthermore, an understanding of the company objectives can result in an increased commitment by the workforce to achieve goals, which can in turn positively affect growth and profit levels.
There are many tactics that can be deployed to communicate with your workforce from the traditional newsletters, e-bulletins, meetings and intranet sites to teambuilding days, comment boxes and staff award ceremonies, to the more contemporary “Ask the boss” sessions, forums, blogs and even job swaps.
In deciding on the appropriate communication tool you must consider your workforce – you may have some members of staff who are not as technology savvy and prefer a newsletter or face to face interaction or you may have team members who rarely operate from the office and would benefit from an e-bulletin or forum site to participate in discussions.
Lisa Evans comments: "Whatever the tactic, you simply need to offer a mechanism where staff can express their ideas and engage with colleagues. Provide this and you have the potential to create an enviable internal culture, where employees can become brand ambassadors."