Internal communications - it's not rocket science

Return on investment - worth the effort?

There have been a few discussions recently on the ROI issue on a number of fora.  

Sadly a few have generated more heat than light so I decided not to join in, but I did want to make a couple of points...which is why I have my own blog!

As a management discipline, communications should always act with data.  I hope the days are long gone when the gut feel from hoary old hacks was considered to be a useful guide to action or an excuse for evaluation.

If you accept the need for data you then hit another problem.

What is an acceptable level of data for communications?

This is a problem which has exercised better minds than mine and I would praise the work of Angela Sinikas for anyone who wants to explore the subject further. And some of the work of Kathryn Yates at Towers Watson demonstrates the potential value of research into this area.

The central question is how to evaluate the impact of communications inputs in bringing about change.  When behaviours at work are the product of many different forces, how do you reach a reliable or unequivocal assessment of the value of communications.

Angela has produced some very interesting case studies.  She does tend towards accentuating tracking very specific behaviours - because you can isolate where behavuoural change has happened and hopefully isolate a limited number of potential drivers.  The Towers Watson models operate on a more grand scale and are equally interesting.

Now, the methodologies of all practitioners are open to question and should be challenged. Only through challenge and debate do we move forward.

But because I might disagree (or in my case simply not understand) with the methodologies, do I think the endeavor is worthless?

Of course not.

It is my personal experience that the most effective communicators come to conversations with data.  The stars of our profession are excited by what they can learn from the data that is available (check out Charlie Nordblum's Communicative Leadership group on Linked-in to hear what they are talking about).

It is therefore my prejudice that the mark of a potential leader in our profession is an interest in data and a willingness to explore issues like ROI.  I don't know the answers but I do believe that they are worth worrying about.

 

Sponsorship and internal communications

The World Cup wall planner has gone up in the office and I found an old England flag stuffed in the back of a cupboard, so that's hanging off the side of the TV by Neville's desk.  Given that England could well get through the first round we're in for at least three weeks of me pretending I know what I'm talking about when it comes to football.

However, sport seems to be coming up more and more in my working life.  I'm working on a project for one of the Premiership rugby clubs and yesterday I had a really fascinating conversation with the guys at Essentially - Bell Pottinger's sister Sports marketing business.

This isn't a lame attempt to plug a sister business; I do have a point to make.

My colleague wanted to talk about how little internal exploitation takes place of many sponsorships.  Companies seem to be really good he said, at wringing every last drop of value from sponsoring sports or arts events, but often the internal dimension was largely forgotten or only minimally explored.

He said that often even employee allocations of tickets for events don't get taken up.

Which is real shame as I do believe that one of the key roles of internal communications is to bring people together and make them feel part of a community.  Getting involved with a sponsorship is a perfect way to connect people.

I'm not suggesting that we should get better at dishing out tickets for the opera or the Super bowl.   I do mean that a partnership with an arts body or a sport creates an opportunity to get staff out there talking about their organisation and sharing the values with the wider world.

For example McDonalds in the UK makes excellent use of its association with footbal - they help crew members qualify as coaches and run a national inter-restaurant tournament.

Or it is great excuse for getting people talking about your brand values - O2 ran an amazing party of their staff a couple of years ago when they took on the rebranding of the Dome.

However, I think there is a small problem facing IC people.  We rarely get access to the sorts of budgets that our marketing colleagues are used to playing with.  I suspect that we sometimes don't find it easy to get really carried away with the possibilities.

I'm certainly going to look some more at this area - I think there's real potential here for communicators to push the boundaries.

Liam

Bell Pottinger Change and Internal communication

What about the workers?

I get the impression that industrial disputes seem to be on the rise – or maybe I’ve been reading the Daily Mail a bit too much. And I get the feeling that IC people are being asked to think about industrial relations issues more than they have needed to for some time. 

In case anyone is interested, here are a few operating principles which I hope are useful in the event of industrial unrest blowing up. 

1) Remember to communicate – when things go wrong the pressure is on to deal only with representatives or the union which is fine as long as other channels are kept open. Not everyone wants to hear from the union and not everyone is in dispute. However reach is more important than volume. 

2) Get decent intelligence – the level of management speculation can be incredible when a dispute blows up. The role of IC should be to challenge or test rumours that are reported as fact in crisis meetings and to supply your own reliable information. Good IC practitioners have their own channels and sources and now is a time to use them. 

3) Think laterally about the channels you can use – that means looking at new media like twitter or Facebook as ways of putting factual information into the hands of people who are not coming on site and so are not looking at your intranet or your notice boards. Waiting until things kick off is probably too late; start planning now. 

4) Look for the upside – there is a danger that communications to workers in dispute can be quite hard-edged and only serve to solidify attitudes. In the messaging look for conciliatory themes or ways in which people can make good lost wages. 

5) Be strategic – remind yourself what your organisation is trying to achieve and keep it in mind. Too often communications can be driven by the tactical; how do we get this letter out, what is the best way of publishing that poster. If you keep returning to the questions that matter you won’t go far wrong – how do we get people back to work? How do we mend bridges so people return to being engaged as quickly as possible? How do we stop this happening again? 

It is also worth learning a bit in advance about the legal framework and agreements that apply to your situation. Hope it helps. 

Liam 

Liam FitzPatrick Bell Pottinger Working Communications Communications during strikes Internal communication and industrial disputes Trade unions

Intelligence-led Internal Communication

In the last couple of weeks research has kept coming up as a topic of conversation.

That’s partly because I ran a class for the CIPR Diploma on evaluation and another for the Post Graduate Diploma in Public Communications at Leeds Trinity on internal communications.  And it came up as a significant issue in a simple audit I’ve just finished.

And best of all, I’m feeling less and less like a mild obsessive sitting in the corner that no one listens to.

My thinking is quite simple – possibly simplistic.  If an internal comms person wants to get the attention of people who make the decisions that affects them then there are two possible sources of influence – control of resource and specialist knowledge.

The former has a number of weaknesses as a strategy for gaining influence.  Most strikingly, it can easily lead to the IC function making a pitch as the experts at posting stuff on the web and sending out emails.  You might be the only people who can do it,  but you risk finding it’s the only thing you’re allowed to do.

But if you own information that no one else has it’s a different proposition.  In my experience people who know stuff get listened to.

However, more importantly is the role that good quality intelligence should take in shaping messaging, defining segmentations, choosing channels and measuring impact.  I’ve long been staggered at the number of comms programmes that are launched on the basis of nothing more than the gut feel of a couple of people. 

And how many communicators recognise the situation when a carefully considered strategy is derailed because a senior manager has been getting some ‘negative feedback’ which turns out to be a bit of gossip overheard in the car park?

I think though that I’m noticing a difference. 

A few years ago when I banged on about this stuff I either got balnk looks from communicators or was told that it was all too difficult.  Now the conversation seems to have moved on to ‘yes I know I should be doing it but...’ or debate about some of the finer points of techniques.

And at least one Government Department has a carefully developed internal segmentation model – which makes my heart very glad (in a deeply geeky way).

So has the day of Intelligence-led IC finally arrived?

Liam

 

Liam FitzPatrick

Bell Pottinger

Internal Communications

Change communications

Employee survey

Employee research

Finding the cause for pride

I've mentioned that we've been doing some research into what makes people publicly praise or attack their employers.  It's been prompted by a recent spate of postings that I've noticed of people using Facebook or other channels to talk about the organisations they work for.

And the reaction of employers has been making the news.  For example British Airways recent took action against a couple of staff said to have been intimidating colleagues on-line.

What the research seems to be suggesting is that employees are most likely to be supportive when they feel that their organisation is doing some good in the world.  That could be because of a great CSR programme, a brilliant product or service or even excellent performance.

The crucial thing seems to be having some cause of pride, somewhere.

A Google search of "I'm proud of my job" yields 310 results. Whilst there are 692 hits on "I hate my job" and according to Google Insights, searches for haters had significant peaks in January and April 2009 and April 2004.  The sudden peaking would suggest that external events are also a significant trigger in making people feel bad at work.

My colleague Nicholine Hayward tells me that people tend to search "Employment Rights" mostly during very cold snaps or very hot spells.

And what seems significant is that Google searches for "Doing Good" (and derivatives thereof) seem to be rising consistently.

My working hypothesis is that we live in a world where people want to make a difference. Give your staff a cause they can believe in and you're on route to workplace harmony....

Liam

Do you say you work FOR someone or AT somewhere?

The proliferation of new media means that more and more people are willing to talk about their jobs in public.  And how they say it can be quite enlightening if you work FOR someone, you seem more likely to say positive things than is you simply work AT somewhere.

In conversation with Nicholine Hayward we started Googling the phrases “I work at Mcdonalds” and “I work for Mcdonalds” and got some surprising results.

According to Google, 306,000 people have posted messages saying that they work AT McDonalds compared with only 104 people who work FOR the company.

And when you ask the same question of other companies you’ll find that 28 people work AT O2, but 165 work FOR O2.  97 people work FOR BP, 40 people work at BP.

Without conducting a major analysis there seems to be a qualitative difference in the attitudes of AT people and FOR people.  AT people seem to be more negative and likely to tell stories about the stupidity of customers or managers.  FOR people are more mixed but are more willing to provide advice to customers or attempt to explain company policy on internet fora or on Facebook.

In the case of Vodafone, there is clearly a culture of providing helpful advice to customers – an approach which must impress customers.  In fact employee advocacy seems to be breaking out all over – postal workers are explaining how to get the best from the Royal Mail, Tax officers are helping teenagers pay the right tax and BMW mechanics are helping aviation enthusiasts track down rare books.

As a simple exercise a quick Google audit will tell you a great deal about the state of internal communications and workplace engagement.  Describing yourself as working FOR implies some level of involvement in the mission of your employer.  Staff who are uncommitted seem to prefer to see their job as a place of employment and little more.

And having your staff voluntarily speak up for you could be the new acid test of your reputation.  If the holy grail of customer satisfaction is getting customers to recommend your product to their friends, maybe the perfect communications programme results in your people going out of their way to out themselves as working for you.

Liam 

Liam FitzPatrick

How much privacy can we expect at work?

This story about a US court case leapt out at me.  There's a debate about the rights of employers to see communications sent by employees on company networks - either SMS or emails.

I'm interested because I've been taking a look recently with my colleague Nicholine Hayward at how people describe their employers on-line.  And despite most organisations having  clear policies about what you can and can't say in public on the web there's an awful lot of it around.  And not all of it is nice.

Even though broadband penetration is quite widespread I assume that quite a bit of this stuff is posted from work.  It seems that people assume that what they say is private and not going to come back on them.

I'm sure that HR departments don't see it that way.  Whilst most employees would accept that they could be disciplined for sharing porn at work or posting to hate sites, they would probably be aghast if HR took exception to someone writing "I work at XYZ co and I can confirm that customer service isn't a priority here..."

It's an interesting test of the quality of employee relations to see what people are saying online about their employers.  But I wonder how many organisations will go down the enforcement route - penalising people who speak out - rather than working to create a climate where people feel excited enough about their employers that if they do go on-line it is to enhance rather than undermine reputation.

Liam

Stop communicating strategy... communicate personalities

Thanks to Human Resources magazine for two cracking articles this month.  One examines the proliferation of awareness days and the other breaks the shocking news that bosses are poor at explaining strategy.

With regard to the latter my take has always been that the missing link isn't the ineptitude, stupidity or mendacity of middle managers that gets in the way.  It's quite simple really - it's the fact that few people understand what the strategy means in practical terms.

My belief is that most people just don't get strategy - no matter how much we like to think we do.  For the vast majority of workers a strategy is just a big 'to do' list - tell me how it affects my job on Monday morning and I'll get it.  If you can't translate the CFROI and EBITDA targets into sensible tasks that I can do, well you're just wasting your time.

But I have another theory.  And it's this... people don't actually want to sit down and have a chance to debate the strategy team's well argued business case and scenario analysis.  In fact very few people even understand it at all.  

What they do want is a chance to speak to the leaders responsible for driving the business so that they can make a judgement about whether they think the boss has his or her head screwed on properly.  They want to look the boss in the eye and decide if they seem the sort of person who knows what they are doing.

So my suggestion for communicating strategy?  Stop it and get on with introducing the boss to their people and concentrate on explaining what people have to do next week.

Of course you have to paint a vision and describe the journey.  But I think you'll get there a lot faster if you work on the authentic human components... and a bit less on the carefully argued powerpoints

Liam

Communications planning - audiences

As part of my series of postings about internal communication strategy I realised that I hadn’t done one on audiences and segmentation.  So…I’ll try to remedy that here with some notes from a recent programme that I ran and it borrows in a few places from some work I did with Sue Dewhurst a couple of years ago.

No one would dream of communicating without understanding their audiences.  As part of the planning process you should always think about who you are talking to because:

·      we need different things from different segments – you can’t afford wasting energy convinicing people who only need to be aware and you can’t risk just sending an email to the very people who’se commuttment and support you need.

·      we spend our lives ignoring the noise at work – so a communicators has to understand enough about individual audiences to work out how to grab their attention or what channels will reach them

·      people don’t wander around in a state of blissful ignorance until we communicate with them.  They will react to our commuications according to their personal experience, natuarl prejudices or whatever else is going on in their world.  If you don’t reflect this in your messagingor channels you are doomed to a lot of wasted energy.

 

There are two essential areas to think about:

·      Audience demographics

·      Segmentation.

It is inconceivable that a good internal communicator does not understand the complexity of the workforce in their organisation.  At its most basic, you can’t produce an interesting newsletter if you don’t understand what different people want to hear.  And if you’re trying to build employee commitment and loyalty, you need to understand how motivations vary in different groups of employees

 

Demographics

 

At its most basic an internal communicator should know some key things about their audiences.  For a start we should be able to say:

·      Where they are

·      What they do

·      What languages they speak

·      What channels reach them

·      What is their recent history.

A simple map of their organisation should sit on the wall of every internal communicator.  As well as illustrating the fundamentals above, it will include other facts which reflect the character and issues in the operation.  A charity may differentiate between employees and volunteers, a police force may list the split between enrolled officers and civilian support staff. 

The key thing is to have at your fingertips a simple guide to the main segments within the workforce.

The Demographics Log book

Every good internal communication manager knows their audiences.  Below is an example of a page from a simple log for a manufacturing company’s distribution centre.  It may not exactly match what appears on the HR database, but it provides enough to tell the IC manager how to reach some key people.

 

Download Demographic log book

 

Segmentation – why bother?

As well as understanding where your audience are and all about their communications habits you need to know about their likely reaction to communication and what outcome you need from them.

You need to know this information because it will influence their communications behaviour, the messages to which they will respond and the channels you choose to reach them.

In fact, it is the vital responsibility of the internal communicator to understand the different perspectives that exist within the organisation.  It is certainly not unknown for major decisions to be reversed when the communicators point out potential reactions which were not previously anticipated.

When? 

The process of audience segmentation takes place in two main ways; as part of the annual planning round and as a step in the development of plans for specific initiatives.

When looking at the annual plan, the internal communications manager has to anticipate what events or activities will require support.  Some of these will be regular items, like the results announcements, the publication of the annual review or calendar events such as Christmas or the summer staff barbecue. 

Often little fresh thought is given to the needs of different internal groups.  Year in and year out, the same (or similar) tactics will be used and very little attention is given to anything apart from basic logistics.  This may or may not matter greatly; however, a base line picture of the organisation is needed.

However, deciding how to define employee segments is not an obvious task in itself.  There are a large number of ways of doing it – the challenge for the professional is to decide which approach to apply in any given situation.

How?  Different ways of segmenting your audience. 

•  Organisational Geography

The first and most common strategy for segmentation is usually to reflect existing organisational structures and topography.  Most communicators will naturally be able to tell you how many people work at different sites or provide a break-down from different divisions and functions.

In fact, wherever there is a defined organisational distinction, internal communicators will be encouraged to use it as a model for segmentation.  Hourly paid vs. salaried staff, membership of a share scheme or unionised and non-unionised staff are commonly used as ways of identifying different audiences in workplaces.

Following the existing organisational boundaries makes much sense for internal communications.  Many employees are happy with the identity which comes from being a member of a particular division or skill group and are grateful of communications tailored to their location or pay grade.

And such an approach typically is immediately more efficient.  The informal, and often voluntary, networks of friends and helpers on which all internal communicators rely will be organised along these lines.  For example, where an organisation is structured around locations, the network will naturally also have a geographic logic with key contacts responsible for individual sites.

The drawback is that the network has a natural reluctance to consider alternative approaches to segmentation.  If contacts are arranged around operating divisions, considerable effort is needed to get the network to think about messages that need to be differentiated in another way.  Asking your key advisor for the Paris office to communicate a message only to marketing people or to staff nearing retirement is often less satisfactory than if you had a more direct way of reaching those audiences.

A further constraint is that closely following organisational boundaries can introduce gatekeepers who may not always be helpful.  For example, the Head of Marketing may insist that any communication that is sent to her staff is cleared with her first – regardless of the relevance of her permission.  Many internal communicators have experience of dealing with the site manager who has strong ideas about the value of a CEO’s town hall or how it should be organised. 

Notional ‘ownership’ of a segment of the population is often seen to confer the right to modify, delay or even block messages even when there is no reason to do so.

Finally, the biggest difficulty is that whatever structure you choose, it assumes that the groupings within it are otherwise homogenous as well.  If all your communications are organised around location, how well will it meet the differing needs of accountants, researchers or marketers who happen to work at the same place?  Just because you are a member of a particular group it doesn’t mean that you are identical in every respect to every other member of that group.

• Communications Behaviour  

The next most common segmentation strategy is to define people in terms of their access to different media or channels of communication.

Every internal communicator today will have a fair idea which of their people have access to email and who needs a paper communication.  They can usually tell you who can reach the intranet and who can not.

However, segmentation by means of communication behaviour often goes much further – and often without any deliberate design.

Every internal communicator knows of times when a key piece of information was only provided through a particular channel – such as the intranet – meaning that only people who looked at the intranet would receive it.  This approach is to be avoided for anything which is likely to be controversial – if people think you’ve tried to make an announcement by the back door it will seriously undermine any hope you have of being seen as proactive or candid in your communications.

Yet there are times when discussing issues only with the users of one channel or another make sense.  You may actually decide that you only want to debate a specific topic with people who are interested enough to attend a meeting on the subject or you would prefer to test initial reactions to something with the small group of people who use a particular forum on the internet.

Interestingly, marketers often say that adventurous or innovative consumers are marked by their exposure to multiple media.  Apparently, people who watch more television, read more magazines and spend more time on the Web are more likely to experiment with new products.  There may be some lessons here for the internal communicator!

•  Outcome

Perhaps one of the most important ways of looking at your audiences is to consider what outcome is required from communication.

Some people may need simply to be informed about an issue whilst you might want others to be actively involved in debating it and reaching conclusions.

Bill Quirke has written extensively on this subject and his books Communicating Corporate Change and Making the connections contain some of the best guidance. 

In broad terms his point is that when considering communications for a new project or initiative, the question should be asked about who needs to do what to assure the success of the project.  Communication activity can then be focused on securing the outcome needed for each segment.

Consider, as an example, a project to introduce a new appraisal system.  At its inception, the project will need to directly involve those managers who can authorise any change.  Communications will probably be very personalised, perhaps involving detailed briefings and inevitability significant changes to the plan in order to accommodate their wishes. 

Once the new system is designed, it will need to be introduced to line managers – the people responsible for implementing it.  Although they lack the authority to reject the system, they certainly have the power to resist its introduction and success will depend on their wholehearted compliance.  As a result, communication will probably involve very careful explanation and training.  Perhaps, there will be scope for some change to the plan in response to their reactions.

Finally, for staff who need to be aware of the new system, communication will probably concentrate on explaining the process and timings.

Applying this approach is one of the strongest tools in the internal communicator’s armoury.  Many projects or change programmes undergo quite detailed design before the communicators are involved.  Yet often, only by asking questions about the specific outcomes, do flaws become apparent.

Shel Holtz in his book Corporate Conversations also looks at this issue in a very helpful way and is well worth reading for a highly practical approach.

•  Disposition

Increasingly Internal Communicators are becoming interested in how they can segment their audiences by attitude.  Being able to target one message at people with a positive outlook and another to colleagues with, say, a more cautious disposition is clearly going to be very useful.

Such a model is enormously attractive when one considers the problem of an individual who feels very differently about an issue to those around him or her.  If your peers or manager hold views about an issue with which you disagree, you are bound to want communications that help you make up your own mind – a communication targeted at your information needs.

Writing in his book, The Employer Brand, Richard Mosely reports work done by researchers TNS into employee attitudes at work.  He explains that they have created a simple model which defines ordinary employees in terms of their commitment to their employer cross referenced with their commitment to their career.  This model divides the world into Ambassadors, Career Orientated, Company Oriented or Ambivalents.

Mosely talks about UK retailer Tesco’s project to use data to model employee’s attitudes to career development, reward and work in general.

The Buy-In Benchmark

 

One popular model is the Buy-In Benchmark which I believe was developed and used by the Enterprise IG Brand Engagement practice in London to assess levels of employee engagement.

 

The benefit of this approach is that it measures emotional buy-in as well as intellectual understanding. This allows you to fine tune your communication or change programme more effectively.  A bystander may understand the company's strategy but doesn't give a damn about implementing it. Whereas a loose cannon can be highly engaged, but ignorant about where they should be applying their enthusiasm. These two types will need a different kind of mentoring to become champions who are intellectually and emotionally engaged.

 

Enterprise IG have benchmarked a range of companies around Europe and are therefore able to compare the results against a quantifiable mean.

Use your data

Whilst TNS use a simple two dimensional model, more advanced statistical techniques can generate even deeper insights into the real attitudes of your people.  Using techniques that owe much to political polling, Robert Berrier of US specialists Berrier Associates develops factor-based models for clients. 

This approach involves taking survey data and exploring the underlying connections between staff attitudes and how they cluster together.  Importantly, this approach does not require a pre-determined model – by interrogating the data for each company separately it comes up with the factors that matter most the organisation under examination.

The Outcome (see case study here) is a model which explains what messages will interest people and insights into how to engage them, particularly at times of change. 

Apart from the value which dispositional segmentation provides to crafting messages, it also helps the internal communicator fulfil one of their most important roles – that of organisational sense-talker.  When senior colleagues are advocating decisions or communication, having an alternative map of attitudes helps enormously to test the wisdom of the proposal under consideration.  By stepping away from normal organisational boundaries, and the political issues they bring, the dispositional approach allows an alternative perspective to be aired.

Do it often

Whatever approaches you choose, it is important to stand back occasionally and check that your final model still makes sense and is complete.

It’s sometimes easy to lose sight of the role which segmentation plays in delivering overall business strategy.  Creating an over-elaborate model can mean that the level of complexity in the system actually gets in the way of simply delivering communications.

Yet at the same time, working exhaustively through a list of potential groups is valuable to establish whether there are new insights that can be gained or audience groups that are being missed off.

 

Liam

 

 

Making the message persuasive

I’ve been working up some lengthy notes for a workshop on messaging and I thought I’d share them here as well.  I’d be really interested on your views of the notes and if you can't bear to read them on screen drop me a mail and we'll send you a word version.

Why does it all matter?

The central abiding challenges of strategic internal communication is understanding how we influence behaviour in the workplace.  The aim of great internal communication is to get people to act in the ways that the organisation needs them to do in order to support its core objectives.

That can be as simple as delivering the right customer experience or being a productive member of the workplace community.  Or it can demand that employees act as external advocates or embrace fundamental change. I blathered on about this here.

Whatever behaviour you need, your success depends on people being persuaded that the actions you are proposing are the right ones.

Some people might argue that compliance is not dependent on consent.  There is still a school of thought that believes that it is possible to command employees to follow certain procedures and practices.  And it is undoubtedly true that the fear of dismissal, reprimand or punishment will shape some behaviours on the job.  Safety or security rules are commonly enforced without any attempt to explain why they must be obeyed.

However, increasingly there is evidence that without persuasion, compliance to enforced behaviours is temporary or weak.  Studies into discretionary behaviour highlight that employees will only observe minimum standards and will do as little as they need to avoid trouble.  The real value comes when people at work see the point of doing something and are ready to invest effort above what is demanded of them.

Recent studies by consultants such as Blessing White have continued to promote this view and are well worth reading if you want to catch up on engagement.

What do we mean by ‘messaging’?

When we talk about messages in employee communication I find that people very quickly start confusing what and how.

Here I am mainly focused on the idea that a message is a shared meaning or concept.  I am not discussing the significant issue of who a message is crafted.

Anyone who has worked in communication will have experienced what I call the ‘challenging’ debate.  I’ve called it that after a particularly maddening three-week long discussion I had with a colleague once about whether the CEO’s speech should refer to the coming year as being ‘challenging’ or ‘tough’.  To this day I don’t understand the nice point that my colleague was trying to address but I do remember Russell Grossman saying “the messages you craft the most, you use the least” – in other words don’t get hung up about the words until you’ve got the central idea down.

Which isn’t to say that the how doesn’t influence the what.  Obviously sending out redundancy notices by SMS message will undermine your messages about caring and concern for departing employees.  But if your channel or media is decided before the message you may be putting the cart before the horse.

Trees falling in the forest

Essentially communication is a social process.  If there is no one to share a meaning with all you are doing is shouting.

As a result it simply isn’t possible to consider a message without considering the audience.

I know that could seem to be a banal point but I am afraid that my experience of many workplaces is that communications all too often seem to be despatched with scant regard for the reaction of the recipients.  In fact, communication is commonly said to have happened when an intranet story is posted or an email sent.  The fact that no one read them or understood what they said doesn’t seem to bother some people. 

The truth is that one of the key skills of the communicator is to understand how a particular concept can be shared with an audience group.  Through experience or analysis we should be able to show other professionals how persuasion works in their workplace and explain how they’ll always get superior results when they try to convince people rather than just shouting at them.

Central to this is the communicator’s need to understand audiences.  If we don’t have a reliable and current insight into what our colleagues think, believe and understand we can not advise our fellow managers.  If our insights lack analysis and objectivity we are not likely to add significant value.

The theory bit

There is a considerable body of theory around the issue of how people are persuaded to act in one way or another.  It’s a field that has fascinated academics and practitioners from many different disciplines including psychologists, political scientists, marketers and almost anyone who has ever had to mount a campaign of one sort or another.

The literature on the subject of persuasion is full of attempts to address questions such as why people continue to smoke tobacco in the face of overwhelming evidence of the harm it causes or why so many people are willing to deny the facts of climate change despite the scientific consensus of its reality.

Communicators who want a deeper theoretical underpinning on the processes of persuasion should probably spend a little time looking into:

·      Social Judgement theory (Sherif) from the 1960’s which first developed the idea that we have fixed views or prejudices which limit the range of topics on which we are open to persuasion

·      Elaboration-Likelihood Model (Petty) from the 1980’s which suggests that we can either be convinced by strong rational arguments (as long as we’re motivated to listen and can understand what’s being said) or we can be swayed by emotional triggers

·      Cognitive Dissonance theory (Festinger) which argues that we’ll seek out a course of action that conflicts least with our beliefs or values.

There is also a strong school of thought that suggests that humans are not as generally as rational as we like to think.  The ‘Narrative’ approach argues that we individually create meaning from our experiences and communication – a process in which we decide which facts to ignore, discount, forget or emphasise.  This approach argues that it is the role of the communicator to create a meaningful narrative or story around a course of action.

The core elements

There are probably very few perfect messages in employee communications.  Event the simplest and seemingly most compelling actually don’t penetrate very easily – next time the fire alarm goes off in your office spot the number of people who stay at their desks!

However what follows is a checklist of some areas where you can test the impact of a proposed set of messages – the idea is that the stronger you score in each area the more impactful your message will be.

 

 

Download Persuasive messages slide here

Proximity

If you’re asking people to believe in something that is so far from their own beliefs or experience you’re in for a hard time.  Communications which go against the grain of opinion or experience are less likely to be persuasive than messages which are supported by existing attitudes.

For example, sales people who are used to being paid commission might be more amenable than colleagues in the finance department to a new performance related pay scheme.  Telling people that the IT department is committed to customer service might not ring true in a workplace where computers take ages to repair.

Where possible a communicator should look for ways of connecting a message to existing beliefs or values.  Interestingly, when people think that an idea or plan is broadly in line with their existing views they will tend to minimise the differences between what they want and what is being suggested. 

Rational

How well does your argument stack-up?  People expect their employer to present a strong case in support of proposed course of action and will want to challenge it when they sense a plan hasn’t been thought through.

It is often at the moment of communication that the flaws in a plan become apparent and it may fall to the communicator to point out why a crucial factor has been missed.  Commonly people will work on a plan in isolation and the communicator is the first person to see an argument in its entirety.

Obviously, as indicated earlier, we do not all judge facts and data in the same way.  Our valuations will be skewed by our prejudices and our personal experiences or values will cause us to apply subjective weightings to different factors.

But, a communicator will want to assess an argument for themselves and not take the slides from the strategy consultants at face value.  And they will want to ensure that the advantages of a proposed course of action are both plentiful and compelling. 

Motivation

People can confuse the concept of ‘what’s in it for me’ with the need to make sure people are motivated to think about the issue at stake in the first place.

The more interested people are in an issue, the more likely they are to respond to rational argument in favour of a course of action.  Take the example of a new employee appraisal system – you’re more likely to get the attentions of someone who supervises a large team than you are to excite a student who’s only working with you for the summer.

The crucial point is that many subjects that need communicating do not automatically excite or interest people at work.  A communicator has to find ways of capturing the attention of an audience group and keeping them interested long enough to digest the arguments you are presenting.

The added complication is that senior managers are often deeply fascinated by the topics they want to share with the workforce.  And they can’t understand why anyone else wouldn’t be every bit as excited as they are.  A communicator must understand their audiences well enough to spot when a leader’s enthusiasm for a particular subject won’t automatically be reciprocated by the rest of the organisation.

Delivery stability

It is essential that arguments are seen to be consistent and there is a continuity of delivery.  Communications which are fragmented or episodic are rarely convincing – a failing of many messages about organisational change.

Messages have to be part of a common conversation – employees will listen to an argument in the workplace and will test it against other communications or experiences.  For example I once ran a cost-savings campaign that floundered when employees saw the Sales Director continue to arrive at work in a chauffeur driven car.

The communicator’s role is to look for the incongruity in the overall conversation.  In this context, Bill Quirke talks about the importance of Air Traffic Control – the orchestration of different channels and messages into a coherent theme.

And the flow of communication should be uninterrupted. 

At its most basic, we are more likely to understand an idea or an argument if we can absorb it in a single sitting without interruption or confusion.  Imagine teaching a complicated concept to a class of students and having to contend with a fire alarm or a disruptive pupil.  The same is true of workplace communications.

Where possible a message or argument should be presented in a complete form – stringing it out over several instalments is rarely a recipe for comprehension or support 

Emotional triggers

People are not entirely rational.  If we are not motivated to listen or a message is just too complicated to understand we will fall back on non-rational cues to help us decide what to do.   A communicator should ask whether any of the following triggers are in place:

 

·      Source liking – perhaps unsurprisingly, people are more prone to listen to someone they like or admire.  That’s why advertisers or campaigners use popular celebrities – they hope that if we like Roger Federer we’ll buy the razor he’s promoting.  Likewise that’s why some senior leaders make great performers at town halls (and why some should never be let out in public!)

·      Limited opportunity – Implied scarcity is used to sell everything from Harry Potter books to diamonds and ten minutes watching a TV shopping channel will include multiple appeals based on a limited supply.  In the workplace this is used to encourage sign-ups for voluntary severance programmes or to promote participation in training schemes.  Clearly there are ethical considerations connected to being untruthful or to falsely denying access to a benefit or service but where a limitation does exist it is a powerful addition to a message.

·      Reciprocation – most high value sales strategies include an element of reciprocation; persuading a prospect that you are doing them a favour is intended to create a sense of obligation.  Internal communicators look for opportunities to highlight how different audiences are working together or how certain benefits can be achieved if we all work together.  For example people are often persuaded to support a new HR initiative because it could lead to better training opportunities or a move to a new site could allow the company to fund a better gym or restaurant facility.  Naturally care is needed to ensure that benefits are genuine.

·      Authority – in some situations invoking management’s authority is sufficient to secure a desired action.  “We’re in charge around here and we say it’s the right thing to do” is temporarily effective when the speaker enjoys the respect of the workforce and has a track record of being right.

·      Commitment – if people are already tied to a cause or an organisation, they are more willing to support a call to action.  Political campaigners have known for years about the potency of getting people to wear a button badge or display a poster in their window – such an act may not persuade a third person to support a candidate or a campaign, but it will start drawing the individual closer and closer to a cause.  People who have bought into a small aspect of a campaign or cause are ready to start listening to arguments which they might previously would have rejected.  Internal communicators are familiar with the phenomenon of employees becoming suddenly more positive in staff surveys after many years of service.  Messages which reflect on how much people have invested in time and energy in a company or a project can be more potent. Equally, finding small actions that people can take to sign up are often the opening shots in environmental or safety awareness campaigns.

Scale

One of the deciding factors in how well people respond to an argument at work is the sheer scale of the change being proposed.  A complete reorganisation of the company is more likely to meet resistance than a request to recycle more paper in the office.

Whilst no one would condone hiding to a workforce a far-reaching change the perceived impact of a change can be kept to reasonable levels by ensuring: that the uncertainties about the scope and timing of the transformation are minimised.  No one is helped by painting vague and unspecified doomsday scenarios.  And ensuring that local implications are always spelt out keeps the focus on a human level.

Social proof

As much as we like to pretend to be independently minded we are heavily influenced by the attitudes of our peers.  Communicators should look for opportunities to show who else is supporting a proposal – perhaps by creating a forum for people to discuss their support.  Equally, overemphasising the support for a countervailing view is rarely a good idea.  Make sure that people get a balanced picture of who supports an argument.

Understandability 

There really can be no excuse in this day and age for communications that are either so dense with obscure jargon or are so packed with complicated data that no one understands them.   It may seem stunningly obvious but it is a lesson that has to be continually shared with colleagues in management.  Sadly, communicators are often bullied into sending out dull rubbish or are given too little time to remedy the turgid guff that’s been dumped on them.

Memorability

The final challenge for the message is to check how memorable it is.  If people just can’t recall what it was they were told or the arguments they were given, all the drafting and preparations behind the communication are likely to be a waste of time.

The simple test is to ask yourself what do we want people to remember from a particular communication and consider whether the message expresses it clearly.  Some communicators advise limiting the message to a single point – advice which may be overly restrictive.  However, trying to cram too much into a particular communication is asking for trouble.

Proponents of ‘storytelling’ argue that creating a narrative around a message is the ideal way to embed a concept.

The message builder

Elsewhere I have set out a simple template for defining a message – it relies on the concepts given above to make sure that we structure and plan what we’re going to say. 

It’s all about knowing the audience

Communicators always need to provide their management colleagues with good advice.  And when it comes to planning, developing and testing messages, the quality of that advice depends massively on our understanding of the audiences.  A communicator has to understand the motivations, attitudes, experiences and values of their audiences – without these insights the role is reduced to one of minute-taking and mail delivery.  With real knowledge we are in a position to make an enormous difference to the success of the organisations which we serve.

Liam