Changing roles for internal communicators
4th April 2006 by Bill Boyd, ABC
There’s been quite a conversation on this site about whether employee communications belongs in Corporate Communications (or Public Affairs, PR, or Marketing) or Human Resources. I can argue either side of that issue (I found HR to be one of the best places to be when it comes to getting information about company strategy).
But this particular dialog misses a larger point. The action is shifting from top-level, “send out stuff” models to two new ones:
1. Operational communications: Organizations like Manufacturing and IT have communications needs, too. And they’re seldom satisfied by the traditional internal communications function, which is often too busy feeding the intranet to help the operations guys solve their communications problems (such as coping with perpetual change). So such organizations are recruiting their own talent, which may or may not answer to, report in to, or even acknowledge the corporate communicators.
2. Communications facilitation: Every manager – and often a huge percentage of employees – has the electronic means to be a publisher. And how do they use them? Often, badly. These de facto communicators need training and tools to help them think more strategically, craft better communications, and send them to the right audiences. The best place to house this work may, indeed, be Human Resources. Or, again, in an operational division.
What do you think? How long will it take before the majority of internal communications are doing this kind of work . . . and the function has morphed into something the long-ago publishers of the company “house organ” would never have recognized? And which part of the company will write the check for it?
April 6th, 2006 at 3:57 am
Where we sit is of little relevance - it’s what we do and why that matters.
Every organisation has a core of information that must be shared if that organisation is to achieve its goals. Sometimes it’s operational, sometimes strategic, occasionally even inspirational.
What’s absolutely clear is that we, as communicators, don’t own that information.
What we do own is the right to work with management at all levels to use communications as a means of enabling them to achieve the business outcome they’re aiming for.
We should have a unique expertise within business - the ability to harness whatever ‘output’ opportunity is available to secure the outcome the organisation needs.
I advocate a single communications group within an organisation working as an agency/consultancy to support business teams across all stakeholder audiences.
But we can never become a bottleneck - that stymies the whole process. So, as much as being the doers doing the do, we have to help leaders to be more personally effective as communicators, and for everyone to feel its easy to comply with clear policies and practices and be active in their own outcome-focused business communication.
So, our role becomes custodians of the overal comms plan drawn from the business strategy; setters of great examples, troubleshooters to ease the log jams, knitters of a coherant web of communication, and still a corporate conscience where our first question has to be ‘what are you trying to achieve’ rather than ‘what format do you want this in.