IABC Employee Communication Commons

As part of my ‘giving back to the community’ activities, I am helping out the PR students at Deakin University in Australia by recording interviews with experienced internal communicators.

Why? Because I believe that the new PR young guns will potentially miss out on exposure to wisdom about a HUGE part of their publics and it behoves we business communicators to ‘wise them up’.

I am looking for seasoned (and only lightly salted) internal communicators who are willing to be interviewed (probably over Skype) for about 30 minutes.

The questions I would put to you are some/all of the following:

• Why do you think internal communications are an important part of the overall communication/PR mix?

• What method is the best for communicating to employees?

• There are some experienced business commentators who say that despite the focus on it, ‘engagement’ is worse now than, say, ten years ago. Do you find this? If it’s true, what are the reasons and what can be done about it?

• Does the size of the company make a difference in how you communicate with employees?

• In your experience is it possible for there to be too much communication?

• There is a saying that everyone sees themselves as being a ‘marketer’, or at least has an opinion; does the same mindset apply to ‘communication’ (i.e. everyone sees themselves as a brilliant communicator) and what is the most effective way of dealing with it?

• What was your biggest internal communication success?

• What was your biggest internal communication ‘learning experience’?

• Finally, any last words for students of communication/PR who may be considering adding internal communications into their skillset?

If you are able to help out and are willing to be ruthlessly grilled to the point of tears give of your wisdom, then please either email me: Lee at LeeHopkins dot com or else leave a comment on this post.

I feel it vitally important that we educate and promote our passion to others, especially those who are about to enter into the giddy world of PR/comms and who may not be aware of how vitally important good employee communication is.

Many thanks in advance,
Lee

This entry was posted on Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 5:19 am and is filed under Channels, Employee Communication, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.