It’s a while since the ancient art of “tug o’ war” featured in the Olympics, but it’s alive and well in a boardroom near you.  Internal communication, that golden thread between employees and customers, is starting to take the strain!

According to a Melcrum study back in 2006 which compared the generic site of the internal communication function between 2003 and 2006, there’s a very real “heave ho” taking place between HR and Corporate Communication to control the internal communication strings. 

During the period in question, 44% of corporate communication functions across the multi-sector survey claimed to include internal communication among their reporting lines.  This was a 14% increase in three years. The HR figures were roughly half that amount, but increased by 10% over the same period.  It is also evident that, in that time, a number of HR functions were attempting to sweep internal communication into the employee engagement and industrial relations pot.

The growth in the demand for control over internal communication within HR and Corporate Comms was apparently at the expense of functions like the office of the CEO, Organisation Development and Marketing. I believe that’s a worrying trend.

These figures become most interesting, however, when seen in the context of a 2005 study by the same organisation (see Buckingham, Brand Engagement, Palgrave/Macmillan 2007 )* which reports that where organisations claim to have a formal employee engagement programme, 67% claim that this falls within HR, 55% attribute engagement to Internal Communication as a distinct function and 27% claim it is the responsibility of their Organisation Development function.  There’s no mention of Corporate Comms which is worrying when you consider that employee engagement is, in effect, the highly evolved form of internal communication at the opposite end of the spectrum from tactical “push” communication campaigns.

Now the more statistically astute of you will have detected that the figures in the last paragraph don’t add up to 100%.  And that’s the crux of this argument. Internal communication is not simple message management controlled by the HR or Corporate Comms function.  Truly evolved internal communication requires partnerships across the business functions and professional collaboration which is why so many departments believe that employee engagement, its most glamorous manifestation, falls within their remit.

Unfortunately, take a look at the recruitment press and it becomes clear that the internal communication profession is still dominated by message managers.  Where’s the glamour in owning the intranet and newsletters? 

The cream of the profession, however, are skilled engagement specialists with solid, credible business pedigree who are as comfortable in the newsroom as they are in the boardroom. They have the respect of their executive peers given that the best internal communication role models a partnership mentality. 

Internal communication should bring together the key people disciplines to ensure a clear and consistent representation of the vision, strategy, goals and employment brand.  That’s why any formal engagement programme needs to evolve out of what I call an engagement axis!  If too closely aligned to any 1 department it becomes subjugated to and inevitably falls foul of issue cherry-picking and internal politics (creatives vs pragmatists vs authenticity vs budget hunters etc).

It’s time we all afforded Internal Communication and the respect it deserves and credible practitioners similar kudos.  It’s vital to the management of the brand, employee motivation and retention, innovation and ultimately customer service, needs to be led by specialist practitioners and must be properly funded by budgeted not discretionary spend. 

Come to think of it, that just might be why so many of the internal generals are bracing their backs and tugging at that rope!

I’m intrigued to hear about the fun and games where you work.

We’re all familiar with the cliché that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. In fact it’s the philosophy on which process management methodologies like Total Quality Management and Kaizen are based.  But what has process and systems thinking got to do with the subtle arts of people-centred services like HR management, Organisation Development and the concept of Employer Brand?

As some of you will know, I believe the term employer brand is a misnomer. As I’ve stressed in this column previously, Employer Brand is only half the story.  It represents the “promise making” part of the equation.  A more appropriate term is Employment Brand which takes into account the promises made by the organisation about the working practices, values, norms - or put another way - the culture, but also factors in the reality and actual employee feedback about the delivery of the promise.

We’re accustomed to seeing the application of principles like customer relationship management and the management of the customer value chain by our marketing colleagues concerned with the brand projected to customers.  But how many of our HR colleague are applying similar principles to the management of the employment brand.  I would suggest, right at this moment, very few.

The value of a process-focused approach to managing Employment Brand is that it:

- stimulates cooperation between the key internal stakeholders responsible for managing the links in the chain

- it drives consistency in how the brand is interpreted and communicated

- it encourages performance measures at each link in the chain and provides a platform for more effective relationship management at each stage

To illustrate my point, take a wander through the vacancy pages of even premier recruitment sites like Changeboard, and PR Week.  How many simple but explicit errors can you detect in the advertisements?  Now ask yourself how this makes you feel about the capability of the agency in question to manage your account, cv or personal profile with appropriate care and sensitivity.  If you’re the client of the agency, how well do you think they are representing your brand and what are the explicit and opportunity costs of these errors?

It’s a little unfair to single out the recruitment agencies that are largely reliant upon the quality of the briefing they receive from our own ceos, but hopefully it helps to illustrate my point.  It’s tough for HR professional to ensure they are sufficiently in tune with the strategic goals of the business and translating this data into the processes they promote and stakeholders they rely upon as they manage the evolution of the Employment Brand. 

What is clear, however, is that managing the Employment Brand does call for systems thinking.  And this presents another opportunity for collaboration with our more explicitly external facing colleagues in order to bring the brand to life from inside.

Ian

WASP males don’t tend to get too many invitations to be involved in the promotion of diversity management; which is a shame really.  I’m a firm believer in the notion that the promotion of diversity should embrace the full range of stakeholders; it should truly practice inclusiveness in the way stakeholders are engaged with the philosophy or it runs the risk of being seen as a marginal activity aimed at an exclusive audience.  A “push” communication approach may be one of the reasons why the diversity flag bearers within organisations sometimes find themselves struggling for real influence at the top table.

But this thought piece isn’t to critique the notion of diversity or challenge its increasing relevance to the organisation development and employee engagement agenda. I would like to share a rare moment of Belgian enlightenment.

Picture the scene.  The wonderful and irrepressibly inspirational Myrtha Casanova of the The European Institute for Managing Diversity had enlisted my help to co-facilitate a workshop she was running with the senior executives of a global producer of cereal crops and foodstuffs.  They had been embroiled in a PR war with NGOs and pressure groups worldwide because of controversial growing techniques and what was perceived as an arrogant communication stance.

The workshops were intended to develop diversity strategies across their global businesses.  Most of their senior executives were gathered in Belgium to that end – and they weren’t very pleased about it.

It was soon clear that their beleaguered HR Director had been forced into developing a diversity strategy by the board who were in turn responding to US legislation.  The executive cadre encamped in Belgium were 90% male, mostly of Anglo Saxon origin and frankly, felt they had much more pressing priorities.  In short, the workshops quickly regressed into trench warfare.

The turning point came, however, shortly after lunch on day one when, rather than push more and more statistics, facts and process at the group, we adopted a less evangelical approach and asked them to explore their brand from the customer’s perspective.  

They had traditionally seen themselves as a business to business organisation but it took one of the more junior managers, who also happened to have the largest team and who also happened to be a woman, to point out that housewives could make or break their company.  By drawing a simple supply chain model she was able to quickly illustrate the route their product ultimately followed to market and how it was immaterial that they weren’t putting the bread on the shelves themselves. Women still make the vast majority of purchasing decisions per household and the retailers were reliant upon their suppliers to provide raw materials in tune with the ethics and values of the consumer.  An epiphany!

This simple, jaw-dropping moment proves to be a revelation for her cynical peers who had clearly spent years developing competencies and promoting values appropriate for managing their equally macho purchasing managers in the businesses they were selling to.  Suddenly the link between organisational culture and their PR problems was put into stark relief. More importantly, they realised that, without a more representative management structure they would make similar mistakes.  The business case for diversity had become clear and the rest of the session was put to productive use developing a central and local diversity policy, strategy and engagement approach which owed much to a loaf of bread!

If you want to find out more about the EIMD (a not for profit organisation founded in 1996, with headquarters in Barcelona and which operates across the European Union), take a look at their website http://www.iegd.org/englishok/who.htm

Or feel free to drop me a line and I’ll tell you more about this and similar stories.

Ian@by2w.co.uk