©2009 Stephen J. Kasser, Ph.D.
Re-Engineering the Employee Communications Process
Stephen J. Kasser, Ph.D.
The communications profession has a standard method when it comes to planning processes and determining what messages and media work best for clients or organizations in terms of communicating with, and listening to employees, customers, shareholders, and the public and other stakeholders.
Current View
Generally, whether communication planning is portrayed as a four-step or a nine-step process or something in-between, it involves researching existing opinions, setting goals, writing a communication plan to achieve the goals, implementing the plan, and then assessing the results.
Any important event or circumstance – such as a merger or acquisition, or a series of layoffs – generally deserves its own communication plan.
Because of today’s emphasis on proving the bottom-line value of communications, the research and assessment phases may have taken on more importance recently; meaning more employee, customer and public opinion surveys; more focus panels, and a search for new ways to listen to employee opinion - all good things.
While this linear process, complete with more research, works well for individual campaigns, it sometimes falters when the plan is required to reflect an organization’s complete employee communications situation – particularly in a company with many divisions and departments, some of which might exist in foreign cultures. This is further complicated when the relationships between employee and public communications become more complex; in many ways, employees are a part of the public’s an organization serves.
Sometimes, it is simply a matter of there being too much information for such a linear planning process to handle. In these cases, often several plans are generated. But with limited staffing to handle all of them, the plans that are not absolutely top priority may not get the ongoing attention they require. Also, the relationships between the various plans are not always clear, so organizational communication is not always consistent.
Solutions & Benefits
A solution we found useful at a major utility was to regard the organization’s complete communications situation as a system, which meant attempting to define and map out the relationships between inputs, processes, procedures and outputs.
To help define these relationships we created a model of the system to be used as a planning tool and dashboard to assess results. We developed procedures for updating the model weekly as new inputs arrived and new results occurred - to keep it current, and to keep the planning process alive during the implementation and feedback processes.
Expected benefits from the start were:
- No surprises from emerging issues, since all potential situations were explored with the people concerned with them on a regular basis.
- Feedback from employee and public groups was scheduled and expected, so employees felt "listened to" and empowered.
- Messages to all audiences, including employees, became more coherent and unified and therefore more powerful because the research results are more highly organized.
- The approach enabled employees to speak with one voice; and to know when they could go public and when they should defer to communications professionals. In this era of social media, well-informed employees are more important than ever.
- Communicators received better and more concise guidance in terms of developing employee communications as well as external communications; therefore more consistency and fewer false starts and off-target campaign proposals.
Some unexpected but important benefits were:
- Other departments which have been used to thinking in systems methodology gained a greater respect for the company's communicators.
- Employee and public stakeholder groups felt included in the early stages of communication planning and, eventually, even policy planning; they developed a greater sense of participation and ownership in the company.
- Even external stakeholder groups were given an opportunity to participate in constructive dialog and they, too, develop a greater knowledge and understanding of the company and its operations, and something of a sense of ownership. Improved attitudes on the part of external groups became helpful to employees in their day-to-day communications outside the company.
Conclusion
As with many systems approaches, time spent up front in structuring the communication processes paid off repeatedly. Things simply worked better: more efficiency with less redundancy, more dialog and less confrontation, more power in terms of messages and fewer false starts.
This higher level of organizational planning does not "dehumanize" the communication process. Quite the contrary. The systematization of routine matters made room for more creativity.
The approach has since been applied to a variety of communication situations, always with success. It has evolved, and now resides in a user-friendly software program.
It took us about a year to achieve our initial design and several additional months to transit the system to a software package, so we recommend, as with any system, allowing sufficient time to build your system.
However, just thinking about your overall communications in systems terms can be extremely helpful. The key is to think in terms of flow of information, similar to the way an accounting system regulates the flow of resources. Whether you apply specific methods such as those we have discussed to facilitate this kind of planning, or simply change your thinking, the power of the results may surprise you.
Stephen J. Kasser, PhD., Designed, installed and managed the nation’s first communications driven issues management system at a major utility. He has since used this technology to generate systems-based communication programs for a variety of organizations, from SMBs to Fortune 100s. For more information, please call 908-797-6880 or email sjk3030@gmail.com.
