My last post covered the results of a research study that found a distressing number of organizations failed to effectively communicate to employees the purpose of their jobs along with their corporate mission & strategy.
It’s not as if organizations don’t have enough communications tools to use.
Check out New Frontiers in Employee Communications: 2005 featured in Christopher Hannegan’s blog. Christopher heads Edelman’s Employee Engagement Practice.
Here are the key findings from Edelman’s survey on employee communication trends:
- While in-person communication was found to be the most effective tool for general employee communications, it is not the tool most frequently used; i.e., cost-effectiveness does not equal communication effectiveness.
- Communicators have a much greater awareness of new communication tools over the past year. Despite high awareness of blogs and wikis, these tools aren’t being applied for internal or external communication.
- Most standard communications policies do not yet include guidelines covering the new tools, notably employee blogs. The absence of such guidelines puts companies and their blogging employees at risk (depending on blog content and tone).
Note: For more info on employee blogs, check out Edelman & Intelliseek’s white paper: Talking from the Inside Out: The Rise of Employee Bloggers.
Bottom Line
There’s no lack of available communication tools – both new and traditional – in organizations. And there’s certainly no lack of content to be communicated. The key is to focus on what employees need to know in order to do their jobs, apply the appropriate communications tools, AND find the right balance between too little and too much information.