The doors are open at a wiki I’ve set up called The Employee Communications Manifesto. The term “manifesto” is, I think, apt, since this wiki will serve as a group’s declaration of ideas and exposition of the theories and directions of a movement. The group is the community of employee communications professionals. The ideas, theories and directions are those those of the employee communications profession.

I’ve launched the wiki because the employee communications profession needs a baseline. As I have noted here before, internal communications seems to be performing less than brilliantly at achieving its goals of employee alignment and line of sight. One reason (and this is purely speculation on my part) is the lack of a common knowledge base for anyone starting out in an employee communications job. Accountants, lawyers, doctors, astrophysicists, and programmers all start with the same core set of learnings. Even those who graduate with degrees in public relations know the stuff Fraser Seitel and Scott Cutlip teach in their books (as translated by instructors). But employee communications remains untaught, at least in terms of any consist, agreed-upon curriculum.

It’s my hope that The Employee Communications Manifesto can help fix that. It’ll work if internal communications professionals engage the wiki and create its contents. I hope to see you there.