△ MENU/TOP △

Holtz Communications + Technology

Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
SearchClose Icon

The blurring line between external and internal communications

Regardless of the other communication disciplines I have practiced—media relations, financial communications, corporate PR, the list goes on—I have always maintained employee communications as part of my portfolio. I believe deeply in the power of effective internal communications. The Globe and Mail made a point yesterday of reporting a Watson Wyatt Worldwide study that linked employee communications to bottom-line performance:

Shareholder returns for organizations with the most effective communications were 57 per cent higher than returns for firms with less effective communications over the past five years. The survey…also found that the best communicators had a 19.4-per-cent higher market premium—the extent to which the market value of a company exceeds the cost of its assets—than the less effective communicators.

There’s more support for a strong internal communications effort in the study and the Globe and Mail report.

However, a couple of items in the blogosphere recently have had me pondering the positioning of employee communications within the organization.

My friend Ron Shewchuk wrote a post for the IABC Employee Communications Common that asked just that question:

I???m particularly interested in whether internal communicators should report directly to Human Resources, or if it???s better to have a ???dotted line??? and report through to, say, public affairs.

The post drew 13 comments—not bad for a relatively new blog. Some took this position: “Since employee communications addresses the needs of all the employees in a company, it should report to the sole department responsible for all these people ??? HR.” Others vote for Corporate Communications. (Read the thread for details.)

I’ve had both experiences. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t report to either. I’d report directly to the CEO. There’s plenty of support for this relationship. In the real world, however, there are few CEOs who would happily add another direct reporting relationship to their plates.

I don’t buy the argument that HR deals with employees exclusively and therefore employee communications belongs in HR. In my experience, far too often HR sees employee communications as an HR communications function, focused on compensation, benefits, policies, and other HR-centric issues. Once you try to communicate anything outside the scope of HR’s jurisdiction, they get very nervous. In today’s world, that can be exceedingly dangerous. (That’s why, in many large organizations, HR maintains its own communicators, distinct from the general employee communications teams.)

Which brings us to the second bit of blogospheric buzz to capture my attention. In the wake of Microsoft’s announcement that Windows Vista would be delayed until January 2007, there has been quite a bit of discussion about the role of employee bloggers. I loved Robert Scoble’s characterization of employee bloggers as being “at the edge of a company.”) Robert insisted he was an official Microsoft spokesperson through his blog; so was any other Microsoft employee blogger, because the blogs are public and his remarks can be quoted by the media.

In comments to Neville Hobson’s blog, I suggested that the issue isn’t one of a blogger’s credibility, but rather of his authority. If 10 or 20 employee bloggers voice their diverse and varied opinions about a company issue—and in the course of their discussions articulate subtly (or not-so-subtly) different information, which one reflects the authoritative statement of record for the organization?

The question of where authority resides is an intriguing one. Inhis post, Robert suggested that he can be the authoritative source…sometimes. Which, exactly, are those times? It depends, Robert says, on whether he’s remarking on his own projects or team efforts, or if he’s simply opining about other company issues. Of course, Robert doesn’t tag his posts as “authoritative” and “non-authoritative;” nor does anyone else. It’s up to the reader to deduce that.

While we wrestle with these issues as we journey farther into the era of social computing, there is one thing companies can do to ensure accurate information is presented to various external publics: They can communicate more effectively internally, providing accurate information and access to details that will help those employees who blog (or otherwise engage in the great conversation) avoid making any mistakes. In other words, internal communcations is having a greater and greater effect on external communications.

Given that, how much additional emphasis do companies need to place on employee communications, and where should it reside? Too often, the answer comes down to politics. Wherever your internal communications department sits in the org chart, though, you’d better make sure there’s a strong tie to the external team and that messages are clear, consistent, accurate, thorough and candid. If not, this new era of social computing could reach up and bite your company in the ass.

12/31/69 | 8 Comments | The blurring line between external and internal communications

Comments

  • 1.Great post, Shel. I love the challenge you put forward: if companies don't pay attention to delivering meaningful, credible employee communications, "this new era of social computing could reach up and bite your company in the ass."

    My sentiments exactly. But I just realized, reading your comments, that there's a big elephant in the room. And that's the incredible resiliency of the modern corporation. Yes, this powerful trend could bite a lot of companies in the ass, but their asses have been exposed for many, many years to other reputational risks, and it astounds me that there haven't been a lot more severly bitten asses to report on.

    Unfortunately, the modern corporation is able to rely on its size, market position, business model, imcumbency, and a whole bunch of other factors including good old inertia, to maintain its position, and even to grow, despite all forms of stupidity when it comes to employee communication.

    And this is the quandary of most employee communicators. We see the shortcomings of management's approach to internal communications, and yet the companies we work for survive, and even thrive, despite their woefully inadequate efforts at communicating with, and engaging, their people.

    Profits rise, the share price keeps going up, efforts to unionize fail. People aren't as engaged as they could be, but so what? We carry on, and business is okay. And if our internal communications people raise concerns, it's just that they're overly sensitive. Things will work themselves out. And, by cracky, they often do.

    I think most internal communicators have a secret apocalyptic wish for their employers -- that their unenlightened behavior will indeed bite them in the ass some day. Unfortunately, that day almost never comes and we watch, helpless, as bad communication decisions don't ever seem to have the negative consequences we anticipate.

    In the end, it's not the resilience of the corporation, but the resilience of its employees, that creates this situation. Most people can put up with quite a bit before they are willing to quit their jobs. It's a reality that may change in the coming years, but I'm not holding my breath.

    But I'm also not going to stop trying to make things better. It's just the way we employee communicators are wired.

    Ron Shewchuk | March 2006

  • 2.The difference today, Ron, is that the external communications practiced by employees can have farther-reaching consequences than big, resilient organizations are accustomed to. Let five employee bloggers offer alternative views of what might be considered "material" information and see what happens when some readers lose money on their investments based on what they read. Let the media pick up on what one "authoritative" blogger wrote and see what happens when it turns out the information was flat-out wrong. Regulatory sanctions and class-action lawsuits are nothing trivial.

    Of course, some organizations will see this as a reason to prohibit employees from blogging, which misses the point. Employee bloggers offer a touchpoint for customers to a real person in the organization. They are evangelists and brand ambassadors on steroids. They can do far, far more good than harm.

    But unleashing this power into the grand conversation has risks -- risks that can be mitigated through effective, strategic internal communication. In fact, social computing provides organizations with a new mandate to bolster their employee communication efforts.

    Shel Holtz | March 2006 | Concord, CA

  • 3.I hope you are right, Shel.

    But is it a new mandate, or increased pressure? It's often been said that people, and organizations, are not willing to change unless they are experiencing unbearable pain, or irresistable opportunity. It will be interesting to see which of those two factors drives corporations into this brave new world.

    Ron Shewchuk | March 2006

  • 4.Shel,

    I agree with your empahis on authority over credibility (though in an ideal world the latter would confer the former) when it comes to employee bloggers.

    However, they is no real way to seperate the voice of the employee as an individual from the organization itself. Is a reader going to make that distinction? Is a journalist?

    Scoble may not be an "authority" on many Microsoft issues, he may even explicity say that. However he is still a representative of the company and will be viewed as an authority whether he likes it or not.

    The question is, can companies marry the goal of having consistent "messages" with an environment that promotes candid conversations from its employees.

    My answer: you as an organization need an authentic story, you need to actual represent something real. Once you do that, instill that idea to your employees, only then can you hope to convey that message effectively to the public.

    Easier said than done.

    Jeffrey Treem | March 2006

  • 5.I worked for one CEO who used to say, "It takes years to build a good reputation, and minutes to wipe it out." There is a real and valid fear that opening up communication will result in reputational damage of some kind. The question is how to overcome this. Is there a way to take baby steps -- an incremental approach that would build confidence over time?

    Ron Shewchuk | March 2006

  • 6.Jeffrey, easier said than done, indeed. Hence my focus on re-invigorating employee communications as a critical, strategic function in the organization. While I agree with everything you say, I would distinguish between "being an authority" on something (i.e., a subject matter expert) and "speaking authoritatively" on behalf of the organization. Even Scoble says, "If you're a journalist writing a story it's best to check in with our PR teams."

    As for separating the voice of the employee asn an individual from the organization itself, I'd point you to a post today from Neville Hobson, who cites the following disclaimer on Amazon's CTO's blog:

    "This is a personal weblog. That means that the opinions voiced here are purely personal and they do not in any way represent the opinions, experiences or directions of my employer Amazon.com. If you take any of the statements on this weblog and use it as an official statement by Amazon.com you are knowingly misleading your audience. For official statements by Amazon.com visit the Amazon.com Virtual Media Room.

    "If I do write something worth referencing, and you feel strongly about the need to reference my affiliation, you should also mention in your reference that this is my personal weblog: ?Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.com, mentions on his personal weblog that the Seahawks have a good shot at the Superbowl this year?.

    "If you can not play by these simple rules, please do not reference this weblog at all."

    That works!

    Shel Holtz | March 2006

  • 7.Ron, that CEO is exactly right. Another CEO once said reputation is something you don't care about until you've lost it.

    The answer is the same one we've had for years: create clear policies, communicate them well, and enforce them. What organizations need to understand is that their reputations could be at greater risk if they continue their traditional top-down communications while competitors begin experiencing reputational gains by encouraging their employees to communicate from the edge.

    Sure, there are ways to start incrementally. Pick a few employees you trust to blog and work with them to ensure they don't cross any troublesome lines (while ensuring they have freedom to say what they think). When the sky doesn't fall, add a few more. I'd also point management to companies where employees ARE blogging and the sky hasn't fallen -- Microsoft, Sun, Thomas Nelson Publishers, IBM...the list goes on. If they can do it -- and experience reputational GAINS instead of LOSSES -- maybe your company can, too.

    Shel Holtz | March 2006

  • 8.In a perfect world there would not be an HR Department. The management of relationships is much more important and is a PR function.
    In the real world, the endlessly shifting sands of internal coalitions, emphsized by digital interaction, means that HR has to be a command and control function and so is now threatened (digital disintermediation is not just limited to the traditional value chain and the departments that are already noticably affected - advertising and marketing).

    In the practical world, this will take a long time. PR people have a huge learning curve (and a history of avoiding new and difficult practices).

    Perhaps the 'Relationship Manager' who takes over HR, advertising, marketing, Corporate affairs and Financial Relations PR etc will arrive ahead of the reforms that PR needs to implement.

    Such a person could even be called the CEO.

    David Phillips | April 2006 | UK

Comment Form

« Back