Speaking the language of leaders.
I was lucky to present at Bledcom in Slovenia, an International Public Relations Symposium that has been organized over the past 17 years to provide a venue for public relations scholars and practitioners from around the world to exchange ideas and perspectives about public relations in all its forms. This year the focus is on Internal Communication. It was a great conference and the debt of knowledge presented at the event shows how seriously internal communicaiton is now being taken.
My paper, “Internal communicators who fail to talk the facts and figures of the corporate suite" was the first time I presented the main findings of my PhD research.
Here is the abstract to my paper:
Abstract
Business leaders and internal communication managers inherently understand that effective internal communication is a business imperative. It builds staff morale, motivation and engagement. It also builds a healthy organisational culture and helps facilitate change, all of which deliver bottom line results for the organisation.
However, if you ask for proof of the value of internal communication you may be provided with an anecdote or two, presented with a good article in a major publication or shown the results of an employee satisfaction survey, but most organisations still fail to consistently prove the positive causal relationship between internal communication efforts and business success. The failure to prove the benefits of internal communication is due in part to a failure to measure communications activity. However, a lack of measurement is not the sole reason. There are a number of contributing factors such as a lack of a clear communications strategy and a lack of clear and measurable objectives for communication activities, poor leadership support and a weak guiding coalition supporting communication within the organisation. All these elements contribute to making evaluation of the value added by internal communication problematic.
This paper aims to establish whether the case study organisations directly tie internal communication results to strategic management and tangible bottom line results. It also aims to establish if internal communication is seen as a strategic management function or is it a technical function to be managed by others. It also aims to identify the criteria necessary for excellence in internal communication. The study uses the generic benchmark of the critical success factors and best practice in communication management, as outlined in Grunig et al’s Excellence Study, as a framework for investigating the internal communication practices in public and private sector organisations in Ireland.
The findings presented are the result of a three stage process involving: (i) international review of best practice in communication and internal communication, and research into effective communication practices in individual organisations; (ii) in-depth interviews with CEOs (or their representatives), internal communication managers and individual staff members in public and private sector organisations in the profit and non-profit sector in Ireland (iii) analysing results finalising and publishing conclusions.
The findings reveal that the hard work of the internal communicators is not leading to demonstrable success. This is because the implementation of the communication tools often takes priority over other important communication activities such as strategy development, clear objective setting, building a guiding coalition and measurement. The findings suggest that internal communication remains mainly focussed on the technical journalistic-type activities. In this paper, and the researcher discusses the findings and suggests the use of the ‘O’Murchú Internal Communication Matrix’ to ensure that internal communicators organise and execute their work in a manner that will lead to success and the development of tangible bottom line results.
My paper, “Internal communicators who fail to talk the facts and figures of the corporate suite" was the first time I presented the main findings of my PhD research.
Here is the abstract to my paper:
Abstract
Business leaders and internal communication managers inherently understand that effective internal communication is a business imperative. It builds staff morale, motivation and engagement. It also builds a healthy organisational culture and helps facilitate change, all of which deliver bottom line results for the organisation.
However, if you ask for proof of the value of internal communication you may be provided with an anecdote or two, presented with a good article in a major publication or shown the results of an employee satisfaction survey, but most organisations still fail to consistently prove the positive causal relationship between internal communication efforts and business success. The failure to prove the benefits of internal communication is due in part to a failure to measure communications activity. However, a lack of measurement is not the sole reason. There are a number of contributing factors such as a lack of a clear communications strategy and a lack of clear and measurable objectives for communication activities, poor leadership support and a weak guiding coalition supporting communication within the organisation. All these elements contribute to making evaluation of the value added by internal communication problematic.
This paper aims to establish whether the case study organisations directly tie internal communication results to strategic management and tangible bottom line results. It also aims to establish if internal communication is seen as a strategic management function or is it a technical function to be managed by others. It also aims to identify the criteria necessary for excellence in internal communication. The study uses the generic benchmark of the critical success factors and best practice in communication management, as outlined in Grunig et al’s Excellence Study, as a framework for investigating the internal communication practices in public and private sector organisations in Ireland.
The findings presented are the result of a three stage process involving: (i) international review of best practice in communication and internal communication, and research into effective communication practices in individual organisations; (ii) in-depth interviews with CEOs (or their representatives), internal communication managers and individual staff members in public and private sector organisations in the profit and non-profit sector in Ireland (iii) analysing results finalising and publishing conclusions.
The findings reveal that the hard work of the internal communicators is not leading to demonstrable success. This is because the implementation of the communication tools often takes priority over other important communication activities such as strategy development, clear objective setting, building a guiding coalition and measurement. The findings suggest that internal communication remains mainly focussed on the technical journalistic-type activities. In this paper, and the researcher discusses the findings and suggests the use of the ‘O’Murchú Internal Communication Matrix’ to ensure that internal communicators organise and execute their work in a manner that will lead to success and the development of tangible bottom line results.
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