KEY POINTS:
All too many management teams talk among themselves and keep lowly employees in the dark.
Yet internal communication, which was once a soft skill, has now been proved to have hard business impacts.
Too many management teams encase themselves in glass walls and fail to communicate sufficiently with employees," says Massey University management and international business senior lecturer Dr Jonathan Matheny.
Companies should have a doctrine of no surprises, adds Neil Flett, director of RogenSi, a global performance consultancy. "Employees come first," he says, "even if it is only by minutes. No exceptions."
"If the employees find out from other sources it is very damaging. Employees need to hear it from the leader first, before it ever appears in the media or before a client mentions it."
One method of communication that has become increasingly popular in recent years should be avoided at all costs. Matheny and colleague Dr Margaret Brunton have recently completed research looking at strategic ambiguity. This is where management makes an ambiguous statement that is taken different ways by stakeholders, polarising opinion and leading to conflict.
"Our review shows that there is advocacy (in organisations) of using strategic ambiguity. Our findings show that doing so can be destructive - it's a managerial cop-out, not a demonstration of values-driven leadership."
They used the example of a healthcare organisation that announced a shift towards a 21st century "best practice" business model. This was interpreted by clinical staff as a mandate to be more clinical in the provision of services while the health promotions staff read it to support their efforts in making the services more accessible and friendly. As these two groups moved in separate directions under what they thought to be one mandate, in-fighting broke out, detracting from the service experience of their customers.
"Strategic ambiguity is a tactic used by the whispering classes when they are forced to come out with a statement. It is a strategic manoeuvre to dodge accountability for direction, disguising the absence of meaningful communication."
Employees subjected to that kind of strategic ambiguity ultimately disengage from the organisation. "They say, 'I have lost contact, I don't know what is going on, I will just do my job and disengage from the organisation'."
Managers don't go to work wanting to do a bad job, says Martin Turner, head of the human capital practice at Mercer (NZ). Nor does he think that many withhold information deliberately. Instead they don't know how to communicate information well.
"They may be nervous, have a lack of confidence, or are unwilling to embrace the workforce," says Turner. "Sometimes they think (wrongly) that the great unwashed won't understand."
When managers keep information to themselves, a communication vacuum occurs. Turner says whenever there is a void of information in an organisation that isn't filled with fact, it will be filled with rumour, innuendo or employees' take on the facts. "This will often lead to polarisation and conflict. Yet it is important for employees to gain insights into how their leader is thinking," adds Flett.
When it comes to employee communication, many organisations are hamstrung by:
* The lawyers.
* The fact that they're publicly listed companies and have obligations to disclose information to the markets. External leaks may cause such companies to make hasty decisions.
* Being highly regulated organisations such as TVNZ or educational institutions that come under scrutiny from key constituents.
* Being fearful of being taken to employment-related tribunals.
In the case where organisations are limited in their ability to communicate with employees, says Matheny, the best way to overcome this is to be clear about the organisation's values, communicate this to employees and then ensure that all decisions made take into account the values.
"If you repeatedly reinforce that you make decisions according to these values," he says, "in the absence of information, when decisions come down the employees can make the connection between the values of the organisation and where the decision came from."
Whatever the company's circumstances, for best practice internal communication to work, says Turner, they need to have:
* A strategy.
* Good training.
* Quality of execution.
Best practice internal communications can include:
* The chief executive being a good role model for communication and championing it.
* Words from leaders matching actions.
* The organisation having a commitment to two-way communication.
* Face-to-face communication being common.
* Bad news being communicated as well as good.
* Communication being viewed as a management function, not a set of techniques.
Getting a company's message across in the 21st century requires using many methods of delivery including face-to-face and electronic communications. No one method is a magic bullet, says Paul Rayner, director of Working Words.
Too many organisations have an over-reliance on electronic communication with employees, he says. Even with the best intranet and email communication it's not uncommon to only get 50 to 70 per cent readership. That's a big chunk of the workforce who miss out. What's more, the classic face-to-face water cooler conversation is left out of the mix.
"But that's just part of the problem," says Rayner. "Organisations commonly let themselves down on three fronts: they rely too much on electronic communication to the exclusion of face-to-face, they don't adequately equip the lowest level of leader to play a key role in communication and they often communicate in a foreign language - management speak.
"Probably from a combination of lack of trust, ego, or ignorance on the part of management these key leaders are effectively unplugged from the communications plan," he says.
It's also necessary in some organisations to segment the audience and tailor the message and delivery accordingly. This may be along Generation Y, X, and Baby Boomer lines.
Generation Y staff, for example, are sensitive about being communicated "with" and not "to", says Turner.
Two-way communications in a company are essential. Successful organisations realise that listening actively to customers can boost a business. The same can be said of employees. However those employees will give up trying to communicate with management if they find that they aren't being kept in the loop with the company's direction.
The interpersonal skills of those people who communicate to the rank and file staff from managers to team leaders and supervisors are critical.
When it comes to training leaders in communication, what works really well across the board, says Rayner, is workshops where the senior management team present the strategy and the lower-level leaders spend time working through how to tailor that strategy and its messages for their own teams.
Those sessions may include role playing in a safe environment before leaders need to deliver the message for real. Leaders then leave workshops clear about the messages and the rationale. They are prepared and practised, and feel better able to talk in language that is relevant to their people.
Particularly with change programmes, it's a good idea to build in time for leaders to digest the communications before the initiative starts.
"Too many organisations set deadlines for communicating their changes - then suddenly it's, 'We're going to do it on Friday'," says Rayner. "They get too focused on change being an event and lose sight of it being a continuous process, one that sinks or swims in the ongoing, ad hoc discussions at a team level."
Research by Turner's colleagues in Britain found that high-performing organisations typically have a formal communication strategy.
Good communication also potentially adds to the quality of your employment brand, says Turner.
He cites the example of Telecom New Zealand versus Vodafone where the latter is perceived by many as having very good employee communications and also has a good employment brand.
