Increasingly in
Europe, knowledge workers are in demand. With the shedding
of manufacturing jobs to the Far East and other fast
developing markets, we look to knowledge skills to help
us survive in the world economy. Companies in the UK
compete to attract and retain the brightest staff against
increasing pressure from headhunters and specialist
employment agencies to fill vacancies. So how does internal
communications fit in?
Many employee communicators see themselves as people
who help organisations deliver relevant information
to their employees. Whether creating newsletter stories
or intranet content or helping put together face-to-face
meetings, it's all about delivering communications that
support the company's business goals.
New opportunities
With the advent of new media such as blogs, podcasts,
wickis and streaming video on demand, there are all
kinds of new ‘social tools’ that can be
used to disseminate corporate news. But these new media
have the potential to do much more. They can create
communities.
Look at your organisation from the viewpoint of communities
and you can come out with a different internal communications
map. What information, ideas and opinions do people
want to share? How many times have you come across a
scenario where employees who know where to find information
get the results, while others, often new to the same
organisation, may not even be aware of its existence
or struggle to get by? What impact does that have on
performance?
Pragmatic communities
The building blocks of internal communities, in the
past, have been on-line forums, bulletin boards and
group email. What’s now on offer, are the social
tools which allow rapid, informal and effectively targeted
exchanges of information. Self-service also plays a
role, where relevant knowledge is quickly made available
through a search with intuitive and sophisticated filters.
These communities, although hosted, are member driven
and pragmatic.
It is time for internal communicators to take a good
look beyond their traditional roles to see how they
can better enable and champion these communities. A
professional engineer, analyst, auditor, accountant,
surveyor may well be an employee but will also be a
potential member of other interest groups. Communicators
need to start thinking about what they can do to go
beyond traditional roles and start to think of themselves
as facilitators of internal communities.
Benefits to the business
Knowledge is the corporate asset whether it is in the
minds of employees or harnessed within a system. Sharing
that knowledge is an imperative for internal communications.
The benefits include providing increased momentum in
the business process, accelerating the innovation process,
real sharing of customer intelligence customer while
at the same time giving scattered employees a heightened
sense of belonging in a worldwide enterprise.
Internal communication professionals shouldn't abandon
their traditional role, but rather expand it to include
starting up new conversations that will spawn content
that doesn't just inform, but also engages, and even
entertains.
If you want to bring some blue-sky thinking
into your internal communications, let Saffron House
assist your brainstorm. Why not give us a call to find
out how we can help - +44 (0)1285 644425
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