Marina Ythier-Jacobsz – Devastating silent killer : poor internal communication

Time and time again, I see a huge gap between what corporate internal communication should be and what it actually is. One would think that with so many communication tools available – phones, e-mail, intranet, social media, blogs, sharing platforms, apps of all sorts, etc – our ability to communicate with our teams would improve. Paradoxically, according to most available data, the opposite seems to be true: the quality of our internal communication seems to be declining as the quantity of communication tools increases. As a result, at best, employees don’t work as productively as they would and should. At worse, they are rowing the corporate boat in the opposite direction.

Many organizations consistently fail at this fundamental business component – communicating and sharing information internally. At a corporate level, the consequences of internal communication failure can be catastrophic. For example, a couple of years ago, Yahoo’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Marissa Meyer, decided to put an end to the company’s tradition of work-at-home employees. This created a real uproar for Yahoo’s CEO, bringing about complaints from Yahoo’s employees while galvanizing opinions in the media. In a clumsily written internal memo – which is definitely not the right channel for this type of communication –the CEO had questioned her own employees’ “speed and quality” of work as well as the integrity of all her remote workers. On top of negative public relations, this resulted in massive employee disengagement and exodus, even though time showed that Mayer had made a tough but appropriate management decision. 

This is an extreme case, but unfortunately, one does not have to dig very deep to find them. And Mauritius is no exception. Just do a rapid survey of some local high-profile business failures and you will see that many will turn up with “issues” fitting that similar internal communication failure pattern.

In almost 20 years of practice in Mauritius, South-Africa and the region, I haven’t met one leader who doesn’t understand the ins and outs of what could happen if he/she was slack in terms of financial management. Yet, many of those same leaders fail to understand the risks that come with taking a slack approach to internal communication. This is even more surprising when one knows that numerous surveys have found a direct correlation between employee communications and the bottom line. For example, Mc-Kinsey Global Institute’s one in 2016 found that productivity improves by 20-25% in organizations with connected employees. In another study, Gallup found that in the United States, every employee that crosses over from being disengaged to engaged adds an incremental $13,000 to the yearly bottom line. According to yet another SMB communications study, poor internal communications cost US businesses approximately $26,000 per employee, yearly, in lost efficiency.

So, why is it that big money is spent in expensive rebranding, re-positioning, new vision exercises to name only these, while big ideas and plans which are often elaborated by and with the top teams only, are not communicated internally in a systematic and professional way?  As a result, great visions are often locked inside the heads of a few. Not only can it be frustrating, but it can also be detrimental to the goal one is trying to achieve – how can you get anywhere, if you don’t know where you are going in the first place? 

Internal communication is the glue that holds an organization together and should not be treated as an after-thought. Fortunately, a growing number of leaders are today effectively managing the information flow within their company. They tend to share a certain attitude as well as a common set of practices. Generally, they adopt communication methods that will allow them to be closer to their employees. They will encourage the setting-up of systems that will allow dialogue instead of monologue. They will engage employees by allowing them to become active participants in the communication process. Last but not least, they are rigorous in their communication approach. On this last point, this rigour should translate into the setting up of a formal internal communication strategy, just as one would have a formal strategy for the launch of a new product or business-line.

This internal communication strategy should be made up of interrelated steps that should be reviewed regularly. First of all, it is essential to assess your current situation and map out what you are currently doing – and not doing – in terms of internal communication. By understanding what is working and what is not, you can better align your communication strategy to your current business goals. 

Just like one would do for a communication exercise for external publics, it is essential to set out the objectives for your internal communications strategy.

Thirdly, please think twice before sending the “all staff” email/memo/intranet message that is unfortunately still common practice for many, as internal publics are made up of various target audiences and are not just one big blob. By clearly defining your audience, one can discern where your efforts need to be placed.

One then needs to craft the messages you want to deliver. They need to be relevant to the audience and be clear and compelling.

Defining the best communication tools and channels to deliver these messages is the next step. Some messages are better conveyed through different channels than others. Messages can get lost if the wrong channel mix is used.

When the tools are in place, what is left is for the delivery of the message itself as all communication strategies are based on delivering the right message, to the right audience, at the right time, with the right effect.

Which brings us to the last step of the strategy, which is the evaluation and learning phase during which one learns from key performance indicators in order to continually optimize what one is doing. At the minimum, quarterly evaluations of an internal communication strategy should be done for appropriate remedial communication action to be taken in time. 

A team’s blindness is often the responsibility of the leaders.  Good internal communication will help employees feel trusted and connected to each other, which in turn increases productivity. So, as much as independence at work and personal initiative should be valued, people should never work in a vacuum. They need to be included and they need to understand. Only mushrooms can grow in the dark.