Inside out – connector or communicator?

It’s that time of year when my attention turns outside in and I take another long look at the role of internal communications. Sharing knowledge around the preparation and implementation of good internal communication strategies always leads me to emphasis the fact that you can’t have good external relationships if your internal relationships are poor or neglected. Relationships of all kinds give our organisations the permission they need to do what they do and to keep their licence to operate. Sadly, internal relationships often fall by the wayside with employees taken for granted by the organisation’s leadership. Much has been made of employee engagement and the need to ensure that everyone is delighted, enthralled and active in the workplace – which is great but, as humans, it is a rare thing if this actually comes to pass, particularly in an era that features zero hour contracts, unsafe work spaces, stress, burnout and the odd oppressive boss. What might be considered ‘gold standard’ internal communication is swiftly cancelled out by bad behaviour – whether that’s the boss, the colleague or the employee themselves. So what’s next for internal communication? We’ve already seen the evolution of titles – employee engagement executive, employee relations officer, chief happiness officer and so on – but have we actually seen an evolution of the role? I don’t think we have but it is getting there. Many internal communicators have moved on from ‘sending out stuff’ and simply actioning executive demands for information sharing and tools like Slack and Trello have helped internal organisational culture move forward a little (although there are growing reports of task update fatigue as employees struggle to use the collaborative tools and actually complete their work).My thinking is that there’s some internal rethinking for organisations to undertake and that has to start with an audit of their people, values, culture, tools and systems. Each of these things informs the other and a cohesive, effective internal communication strategy can only be formulated once this is done (and if you need some help understanding just how it is done, then we can help).Internal communication is everyone’s responsibility but not everyone’s area of expertise. Bringing people together, facilitating good relationships, developing a healthy values-based internal culture is the realm of the internal communications professional and always has been. Communicators for sure – but also connectors, facilitators and encouragers specialising in building a workplace culture where people are empowered not just to get the job done but to do a great job.