Corporate Communication – Internal Communication

As promised, that I would discuss concepts of corporate communication and relate them to daily life situations, here is my second post on Internal communication.

                                   
Photo Credit: Jostel Corporation 

Theoretically speaking, Internal communication refers to the exchange of information and ideas within the organization.  Internal communication helps the employees do their jobs, develop clear sense of the organization’s mission and identify and react quickly to potential problems. It helps to maintain a flow of information in the organization.  The various terms used to describe communication between the organization and its employees are, ‘staff communication’, ‘employee communication’ and ‘ internal communication’.  Significance of organizational/internal communication is employee productivity and organizational identification.

Phew!! That was heavy! :P

You might wonder why begin with internal communication when there are so many other topics that can be discussed? Well it’s simple, isn’t it? Charity always begins at home. In order to succeed one should always start with himself/herself and the immediate environment rather than venturing alien land without experience. It is only when you have a strong base can you build a tall building, without a strong and firm base won’t it collapse? 

So let’s try and understand internal communication, you see finally what matters are not remembering the definitions or what the textbook says, but to understand what it tried to explain.

As kids, the first people we communicate with are, our parent, siblings, relatives and those around us. They are the people we deal with frequently and eventually build a bond with. These are those very people who rush to help us out when in trouble, who stand by us in testing times, who celebrate our victories and help us recover from our defeat and fight back. This is our family and the whole concept has the base of – LOVE, TRUST and LOYALTY.

Photo Credit: Google Images

In the context of an organization, the employees are the family. You GET what you GIVE, if you treat your employees as family they will treat you similarly. It is not less known a fact that, people go leaps and bounds in order to be there for the ones they love and this is exactly what the organization tries to achieve from its employees. The employees are eventually the ambassadors of the organization. If the employees aren’t happy or don’t trust the organization, how can you expect external stakeholders to have any trust in the organization?

It is important that the organization communicates about their ventures, goals missions etc. to their employees because unless they make them feel a part of the organization they won’t develop love, trust and loyalty towards it. Well this can be simply understood by this example.

Example:-
Imagine you live in a family of six (grandparents, parents and a couple of teen kids). Now the family is going to buy a new car. The grandparents are the head of the family, they are discussing which car to buy. The kids are not involved in the discussion – they are alienated. How do you think the kids will perceive the family? They are most likely to think that the elders of the house don’t care about their opinion/ they don’t hold importance in the family/ the elders couldn’t care less about them or their opinions.

On the contrary, imagine the family (grandparents and parents) took the main decision of buying a new car and then involved the children in the discussion of ‘which car to buy’. Now, how do you think the children will react? They are most likely to be thrilled, excited, feel important and come to love and respect the elders more because the elders care about what they think and their opinion is important.

Now lets look at the same situation but in the organizational scenario, in which case the

Grandparents = board of directors

Parents = management

Teen children = staff

Does it make sense now? With the second explanation, you can see the hierarchy as well as the involvement of the staff in the decision making process and how the employees’ perception about their organization is formed.

It is only after the employee feels like he/she is a part, an important part, of the organization can he/she develop love, trust and loyalty towards their organization.  Maybe it sounds silly to take special efforts to build a relationship with the employees, but it only makes sense to do so, as the employees are the organizations biggest assets and greatest ambassadors.

Internal communication also proves to be  ‘The Knight in Shining Armor’ during a crisis situation. If the organization communicates well with its staff and keeps them informed about the crisis, they will not be clueless about what is happening and won’t panic. Well-informed staff becomes the strength and support of the organization unlike a situation where the staff is not aware of the latest news about the crisis and they begin loosing trust.

Photo Credit: Google Images

These efforts taken by the organization, in order to build a relationship and communicate with its employees is called internal communication. This can be in the form of birthday greeting, celebrating festivals in office, emails about the company’s ventures, the CEO (or any person at a higher position in the organization) talking to the staff regarding the organization etc. are all efforts of internal communication. An organization that communicates well with its employees be assured that they are not alone, their family (employees) will always have its back! :)

I will soon be back with another concept, till then tootles! :)

“Your company really has to work for you before you’ll really work for your company.”

― Stan Slap