Communication is culture

In many ways, traditional internal communications, and the infrastructures to support them, are obsolete. Classical intranets, newsletters, magazines, posters – all of these things are unidirectional legacies in an age that expects a conversation, not a communique.

Of course, business does require that a great deal of the communication must be unidirectional – but it doesn’t need to seem like that.

The backbone of your internal communications outreach will always need to be a robust, scalable platform that allows social interaction and bidirectional information flow – but for it to truly work requires something more.

Building a culture of communication and trust is at least as important to successful internal communication within a company as platform, channels and content. Colleagues need channels for information and dialog,and most importantly they need to trust that these channels are backed by a culture of communication – meaning that what they say will be heard. Nothing lowers employee morale more than being deceived by management. In my experience, it’s even more destructive to pretend to listen to them than to not consult them at all.

Why is it so destructive? Because management so often forgets that employees talk amongst themselves anyway. Opening up official channels is a means to improve information flow and join the conversation, if the user base accepts that the intent is genuine and the platform is beneficial to them. Without that buy-in, employees will just develop a communications network themselves, out of your control and using shadow IT infrastructure such as WhatsApp rings, Facebook groups, DropBox accounts, and more – all of which compromise your ability to manage your workforce and give your data security managers grey hairs.

So what can you do to build a culture of communication in your company? The basics are pretty simple.

• Join the conversation with your employees, and listen to what they say.
• Have a sense of humor, and accept that the feedback you receive may not always be positive.
• Understand that you will be judged on how you deal with negative feedback as much as your policies themselves.
• Invest in collaborative spaces, real and virtual, that allow any group of colleagues to assemble and talk.
• Ensure information cascades pass information up as well as down.
• Support the technical infrastructure with a human one.

This is easily said, of course. Implementing it is a far more complex and delicate process, and will lean heavily on legacy structures – technical infrastructure, corporate culture, local languages. But don’t let that stop you. Times have changed, and you need a good internal communications – sooner, rather than later.

See how I can help you on my services page.