Internal Communication: From the Podium to the Paystub

As a corporate HR person for over twenty-five years, I had a great opportunity to observe associations with an anthropologist's perspective. From the moment you walk through the revolving door into a pay stub generator office until the time you leave, you pick up a hundred little clues about how the organization operates and what it worth. For internal communicators, it is just as important to focus on these subtle messages since it is to design an award-winning communications strategy. This is why.

When you ask yourself "What exactly are we saying during this paystub generator, and what do we would like to say?" You will quickly produce a list of themes, initiatives, and values that you currently promote. You will look in employee communication materials, internal newsletters, your Intranet site, and plenty of different vehicles that you expect do the "heavy lifting" of internal communication for you. You will have the ability to spot the differences between what you DO say and what you would like to say for your group. So far, so great.

But assessing the published materials and superbly designed website content misses the point. Employees are extremely complicated when it comes to evaluating internal messaging. They could quickly spot the gap between the Party Line and the Way Things Really Work. That is why inner communicators who concentrate on the proper vehicles risk missing the channels that talk most loudly to workers.

As an example, you can talk about risk-taking until you're blue in the face, featuring risk-taking employees in your internal newsletter and giving awards to individuals who moved out on a limb. But the very first time your workers hear about the CEO bashing someone (or worse, shooting him) for carrying the incorrect risk, your campaign has gone to waste. Not only that - you look like hypocrites, for saying one thing and practicing another.

So am I asking your internal communications chief to control the CEO's behavior? Certainly not. That is not realistic, but what IS realistic is to call attention to the gaps between what's said to be appreciated, and what's actually appreciated, throughout the check stub. Consistency (HR people call it ) is your key.

That is why - talking of risk-taking - leading the internal communications function isn't for the faint of heart. Should you lack the guts to tell the emperor when he's naked, you need to find another profession.

Here is another illustration of misalignment in internal communications. Your company may view itself as fast paced, team-oriented and customer-focused: almost every check stubs does. It only takes one old-school, preachy "don't you dare" memo from HR to blow that perception. The first time your employees read a typical, thoughtless "expense reports filed more than 30 days late won't be processed" bonehead HR memo, your own rah-rah internal communications efforts turn into dust. People are not dumb. They know where the rubber meets the road.

This is the reason successful internal communications go stem to stern - by the Podium into the realpay stubs. Every communication vehicle, from an all-hands email blast to the CEO's Town Hall meeting, should stem from the exact same set of values and goals. It is not hard to fulfill this goal is the best leadership team gives the word. It doesn't even require the Messaging Police to examine each memo and Intranet page. It merely requires consistent, thoughtful education and awareness-building about the purchase price of off-message communication.

In a normal organization, the biggest trouble spots in Podium to create a pay stub communication-alignment efforts are IT, Finance, HR, and Facilities. These staff men have grown up with the idea that they make to set policies and convey them, period. Possessing that orientation, these supervisors might not immediately observe that their well-intentioned, knee-jerk policy-implementation efforts might derail your carefully calibrated communications strategy.

As an example, I worked in 1 check stubs that preached the virtues of global, 24/7, virtual collaboration. We are Where You're, was the message. Except, one afternoon the Accounting department declared that it anticipated invoices from all branches to be hand-delivered to Accounting in order to speed real pay stubs. As if! That edict completely undermined the "virtual" theme and was immediately removed. It requires a new mentality - one that the Internal Communications leader can fortify in each interaction with fellow leaders to move an organization from disjointed, at-odds communication to a set of coordinated listeners, singing in harmony.

And it's amazing when it happens. Workers start to trust the messaging and to incorporate it into their thinking. You'll see the results in customer interactions and in the speed of change attempts. Clients will perceive it. Job candidates and vendors will pick up on it, too. However, it's an all-purpose effort: far past the language in your lovely printed pieces, you've got to touch create pay stubs, the podium, and everything in between.