Change Communications

1. f2f channel/vehicles -
Every survey everywhere has pointed to this communication channel
and it’s specific vehicles (1 - 1 meetings with supervisor;
team meetings; town halls; skip level sessions with higher-level
managers; informal tours by and sit-downs with the CEO; etc.)
as an employee’s preferred source for UNDERSTANDING. Awareness
and knowledge can be had through other channels and their vehicles,
but true understanding can only occur with a channel and its vehicle
that is dialogic and symmetrical.

2. say/do message agreement -
The message is one thing: the source of the message - and the
legitimacy, credibility and believability of the source are
other things entirely. The message we so diligently craft in the
communication from the source has to be the same as the message
received from the behavioural actions and symbolic actions of
the source. Or, in David Ferrabee’s words: true leadership.

3. relationship-management role -
This is about role-enactment in internal communication. In
particular, it’s about how the head of the internal communication
department sees her or his role. There is evidence from many studies
to suggest that we enact the roles with which we are comfortable.
That is, it is not only ‘management’ that puts limits on the role(s)
we play: we self-limit. For example, we place ourselves in various
roles:
(1) information packager and sender (info/message-oriented);
(2) communication system enabler (tools/media-oriented);
(3) you too can be a communicator trainer (supervisor
competency-oriented)
(4) employee change programmer (change them
not us-oriented: change their attitudes, culture, morale,
engagement, etc. - and voila - productivity, retention, quality,
costs, sales, revenues, etc. change for the better) and
(5) stakeholder relationship-builder (advocate for them, change
(deeds; actions; behaviours) us both but particularly us and
maintain mutual trust-oriented).

With stakeholders - self-identified groups who perceive they
have a stake in the consequences of an organization’s decisions
and thus in the organization’s decisions themselves - one finds
customer relationship management, supplier chain relationship
management, shareholder relationship management, community
relationship management (or Corporate Social Responsibility),
and even media relationship management. Stakeholder
relationship-building is the number one topic in the
PR/Communication field’s academic literature at the moment.

Yet, in our internal or employee communication literature,
one does not easily find the concept: employee relationship
management. We seem stuck on the change programmer role,
particularly this straw we’ve grasped called engagement. Yet,
the relationship-management role is more strategic. It is about
behaviour management not communication management.