Asked to justify your existence?

A new resource that calculates the financial impact of effective internal communication is available here. It’s a ‘beta’ version and any feedback or ideas are very welcome! Send them here.

SharePoint Article Now Available

Snapcomm’s white paper – ‘Tips to maximise the value of SharePoint’ is now available here.

Effective Internal Communications – why it’s so important – reason #3

Good reason # 3 - Retain revenues in a shrinking market

If demand for your organization’s products or services is reducing, in order to keep revenues healthy, it becomes even more important to drive organizational performance to increase your share of a shrinking market.
In a competitive marketplace, organizations need to be agile, to reduce process inefficiencies and to increase effectiveness across the business. Effective employee communications plays a critical role in achieving these goals with an investment that’s small compared to value gained.
Good employee communication is a competitive advantage. Read more

SharePoint Update

I’ve just finished collating all the information I have about SharePoint. It’s aimed at Internal Communicators but not yet in a format that I can post to a webpage yet (no references, not proof read properly etc). If you’d like a copy, feel free to request it here.

Effective Internal Communications – why it’s so important – reason #2

Good reason # 2 - Maintain operational effectiveness

Uncertainty due to a lack of effective internal communication can cause high performing employees to jump ship. Low morale within remaining staff can impact customer interactions and damage brand identity.

Uncertainty can also damage a company’s culture. Competition for internal resources can increase between (and inside of) departments. Focus can shift onto projects that ‘look good’ but don’t really contribute towards real business objectives.

Good employee communications can enable you to retain your best employees, protect your company culture and maintain the strength of your brand. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, it costs at least one-third of a new hire's annual salary to replace them. There are also associated opportunity costs such as lower productivity during re-training to consider. It is much more cost-effective to retain good staff and profitable customers than to replace them.
Read more

Effective Internal Communications – why it’s so important during an economic downturn

There is now a new article here which talks about the importance of good employee communications during an economic downturn. Here’s a short extract:

Good reason # 1 - Maintain productivity

No news is definitely not good news from an employee communications perspective.
October 2008 Research from Weber Shandwick showed that 71% of people felt that their company should be communicating more about current economic problems. Unfortunately, the uncertainty caused by lack of internal communications can cause staff to be less productive. In fact, Workforce Week reported in October 08 that 48 percent of staff said that the economic uncertainty has caused them to be less productive at work.

Sharepoint resources

At the recent Internal Communications summit, quite a few people were asking about Sharepoint. There’s some good stuff on the Fast Forward Blog here. There’s also a recent book here.

Wanna join the Auckland Internal Communicators Networking Group?

Feel free to send me a message and I'll add you to the invite list.

Internal Comms Summit 08

I'm looking forward to seeing some of you at the Internal Communications Summit in a few weeks. Click here to check out the program

Great evening, fantastic feedback

What a fantastic evening last night. The presentation was practical with lots of useful ideas about what’s worked and what hasn't. We had our biggest turnout yet with plenty of time for drinks and getting to know each other. Thanks so much to everyone who helped this event come together.

The presentation is available here.

Networking group meeting tonight

I'm looking forward to seeing some of you tonight at one of our biggest turnouts...so large in fact it was 'sold out'.

Claire Johnstone, the General Manager of Corporate for the Ministry of Transport in New Zealand and Steph Beath, an IT business analyst with the Ministry of Transport will be sharing some insights and learning from the MOT's award winning intranet.

If Claire and Steph are amenable, a copy of the presentation will be available here in the coming weeks.

Internal Communications Resources

We've now put up some free hot tips resources for internal communicators. Any feedback welcome!

Presentation - Cross Cultural Communications

Available here

Auckland Meeting update

It was good to see those of you that were able to come to the meeting last week. Mariska’s presentation was as enjoyable as ever and generated a great deal of discussion. Also the decision was made to move this group under the PRINZ umbrella for the next meeting so see how it goes (I’m sure we’ll all be really happy). Dates to be finalised but probably sometime just after Easter.
Unfortunately I’m unable to put Mariska’s presentation up on the site at the moment as my main computer (with all my website tools) is away being fixed (all very frustrating!!) If anyone would like me to email it to them, please drop me a mail and I will reply with an attachment.

Cheers,

sarah.perry@snapcomms.com