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.