Emerging Issues in Internal Communications

This article points out the importance of how generational shifts affect internal communications. Two-way symmetrical communication will positively influence employee engagement. While some communications involve the human resources department, this study examines the use of the public relations department for internal communications. Consider what the study says about establishing commitment from employees and how expectations about communication are changing.

Findings

The Rise of Internal Social Media

One of the emerging trends in internal communication is the rise of internal social media channels. Some of the more popular platforms are SharePoint, Yammer, Jive, and Chatter, which are used for building intranets or as collaboration tools. Some of the features of these platforms include the ability for employees to like content, rate/review content, comment, and collaborate with other employees. These tools appeared to be more likely to be found in corporate settings with less presence in nonprofit and government environments. 

Some of the barriers to adopting these tools that participants mentioned included gaining approval from information technology and legal departments as well as senior leadership, who may see the channels as a waste of time. When adopted, these channels are fostering collaboration and three-way communications. An internal communication coordinator in a healthcare organization described this trend: 

Everyone should…be talking. So it should be us communicating to them, them communicating to us and then employees talking amongst each other. So that's …why we launched…our employee interactive forum, so that we could create posts, employees could comment on our posts and … talk to each other.  

Some employers took a hands-off approach to these new communication channels allowing for user-generated content and only monitored the content for insights into employee concerns, while others would take a more proactive approach. An internal communication adviser for a Global 500 company said, 

Anybody is entitled to their opinion, their frustrations and voicing those frustrations, so we want to make sure that they feel empowered to do so, but we also want to make sure that we work toward the healthy conversations, so that's what employee communications and internal comms. comes to play is presenting that healthy voice back into the conversation. So if we see a lot of comments that are…going down the doom and gloom path, we make sure that we infuse … a voice from the subject matter experts or somebody else that is a champion for it.  

An internal communication consultant said his company has found positive indicators associated with the adoption of internal social media channels: 

The research that we've done, if you have a robust internal social media environment, it drives all sorts of positive outcomes: employee retention, productivity, advocacy on behalf of the organization, willingness to recommend as a place to work… willingness to stand up for the company in a crisis, willingness to participate in public affairs campaigns, all of those can see positive increases in involvement and engagement in companies that have internal social media channels. 

While the number of internal communication channels has increased, some participants said two challenges are moving people from email to the new channels and a lack of one primary source of crucial information.