Internal communication

by Pamela Mounter

When we started looking at ways to improve internal communication in BP’s (British Petroleum) marketing business we asked managers for their views. Two comments stand out:

‘I haven’t got time.’

‘Don’t they read the papers?’

Sounds familiar? The case study that follows explains the steps we took to persuade BP management that communication is essential to leadership, that – like financial analysis – it is a tool for improving the bottom line. It is not a soft issue. Some general principles should be set out first, though, to put the BP case study in context.

Why communicate?

The short answer is that if staff do not know what they are doing and why, they are less likely to perform well. People do perform well, even when they expect the worst, if they are briefed in a timely and honest way. They are less likely to perform well if they are kept in the dark.

Equally important, good communication is a valuable motivator. Communication is the corporate glue that helps build teams, reinforces pride in working for a company and encourages people to work that bit harder to beat the competition.

According to a study carried out by Columbia University in the US, while six out of ten chief executive officers consider frequent communication with their employees important to their jobs, nine out of ten expect it to be more important to their jobs in future. They recognize that communication must be in line with strategy so that people have the right framework to work within. For them, communication is the link between an organization’s compelling need for change and an employee’s compelling need for security.

What do people want to know?

Communication is of course a two-way process involving listening as much as telling. The word comes from the Latin communicare – to share. The information shared falls into three main categories:

• corporate (builds pride and belonging, e.g. ‘I am proud to work for and feel good about my company’);

• cascade (communicates objectives, e.g. ‘What do you want me to do and why?’);

• personal (day-to-day motivation, e.g. ‘How do you persuade me to achieve what you want me to do?’).

An effective communication process will address the needs of all three. It will also encourage people to say what they think about the information they have been given and, more importantly, show that what they say makes a difference. When people see management taking action on their feedback the whole communication process gains trust and credibility. And when that happens the communication process become a genuine tool for improving the bottom line.

Some communication techniques

Read any attitude survey and it will say people want face-to-face communication. This may be admirable – but how practical is it? Some managers are very uncomfortable at communicating with their staff. They need coaching/training/encouraging to do so. Then there is the sheer difficulty of getting peripatetic managers to stay in one place long enough to give quality time to face-to-face communication. Neither of these challenges is insuperable, but they do need working on. Meanwhile there are other useful techniques to back up the desired one-to-one face-to-face communication and these are described in the BP case study that follows.

Primary tools range from various forms of debrief such as team meetings and large gatherings where staff have the chance to listen to, and ask questions of, a senior manager, to facilitated focus group meetings that give staff the chance to provide feedback in a ‘safe’ environment. Among the secondary tools to support the primary processes are articles in house journals, videos, audio-tapes (easy to listen to on the way to work), award schemes and surveys.

The point to make about both primary and secondary tools is that they are more about processes than products. They need to be tailored to the individual needs of not just the company but also the specific part of that company. And they need to adhere to the basic communication principles of timeliness, openness and honesty.

There is one final essential point to make about communication and it is this: communication is a shared resource. It is not, as some people think, something that is done to them. Nor is it, as some managers think, something that people do for them. The success or failure of communication rests with the whole organization, with a little help from the person at the very top…