communicate with your employees to boost your business

Many companies have produced internal newsletters for their people for decades, but how many realise the importance of internal communications?

Today, with email and intranets, mobile phones and text messaging, internal communications can sometimes appear more disorganised than ever, mainly due to the difficulty of co-ordinating so many different channels and technologies.

So, how can companies regain control and re-introduce consistency into their communications? And is it worth doing?

From a brief trawl of press articles, it seems that many companies, especially large corporations, are beset with major problems of absenteeism, high staff turnover, workplace bullying and low morale.

Many of these problems can be resolved by improving management; and at the heart of this is the management of communications.

Most people like to feel valued; we like to be acknowledged for our contribution, for struggling into work on a rainy day when the roads are blocked; for staying late 10 minutes when we’ve sorted out something for an awkward customer. It doesn’t actually take much.

But when we turn up for work and nobody says hello, we’re left to get on with a pile of work that is too much for us, there is no supervision or guidance, and the time drags, few of us would want to stay in such a job.

These days, a common feeling when dealing with many company employees in service industries is that they don’t care about what they do for you, because their employer doesn’t care about them.

This is where improved employee communications can have an instant effect: by demonstrating to employees how important they are, it is possible to motivate them to do their jobs enthusiastically and to provide excellent service.

Keeping people informed through briefings, employee newsletters and intranets can make a real difference, as can getting to know your people and acknowledging their existence.

To provide some helpful tips on improving employee communications, Zarywacz editorial resources has added three new prompt sheets on:

• internal communications
• two-way information flow
• employee newsletters

They are free to download or print and can be used as the starting point for developing or improving employee communications activities.

More prompt sheets will be published shortly.

• 10th June 2004.

• If you have any comments or questions or would like advice on improving any aspect of your business communications, please email hello@editorialresources.co.uk or call 0845 200 7830.

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