6 Responses

1. mercer survey in 2000

   Jenny

   Although specifically about change communication Mercer carried out a very interesting study in 2000 wich relates "use" and "value" of different communication media.

   I can’t put my hand on it just at the moment but you can google it and find it I’m sure.

   I have referred to it and included some of the data in my "Communicating Change" ebook for sale in my online shop on my website

   I hope this helps

   Rus

   http://www.coach-and-courses.com

2. breifing
   Hi

   I think variety is the key to this, I have often found that electronic emails are not enough and voice is also required to complete the communication. No one practice works well for everyone so try a combination, it may be trial and error and different combinations will work better with different people.

3. longevity…

    Hi Jenny,

   Putting together the guide is probably the easiest bit… giving it longevity passed the initial buzz is much trickier.  Because you can’t second guess people’s ideal medium or the strength of the message delivery you might be best off designing a communication ‘menu’. Give people best practice on the ‘how’ not the ‘when or what’. My experience is that formated guideline can work really well for a while but the predictability of it soon wears thin on the recipient.

   Be brave and always do the unexpected if you want your message to stick. I’m much more alert if I don’t know what’s coming next…

   Mix things up and keep your communication fresh.  

   tim keehner

   http://www.twobaldblokes.com 

4. Communication
   Jenny
   A company I used to do bsuiness with were really good at internal communications. They encouraged team leaders to run team briefings at least once per week with standard templates for format and content. You can find a team brief template at http://www.abctrainingsolutions.biz/managementskills2.html. Just scroll down to ‘Team Briefing Template’
   Hope that helps.
   Happy Days!
   Bryan
   http://www.abctrainingsolutions.biz

5. Communication

   hi,

   while running my small business of 8 internal people and 10 external consultants, i found a combination of a number of tactics worked – as the comments above atest to.

   Our strategy was to keep people in the know who needed to be in the know about their area.

   So we did daily 7 – minute check-ins no discussion jst a reporting on 1. what top thing working on today. 2. Stuck point. 3. Metric i.e. new client, A/R, A/P, etc.

   Weekly "management meet" during which we tackled problems and reviewed financials in detail.

   External consutlant check-in’s once a week simial to daily check-in’s.

   hope that’s helpful.

   dr jim sellner, PhD., DipC.

6. Training and internal comms

   Hi Jenny

   As someone who has worked in internal comms since 1997 (my presence on Training Zone is as an occasional writer), I’m afraid there isn’t really a simple answer to your post – it all depends on what you are trying to do.

   The authors of previous answers are correct – there is no one-size-fits-all approach. So, if you are writing a best practice guide for trainers in a particular organisation, then I would say approach the existing internal comms team and ask them which methods they find work best for that particular workforce.

   If you are writing a general best practice guide for trainers in any organisation, then you will need to examine the differences between launching new (or relaunched) provision and the long-term goal of enabling people to find the information they need quickly and easily. At a guess you would need to look at various combinations of media – not forgetting that the approach to office-based people with access to an intranet is completely different to the approach you would take within an organisation where many employees visit a depot once or twice a week to pick up their instructions and equipment.

   I would say the most successful organisations look at what they want to achieve and are then flexible in how they go about achieving it – think about outcomes rather than messages. Two other points would be don’t forget the importance of line managers and that news from training teams/departments will probably be competing with news from the CEO and every other department you can think of, so there is a lot of noise out there.

   I hope that helps!

   Louise