With an ever changing face on business, internal communication is becoming more important than ever before. Employees need to feel they are part of the bigger picture. They need to believe that they are valued and appreciated within the company. Executives also need to find the most appropriate means of communicating with their employees. This can be very challenging depending on the type and size of the company. Many outlets of communication can be available from visual postings to company intranet to corporate newsletters. The main challenge is to determine the course of communication that will be most effective in reaching all employees.
When I worked for Wal-Mart, they took many avenues to keep open communication. At the beginning of each shift, a shift meeting was held to inform all employees at the beginning of their shift of the previous days sales, profits, and any company news for the day. This method was effective in reaching all employees within the store. As an employee of Sheetz, we held monthly meetings that were mandatory to all employees. In addition, to allow for company bonding, they held annual picnics for all employees and their families to help ensure that all employees felt appreciated and gave them a sense of importance within the company. These picnics were attended by the owners of the company who made a point of socializing and listening to employee concerns.
A common pitfall to avoid is a form of communication that would only attract those with high opinions. Many methods, such as ratemyprofessor.com attracts only those with very high opinions and very low opinions of the professors. An executive needs to make sure that lines of communication is open to all employees equally.
Here is a link to an article that discusses different methods of internal communication and the reasons why they work.
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Here is the link. I couldn't get it to attach before
ReplyDeletehttp://www.occasionalwords.com/biz/
I worked within the Pennsylvania State Government for a little over a year. Our main source of internal communication was top-down email. Management would send the whole office email messages concerning a topic and we would read it. Sometimes employees would reply with concerns or questions back to the managers in hopes of getting some answers but they never came. There was never any back and forth and suggestions by us were never taken into consideration. We also had an intranet which was used to post pictures of other departments doing something like having an office picnic or getting awards for good work. It was also another source to post any important news employees had to know about.
ReplyDeleteHere is a link to good internal communication strategy: http://www.morebusiness.com/running_your_business/businessbits/Internal-Communication-Strategie.brc
This is not something that I is followed within a bureaucracy.
While I was in high school, in the summer I worked for Giant Eagle. I was a stock boy and did other various jobs such as unloading the truck and various errands. When I started working there, they were an independent store and within a few weeks, they decided to go corporate. When things were independent with the store, at times there was a lot of confusion with who was in charge of what job and what was supposed to be done. Everything was really lax and there was not a hassle to get the work done because it would eventually be done. In addition, the morale of the employees was not very high. There was definitely no internal communication.
ReplyDeleteWhen things switched to corporate, we immediately started having more meetings and there was a set procedure of what jobs to do and when to do these jobs. The managers listened to us and listened to what we wanted to change and what we liked. Working in high school as a stock boy, I did not think that I had a lot of say in what went on the work place but I was surprised. The managers asked not only me but the stock boys and workers as well. There was a set schedule put in place as well as a rotation of jobs and managers followed up on those jobs to make sure the work was completed and completed well. The morale of the employees started to pick up and I enjoyed coming to work and was happy to be working with my managers and other employees.
Internal communication is very important to use and it does not matter what or where you work. As you can see, it took my summer job for Giant Eagle that I did not enjoy, and turned it around and made things more enjoyable. The morale of the company and employees was up and quality work was getting done.
Matthew Beucker
The persons in charge of the environment of the McDonald's restaurants of France follow each year one information day, conceived to inform them of the progress made as regards environment as well as tasks to come and new laid down objectives. These McGreen meetings are also the occasion to reward the restaurant which posts the best environmental performances and/or the environmental project most interesting. In 2007 and 2008, they talked about the following topics: innovations in the field of the system of recycling, development of the energy management, new legislative aspects as regards environment and measures to the fight against the littering.
ReplyDeleteAt the time of the McGreen meeting of 2008 in Paris, the team of the restaurant of Nancy saw itself decerning the McGreen Award. Concurrently to its excellent environmental performances, our restaurant could realize savings of electricity above the average. The energy use produces at McDonald's the highest impact on the environment
Within the framework of the internal training of restaurants employee, the consultants in environment take part each year to 10 to 12 environmental management classes of 2 hours each. Approximately 200 people take part in these courses each year.
Currently, I'm working for a company that has extremely poor internal communication (I'm going to avoid naming the company because 1: I currently work for them and 2: this is a public forum: but their business specifically deal with communications). The managers and senior employees create an atmosphere that says to everyone, "you should just know what is going on without asking." This means when things need to get done, the place becomes a chaotic mess. There's no delegation of tasks, no direction of goals; just do it and go home. Because of the lack of communication in the company, many tasks do not get done.
ReplyDeleteNot only is there no communication from the top down, the managers don't accept communication of ideas from bottom up. At best well thought ideas get ignored.
I'm not trying to make this a complaint session about my job, only that they lack of internal communication impacts the efficiency and effectiveness of the employees.
I found this video online, and found it somewhat fitting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PujlvJhEEE0
When I worked at Viessmann, the company was really aware that all its subsidiaries worldwide needed a tool that able them to communicate together, exchange information about the market trend, products information, etc. Several actors were implicated in the communication of products, for different purposes, the company had to enable the access to the business systems, for sure to internal employees worldwide, but also to customers, suppliers, business partners and distributors. But each of them needed different information, and some of them shouldn’t have access to confidential information of the company.
ReplyDeleteViessmann managed to be very efficient and a leader in its business thanks to its communication organization, the company worked with IBM, to introduce a Service Oriented Architecture. The company is today able to provide the right information to the right person, regardless of its location worldwide.
Employees within the company had the possibility to access to the information they needed, immediately, and felt really implicated in Viessmann. When the company had a message to communicate, they used this program, for example a modification in a machine, and the employees in relation with this products got immediately the information.
I was really impressed working there, how the company managed such a good organization in its internal and external communication.
Here is a link of a video presenting the company, another form of communication they developed, the ability to communicate with your cell phone to your heater system. You can send a text message to your system before arriving at home, and the heater will go on, therefore when you arrive at home, your house is already warm.
http://www.viessmann.ca/en/flash/cofilm.html
Internal communications is a generic expression for all communication (formal and informal) that an organization undertakes with its close stakeholders — i.e. those people with whom it has a relationship that requires support, principally direct/indirect employees and/or members. The main purpose of formal internal communications is to inform employees or members of the direction and performance of the organization (and/or team) to which they belong.
ReplyDeleteMy Real Life Example:
I was working with my dad in our construction business, me and my dad being the owners and decision makes had to go out for 3 days for a family function. The day we came back from the trip we saw that the work done in our absence is much lower than our standards, thus we had to do the work again, which made us realize that there is constant need of supervision and flow of information between us and employee's which made us to appoint a manger who would be co-ordinating between us and employee's so that we don't waste time and money. Since then we didn't had any problem of that kind.
Thus i think it is really important for any organizations success or failure as to how and in what intensity the internal information is flowing.
http://managementhelp.org/mrktng/org_cmm.htm
As many of the posts above have discussed above internal communication is an integral part of any organization. I believe it is an indicator of a successful organization when they have implemented successful two way communication throughout the organization.
ReplyDeleteMy personal experience with organization has showed that this concept is not necessarily followed. During my tenure with Blockbuster I found that the company was very good at communicating from the top down. When something happened or the company wanted us to change promotion they were very quick and successful at communicating the new expectations. On the other hand however there were no channels that the individual stores could use to communicate with upper management. The only communication that we had to higher levels of management was through our district managers. Who in turn needed to continue to roll up the information. This I felt was very frustrating especially when great ideas were created at the store level.
There was a brief stint when upward communication was encouraged. In the six years that spent with the company. During this time the company asked for employees to fax in new ideas that they had to improve operations and sales. This was encouraged through monthly contests and rewards for those employees that had suggested ideas that had been implemented. The program was eventually discontinued which I beleive was unfortunate. However a better way to handle the situation would have been for the company to offer and avenue of communication upwards and then build a culture instead of turning it into a competition. To me this would encourage aspirations for continues improvment at the store level.