Internal Communication

Chili’s restaurants served over 200,000 free meals to veterans on Veterans Day. One of those meals went very, very poorly, and now the restaurant chain is in a worse position than if it had never undertaken the effort in the first place. What went wrong? An act of kindness to veterans should have been non-controversial.

[Editor’s Note: In honor of Veterans Day, we present this case study that combines honoring our nation’s veterans and boosting employee engagement.] It’s undeniable: An engaged workforce can move the needle in any industry. In retail, though, markets continually fluctuate, shopping trends change, economies contract and expand, and it’s the workforce that determines whether a company succeeds and makes a positive impact on the world.

Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc. (TAMS) struggled with ensuring integration. As I’m certain you know, in a fast-paced environment it’s very easy to get caught up in your projects and fail to consider integration, or much of anything besides your immediate team. Over the past five years TAMS has implemented processes that have helped—dare I say forced—its marketing organization to integrate. Here’s how TAMS did it.

The second part of a two-part series about building an employee intranet. This part of the article deals with the actual build and design of the system and why it’s important to keep a beta user team and your C-suite advocates briefed.

Those outside the corporate world can be blissfully unaware of how unwieldy a corporation can be, especially when it comes to getting new initiatives implemented and everyone on board, paddling in the same direction. But effecting change across large organizations is more often like slaloming the Titanic through a gantlet of icebergs. The lurking danger, just under the surface, is lack of communication.

Brands, in an effort to get out a shareable tweet or a super-likeable post, are often caught in a daily trap of shallow engagement with its communities. Your stakeholders — humans just like you and… Continued

Research consistently shows that effective internal communications help increase employee job satisfaction, productivity, morale, commitment and trust. An engaged workforce inspires excellence and results in employees who are motivated and consistently produce good work. As we know, to achieve staff engagement, employees must be kept informed through regular and effective communications that are timely and relevant. So how can organizations use PR to continually connect with employees?

We most often hear about updates to the hardware and software platforms we depend on through a product launch, some early buzz about the next iPhone, updates to the Microsoft Office suite or early leaked photos and video of Snap spectacles. And no matter how many blogs, Twitter handles or newsletters you follow, it seems we are more often than not part of the consumer pool, hearing about these new things as they launch. We’re then left scrambling to adjust our strategies and skill mixes to adapt and adopt so as to not be left behind. What if communicators and IT worked together instead of assuming it was an “us vs. them” scenario?

It’s getting to the point where we should start to doubt whether digital privacy is a reliable concept anymore. For PR professionals in particular, it’s time to put that doubt into practice in their internal communications. Email and Twitter DMs are not mediums where one can safely blow off steam or otherwise behave unprofessionally.

It’s true – a lot of people just don’t understand what PR people do. They think it’s about pitching the media, chasing positive coverage, then rinsing and repeating. Certainly media relations is an important component… Continued