7 Reasons Why Internal Communications is Important

It’s Monday morning. It’s John Garrett coming to you with another episode of Green Apple Slices. I have on the other line Accountants and Alliances for Sage Canada, Rachel Fisch.

Rachel: Hello, John. How are you doing this morning?

John: Doing great and I nailed your title this time.

Rachel: I know.

John: So things are looking good.

Rachel: That means I have to change it now. Just when you get it right for you, we need to —

John: I see what’s going on. Yeah, we always get together and talk through an article we find online about engagement and culture and just making the workplace a better place to be. This one was an article I found on Jostle and it was Seven Reasons Why Internal Communications Is Important. I think that this is something that a lot of places don’t really do and if they do, they don’t really do it well because this is typically the email that gets deleted or sent to the spam folder by everybody.

Rachel: Do you think that that means that maybe there’s some — so those who have thought of “Oh, maybe we should have some internal communications,” it just needs to know how to do it better. So I think that this is really good and that it reinforces what the intent behind internal communications actually is or what the opportunity maybe is a better word for internal communications and not just one of those lame auto-delete emails that you get.

John: This is not information that’s just filling up my email box. Is this vital and crucial for us to tell our people about? Yes. Well, then is email communication the best way? It’s probably your first question. If it’s yes, then make it that way and then make it something that they want to open. I mean, it’s similar to the emails that businesses are sending us when we shop at their stores. Is there an incentive to open this?

Rachel: Right. We talked a little while ago about where we most — okay, not most accounting firms. Some accounting firms actually have marketing staff because they believe they actually need to market to be getting new clients and stuff like that. So first of all, not all accountants do that. But certainly those that do, what they don’t think of is actually having essentially internal marketing. So I feel internal communications is kind of the main tool of what that internal marketing would be. You spend a lot of time crafting messages and services for your clients or potential clients. How much effort then should you maybe take to engage and to get the buy-in of your staff?

John: Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. People can go to greenapplepodcast.com. You can read the full article and all seven of the reasons. That’s exactly it, is it? It brings people together. It gets people talking. It gets people sharing. I think one great idea that some firms are doing is they have a weekly communication that goes out and at the bottom is kind of a green apple section where every week they showcase one employee’s passions or interests outside of work and then why that makes them better at their job. So then every week, you have a little Easter egg of sorts where you open it, you get to find out a secret sort of a thing that you didn’t know about people that you work around.

Rachel: Right. So not only do you want to be that person who’s highlighted, in many cases, but you now know somebody about your peers and your colleagues that you didn’t know before which is awesome. I know for us, I actually just came back. We didn’t talk about this last week, John. I just came back from Whistler. We had a leadership off site where the whole point is to get leaders from across the Canadian organization sharing and building and strategizing and making sure that everybody’s strategies are aligned and how can we help each other align better. A lot of things that go wrong in organizations actually have to deal with misunderstandings and miscommunications and so could very well be completely benign on behalf of the person that you’re staring daggers at. However, if you actually communicate, if you talk, if you encourage that a little bit, then there’s a lot of stuff that I don’t think would actually be major issues.

John: Right, exactly because then we’re all on the same page. And just putting things in the messaging that then makes people want to open them and want to talk about them is really crucial. Because you could send on the email with this information, but if no one’s opening them and just straight deleting them, then that defeats the purpose altogether but definitely something that people need to take seriously and do with some intent. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time is pretty much the moral of the story I think here.

Rachel: Yeah, a little bit. So I’m not going to call out any specific one of these. You can certainly go through all seven except for the last one which is internal communications creates a channel for feedback, debate and discussion. What I would say is that in some cases where I have seen kind of a centralized or internal communication, you know full well that is intended to be one way. They are not interested in your feedback or in creating a discussion. They are there to give an announcement of sorts, and that’s the end of the story. But I think that again going back to my point about this actually being an opportunity to actually open communication and welcome feedback and see what that then does to employee morale.

John: Absolutely. I completely agree. So with that said, should we —

Rachel: I thought you might.

John: — bring this episode to a close, Rachel.

Rachel: We should, yes.

John: Excellent. I just want to make sure that we had two-way dialogue here.

Rachel: And we are on the same page.

John: But if you want to read the full article, like I said, go to greenapplepodcast.com. All the links are there for all the episodes. Don’t forget to hit Subscribe so you don’t miss any of the future episodes, and on Wednesdays the one-on-one interviews I have with different people on there. Also, we have an Instagram account now. What’s your end? It’s so cool to see pictures of everyone that’s been a guest on there and all of their outside of work passions and just knowing that these are really great professionals, but these are all the cool things that they’re doing outside of work. It’s so neat to see. So check that out on Instagram. Yeah, have a good rest of the week. All right, talk to you soon, Rachel.

Rachel: Yeah. You too. Bye-bye.