Why knowing your people pays off

The full and original article was published on Comms2Point0 by Emma Rodgers

Much is said about the value of good research and insight and understanding who your audience is – what they do, what motivates them, and how they prefer to be communicated with. Often it seems this is something that communications and marketing specialists automatically do when it comes to external communications. Sadly, I don’t think the same can always be said for communicating with people inside organisations. Generalisations can be made, we don’t know enough about who are workforce are and regular and effective evaluation can be limited.

So I’ve put together six tips on making sure you do all you can to know the people in your organisation and how this can help make for better communications.

1. Don’t think of employees as ‘just employees’. Their job is only one part of who they are. Recognising they are human beings first and foremost will help you to better connect and build trust in your communications and the outcomes they bring.
2. Seek to understand. It seems really obvious but always seek to understand where and how people want to find out news about your organisation. Ask the question, listen to what they say and don’t assume that one size fits all.
3. Regularly check what you think you know.  Even if what you find isn’t something you wanted to hear, by being more informed, regularly checking, and adjusting your communications accordingly, you can make sure you’re making a real difference with your communications.
4. Involve people in what you’re doing. Whether it’s to test communications, act as a conduit for feedback from colleagues or to give ideas or thoughts for how you can improve, make sure you look to involve employees whenever you can.
5. Collaborate and share. So many of our employees have talents and skills that could help solve some of the trickiest of challenges but we don’t know about them. Challenge yourself and your organisation to think about how you can better facilitate collaboration, embrace ideas and share.
6. Be clear about what you want employees to do. Use the insight you have to be really clear about what it is that you want employees to do.  Communicating the right message to the right employee at the right time in the right way makes it more likely to be acted on.

The full and original article was published on Comms2Point0 by Emma Rodgers