Communicate what employees need to know

The always excellent Liam Fitzpatrick has an insightful post on his blog today about the merits of communicating strategy to employees. This comment really hit the nail on the head:

So my suggestion for communicating strategy? Stop it and get on with introducing the boss to their people and concentrate on explaining what people have to do next week.

Of course you have to paint a vision and describe the journey. But I think you'll get there a lot faster if you work on the authentic human components... and a bit less on the carefully argued powerpoints.

Liam's absolutely right. In many companies too much of what is communicated is irrelevant to many employees. The problem is too few organisations ensure the information they share is put in a local context to make it meaningful for the people receiving the messages.

Business communicators are familiar with this problem. To start correcting it, communicators should be ensuring messages are presented to employees in the form of a narrative that explains the employees' role and the role of their immediate team mates in the success of the business. But we have to go beyond that and also need to reduce the volume of dry and uninspiring information cascade.

There will always be a need to cascade some information. But wherever possible we should be promoting dialogue, real face to face discussion between real people. We should personalise the delivery of messages and seek a response. It is important to communicate in such a manner because it ensures communication is two-way. It also serves to help embed the line manager as a trusted source of information for his team, while allowing employees' ideas and concerns to be raised at decision making level.