So, I am sitting at my desk minding my own business, when up pops an e-mail, "Effective June 2, 2007, Mr Big will be the new CEO of XYZ Corporation". Other pieces of basic 'Mr Big' information follow this earth-shattering news. As I gently lift my jaw from off the floor, to digest this news I wondered, is this the best way that the company could relay this information to me, a lowly cog in the wheel of production? Yes, I know we will have the grand staff meeting afterwards where we will hear the 'hows', 'whys' and 'wherefores' of this e-mail announcement, but was this the best way to communicate this major change to myself and the other 'cogs'?

I have two questions for you. Who is often the last person to hear about changes that will directly affect him/her in the workplace? What is the quickest (and some say) most reliable source of information in the workplace?

The answer to the first question is, of course, not the manager, not the supervisor but the so-called, 'ordinary employee' working in an organisation that does not have an effective communication system in place. And the answer to the second question is, of course, the grapevine. Okay, okay, confession time. So I did hear at the water-cooler through the grapevine that Mr Big was a coming. But said grapevine left out some valuable information.

What does effective employee communication have to do with business communication, you say? I will let Ron Martin, ABC fellow, answer that question.

"Businesses have recognised increasingly over the last three decades that internal communication is critically important, because employees are essential to serving a company's other two key constituencies - customers and shareholders. Albeit US-based, research has shown that poorly served employees serve customers poorly."

Do I hear a chorus of Amens from the many of us who have to put up with horrible service from employees who we do business with on a daily basis?

Mr Martin further states that, "successful, high-performance companies tend to focus their employee communication on business issues. Even messages addressing the 'softer' issues of values and culture should be delivered in a business context. A business succeeds in the market if it is competitive and its employees perform superbly in meeting customer needs".

Employers should more than wonder out aloud what happens when they lose a customer, large or small, because even though it may be just that one, incrementally it will impact on the company's bottomline. However, this issue of employee communication is not one-sided. On the one hand, organisations must ensure that it exists and that it is done properly. On the other hand, effective communication can spell the difference between retaining employees and losing them.

'Inside Edge', an employee communications consultancy, recently conducted a survey of nearly 2,300 white and blue collar workers in the US and the UK. Between 75 and 80 per cent said that "the way their employers communicate with them influences their desire to stay put or look for a job elsewhere". Further, more than 30 per cent said that communication is a "big influence" on their decision to stay or go. An overwhelming majority of both US (89 per cent) and UK (91 per cent) employees said that their employers' communication with them is key to earning their trust.

Speaking of trust, the 2005 Edelman Trust Barometer survey found that trust has important bottomline consequences. "In most markets, more than 80 per cent of respondents to the survey said that they would refuse to buy goods or services from a company they did not trust and more than 70 per cent would "criticise them to people they know".

I am not sure how far Jamaicans would take this issue of trust, particularly because in our environment there are not enough alternative producers of goods and services. If you are dissatisfied with one service or product provider you are pretty much stuck, although increasingly this is changing.

The truth is that, however it is looked at, effective employee communication is essential for the employee as it is for the employer and the success of the business. There is a school of thought, which is gladly on the decline, that once you have sent out an e-mail, that does it for internal communication.
The e-mail, they think, is the panacea for all internal communication ills and it does not matter that the company you work for is a manufacturing organisation and half the workforce does not have access to e-mail or a computer. Folks, the e-mail does not cure all. In fact, it might just be the cause of illness as there is such a thing as e-mail overload.

The use of the e-mail is just one facet of internal communication, and although it has made life easier for us in disseminating information quickly and widely (geographically) - it is a most useful mechanism for mainly creating awareness. If you really want to spur employees to action and get them involved in the communication process, I have found that face-to-face communication works best.

Nothing beats a good ole 'one on one' with your employees. In fact, best practices for communications processes maintain that employees prefer to get information from their immediate supervisors/managers. The bad news of this is that not all managers/supervisors are good communicators.

Very often they don't know about the importance of communication and how it affects their companies' profitability and maybe they just don't know how to communicate properly. But that is the subject of several columns to come.

Employee communication is a wide area that really affects all company personnel and the profitability of a business. It has not been fully tapped and explored in Jamaica and perhaps the wider Caribbean.

More anon.

Yvonne Grinam-Nicholson, (ABC) is a Business Communications Consultant with ROCommunications Jamaica, a full service marketing communications firm. A former journalist, she has spent the last 14 years working in the financial services sector in the areas of marketing, public relation and communication. She has a BA and MA from the UWI and is currently completing a MBA from the University of New Orleans. She can be contacted at: (876) 941-1210 and yvonne@rocommunications.com. Visit her website GetCaughtmedia at www.rocommunications.com and post your comments. Keep them clean!

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