Employee and Organisational Communications (including Employee Engagement, Internal Communication and Organisational Change)
An organisation and its employees operate in a faster moving world than ever before. Faced with a constantly changing business landscape, organisations need to ensure they not only deliver strong employee communications to ensure their people understand the challenges the business face, but also actively engage with their employees on a continual basis, ensuring that organisational change can be managed as painlessly as possible when change comes.
AAB is experienced in helping clients establish strong employee communication and employee engagement programmes, and also helping our clients when they need to manage organisational change.
Our approach is to keep things simple and be honest.
Anticipate – Don’t let a developing difficult situation drift out of control, making the company even more difficult to manage, and run the risk of letting negative news dominate the agenda. Be honest at all times: concealing or spinning potentially bad news always comes back to haunt you and can seriously undermine trust.
Staff will applaud honesty and are more likely to support tough measures if you engage them at the outset and share your plans with them where practicable.
Plan – Start planning how you are going to communicate the change programme simultaneously with developing it. What are the key messages, internally and externally? What headlines do you want? Is there likely to be an impact on your brand? Will you need to test sentiment later, using market research?
Ensure you and your senior managers are consistent. Rehearse. Hire in professional advice, including presentation skills and media training support if you expect media interest.
Communicate – Set out clearly what your plans are. Employees expect leadership and then for that leadership to communicate effectively. Adopt innovative communication tactics that first engage and then invite feedback from staff. Call a town hall meeting if the mood demands it.