Employee Engagement

Often, communicators focus thier budget and efforts heavily on external communications and leave employee engagement as a minor element of the overall strategy.

As communications become more sophisticated and company information is readily available, it is critical for communicators to engage employees in dialogue. All facets of employees should, and need, to know what is happening at the corporate level.

Some basic criteria should be considered when developing a plan for employee communications:

* Establish a schedule to communicate with employees and stick to it
* Be sure each employee understands the impact of their jobs to the overall corporate vision
* Make sure they have all information (good and bad) to carry on intelligent conversations with clients, family, friends and other employees
* When major changes take place, inform your employees first before making the information public

The employee communication should be developed in tandem with a business plan and should align with the corporate goals.

After you decide the voice and message that you want to convey, there are a multitude of channels to choose from:

managed email communications... voice mail... videos housed on the Intranet... bulletin boards... wikis... CEO blog... brown-bag lunch discussions...

Regardless of the strategy that you choose to follow, consistency and trust are the key elements to success