Consortium survey defines internal communication excellence
It’s rare to see an employee communications study that doesn’t make you say, “Well duh.” Which is pretty much the reaction I had to the results of a massive research undertaking coordinated by HR consulting firm Towers Perrin. Still, one of the nice things about studies is that they provide quantifiable research to support what you’ve known all along.
The Towers study—interestingly available as a MarketWire release but not available on the company’s own Web site—brought 17 large U.S. companies together to conduct the same study. Each company could evaluate its own results, but since employees at each company answered the same questions, the results could be rolled up for a view of perceptions across business. Some 25,000 responses were aggregated to produce results that, while a blinding flash of the obvious, do reinforce what we’ve been saying about internal communications all along.
For example, employees who believe their companies’ leaders “demonstrate a seincere interest in employees’ well-being” lead employees to believe their organizations communicate effectively with them 12% more than those working for companies with leaders who, I guess, don’t give a damn. Towers’ conclusion (according to Katherine Woodall, a senior communications consultant): “The study reinforces just how important it is for senior leaders to connect with employees on a truly human level.”
The survey was designed to build an employee definition of effective communication. The results (and again, don’t expect to be floored):
- Open and honest exchange of information
- Clear, easy-to-understand materials
- Timely distributions
- Trusted sources
- Two-way feedback systems
- Clear demonstrations of senior leadership’s interest in employees
- Continual improvements in communication
- Consistent messaging across sources
The study also dug into the elements that are most influential in influencing employee opinions:
- Supervisory effectiveness in communication
- Basic communication tools
- Market understanding (competitors and customers)
- Business understanding (how the company succeeds)
- The employee-employer deal
While these elements (presented in order) are important, companies (another surprise) are doing a lousy job at them. For example, the study found 65% of employees don’t receive an adequate amount of information on competitors and 43% feel the information they do get is ineffective. Forty-eight percent don’t get adequate information on customers and only 38% believe what they get is useful and 27% say it’s ineffective. And only 39% get information that differentiates their company’s products and services from the competition.
According to Towers’ Charlie Watts, “Employees at all levels are saying that a key element of effective communiation is providing a clear picture of customers and competitors. And the data tell us there is a significant gap here.”
Only about half the respondents say their supervisors take the time to explain company strategies and company developments to them, and less than half believe communication has improved in their organizations in the past couple years. Less than half say leadership communications are two-way and only about half say procuedures are in place for employees to raise questions and issues with executives or for executives to inform employees quickly about major decisions and developments.
The dissatisfaction among employees mirrored in the Towers study reinforces the Accenture study I wrote about back in August.
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